We All Live Here: Housed and Unhoused, East Central is Our Home and We Deserve Better

By Camille Washington

lETTERS

Weber Housing Authority Open House at proposed site, January 13, 2025. Photo provided

We’re used to vacancies in my neighborhood. It feels like there are as many vacant lots as there are vacant buildings in East Central Ogden. On some blocks there are both. Empty buildings plastered with disintegrating construction/developer logos that once said coming soon but have since been changed to for sale. Always for sale. For rent. All except the ones that get boarded up just before they fall apart, bordered by busted sidewalks and roadways. The many, many potholes are vacancies, too. 

In the early 2000s I was part of a small church group that ran a soup kitchen at the church on 23rd and Madison. Not the hodgepodge neoclassical one with the large twin staircases and glass blocks, the one with the impossibly tall a-frame roof that is losing shingles from lack of care. Both of them are vacant now.

We would quietly serve free hot meals out of the basement kitchen on Saturday mornings. There would never be more than a few dozen people who ate our food. Most of the time it was a handful. We were shut down just after Christmas the same year we started. Ogden City said we encouraged the wrong element to frequent the area.

Left: Historic Sixth Ward Meetinghouse at 682 23rd Street. Right: 705 23rd Street

About 20 years later, I moved near Lester Park. My place is right around the corner from that same church. Turns out shuttering our soup kitchen didn’t stop wrongness from entering the area during that time. So many of us in East Central are the wrong element depending on the spreadsheet, or the data points, or the elected official denying us services. 

Despite the unused buildings and empty lots everywhere, there is no shortage of people in my neighborhood. People who live in pricey new townhomes, and people who live in single rooms in converted Victorians. People who own, and people who squat. People who live alone, and people who live with their large families. People who sleep inside, and people who sleep outside. 

Last summer, a neighbor approached me with a rumor about a well-known property owner buying the vacant assisted living building across the street from the now vacant church where I once helped serve food. We worried together since that property owner is notorious across the city. Developers and landlords never seem to be the wrong element to Ogden City.

At the end of the year I learned the truth. Weber Housing Authority purchased it and wants to house a few dozen disabled homeless people there. Some of them long-term and some of them until they can live on their own. All of them will pay rent. 

When I listened to the presentation given by the Weber Housing Authority during a City Council Work Session in early December, I was hopeful and relieved. Not only could some people in my neighborhood who most need the help get some, the building might have a positive purpose again.

Perceptions of East Central have been tricky since before I knew it as East Central. What I’ve experienced is that it’s harder to accept the variety of life and people in a place where it’s difficult to perceive living. If the lights aren’t on, nobody is home, and if nobody’s home, why should the decision-makers care, even if the neighbors do? Unused and abandoned structures distract from the very real lives of the thousands of people who make up a neighborhood. 

Weber Housing Authority Executive Director Andi Beadles talking about the proposal during the open house. Benjamin Zack

When hundreds of my neighbors showed up to the open house that Weber Housing Authority hosted for a few hours a couple of weeks ago, that section of the block instantly felt more alive. Those of us living here know that our neighborhood has never lacked life. Just a positive perception of that life and who we are. The fullness of our lives.

Most of the people that make the decisions about East Central don’t live here and wouldn’t. Even if they own property here. So, the lives in our neighborhood are abstract to them. As tangible as the equation for Adjusted Median Income, the blinking blue lights of remote police surveillance, or the greying and soggy chipboard that encases construction sites through yet another winter. Perception first. Interpolation second. People last. 

Soft and hard opponents to the project who live in the neighborhood have taken the Weber Housing Authority proposal as a chance to express how they feel, too. With passion and resolve they’ve expressed feeling overlooked and overrun at events they think someone might notice: during the Open House, walking door-to-door, and at City Council meetings. For the most part I understand their frustrations even though I don’t share their opinion. It’s why I was so concerned about the rumors before I learned more.  

Today the old Aspen Assisted Living building is dark again as its future as Weber Housing Authority’s careful planning is subjected to more delay. The mayor insists on duplicating efforts that were completed while he was a councilperson, so now a broker is scouting other sites. This new search is the only part of this dragging process that is directly costing Ogden residents in tax money. It also jeopardizes over a half million dollars of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that need to be spent by the end of June. 

Like everyone in East Central with an opinion about Weber Housing Authority’s proposal, I want better for my neighborhood. The numerous people who’ve put pressure on unsupportive Ogden City Council members reflects that, as have the large crowds that showed up for the open house and city council meetings. We want more than all the vacancies used to excuse the ways my neighbors and I are routinely ignored and under-resourced. We want better for all of us who live here. In homes they own or not.

Former Aspen Assisted Living Building at dusk. Benjamin Zack