In September, Durrant joined the Ogden City Police Department as the department’s third homeless service advocate, joining Anna Davidson and Nancy Griggs. The advocate position was created in 2019 and operates under the department’s Community Policing Division.

“It’s the first of its kind in Utah,” he said. “I was working in the field with Lantern House and got to know Anna Davidson, who was the first Homeless Service Advocate here, and just networking and collaborating and working together with her. When this position opened up, I applied for it.”

He said the position helps both the police department as well as those experiencing homelessness.

“We are trying to assist individuals who are experiencing homelessness directly with law enforcement as an alternative to consistently ticketing and criminalizing homelessness,” he said. “I feel like it’s a very mutually beneficial role here at the PD where the police can do some more advocacy for these individuals who are struggling instead of just ticketing them and burying them under citations and court procedures.”

Durrant said the advocates get to do “a little bit of everything in the field.”

“We will meet with individuals encountered by law enforcement, sometimes referred by other agencies, to eventually house individuals who are experiencing homelessness,” he said. “This program’s actually very good at keeping people housed. They have a very good track record of keeping people housed that they have housed. Compared to other agencies, there’s a very low return to homelessness. … The way it was designed was to fill in some gaps in services. If there’s an individual that has been turned away by another agency for violent behavior, that’s something we can step in and help with. If there’s someone where their mental health is a bit too hard for them to cope with going into shelters, we can assist with that as well.”

He said this is a shift in how law enforcement had traditionally dealt with homelessness in Ogden prior to the addition of homeless service advocates.

“We did not have a street outreach team,” he said. “The police were kind of forced to provide mental health services in the field as a police officer. They were forced to try and coordinate services through other agencies without a social worker there that can navigate that for them. The police would give varying advice for people. … The intent was always there to help these homeless guys and gals, but when Anna was brought on as a Homeless Service Advocate, she was really able to coordinate services and help people on the street level.”

While he’s been with OPD’s group of advocates for more than two months, Durrant said he’s been working with the city’a homeless population for years, first taking a paid position at the Lantern House in 2016 after doing volunteer work.

Some of that early volunteer work just happened to be ordered by the state of Utah.

“As a kid, I was kind of a juvenile delinquent, so I was doing a lot of court-ordered community service,” he said. “The little community service work van would pick me up and one of the tasks that we would do for community service is we would go and clean up the old St. Anne’s Center, which is now the Lantern House. We would go and clean up the property and then we would go and pick up pizzas from different organizations and deliver them.”

It was during this experience that he found a calling to help the city’s homeless population.

“Just seeing the way some of these individuals have to live, it just struck me and stuck with me for the rest of my life,” he said. “It’s very hard out there and I don’t like to see people suffer and struggle like that.”

Durrant said he’s learned a lot from helping the homeless.

“This experience has taught me to not believe everything you hear,” he said. “Some of the nicest, kindest clients I’ve ever met were the loudest and most mentally ill. I think we have this idea in our heads that the homeless are violent, scary and awful. There’s some instances where it can be a little dangerous, but for the most part, they’re people just like you and me. After we house people, you could see these people walking into Walmart and you would never know they were homeless before.”

He added that there are other misconceptions the public tends to have around homelessness.

“The biggest misconception that I hear is that, ‘These guys aren’t working. They’re lazy. They just sit around all day,'” he said. “It’s very rare for me to meet a homeless client that does not have an income. … It’s very rare to have no income at all. A lot of these individuals, they’re on disability and it’s not enough to pay for rent; it’s less than $1,000 per month for these individuals. Some of them are working two or three jobs just trying to make it and they just can’t. It’s very expensive to be homeless. You and I, we can go to the grocery store and we can buy our food for a week and it’s a little cheaper. These guys, they don’t have anywhere to store their food. They can’t buy a dozen eggs and have that last two or three days, those eggs are going to go bad. To buy everything in a small quantity is very expensive, so day-to-day life is extremely expensive as a homeless person.”

Durrant said he’s excited to take the position on in the future and, alongside his colleagues, grow its reach and abilities in the city.

“We would like to grow this position to get more funding that’s going towards the clients,” he said. “Things to help with vital documents — we want to be able to get some funding to help people obtain their birth certificate, their ID, their Social (Security), all of those things that you need to get a job or get an apartment. Out-of-state birth certificates, sometimes they can cost $20-$60 and that’s a lot of money for homeless people. When we don’t have that funding to help them with that, it’s a little tough.”

He said they would also like to find additional funding to help with rental assistance, deposits and bring on additional Homeless Service Advocates.

“I’ve known Anna and Nancy for a while and they are really truly amazing people,” he said. “I’m really grateful the police department gave me this shot to come and help.”