FARMINGTON—The Utah Homeless Services Board recently recognized Davis County Community Services Manager, Ryan Steinbeigle for his work related to homeless services with the Outstanding Leader Award. Steinbeigle is one of only three people in the state to receive the award.  

“I’m honored,” said Steinbeigle. “I wasn’t expecting it. I think the board just recognized that  I’ve been really engaged in Davis County's homeless response and leading out with the warming center and putting our plans together for a response in our long-term strategy for addressing homelessness in Davis County. There hadn’t really been a whole lot happening in that respect related to homeless services in Davis County until the county decided to take this on.”

Steinbeigle has been with the county for three years. He started his career working in venture capital and private equity finance for a nonprofit. “We did investments in the startup tech companies throughout the state of Utah. I left that and went and worked at the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome where I was a development director for seven years. Then the board hired me to run the organization so I was the executive director for seven more years.”

Then Steinbeigle said he left there to come to Davis County. “It was primarily to do economic development and then I started getting heavily involved in homelessness and affordable housing. I think the commission recognized that there was a need probably for a community services division within the county and so they created this division and asked me to lead that.”

Steinbeigle said they are hiring two additional staff members, a grant administrator who will run the federal programs and a housing and homelessness coordinator who will oversee affordable housing initiatives and also homelessness response.

In addition to his work with the county, Steinbeigle serves on the executive committee for the Utah Balance of State, Continuum of Care and co-chair for the Davis County Local Homeless Council. He also sits on the board of Davis Community Housing Authority. 

Working with homelessness has had its challenges, he said. “Housing and homelessness are probably the two most hot button topics in the state of Utah right now. I think it's great that we’re focusing on those two areas.”

Davis County is the third most expensive county in the state of Utah for housing, said Steinbeigle. “What I’ve enjoyed is that we’re putting an emphasis on increasing the supply of affordable housing, that we’re addressing homelessness and trying to work toward something that’s more upstream of helping people get out of homelessness or prevent homelessness. Working toward that I think is important.”

Obviously last year was the warming center, he said. “There were lots of challenges in terms of getting that up and running. That was hard. But we got through it and the opportunity to see how we were helping individuals experiencing homelessness and understanding better about why people are becoming homeless in our county.”

Steinbeigle said it was really helpful for him to see how grateful people were. “They had a warm place to go when it was super cold out and it was great seeing how our community really rallied together and we had so many people volunteer to help staff.”

Homelessness is a hard topic, he said. “It’s not something people love talking about or addressing. That definitely makes it challenging in terms of this new role. But it’s important we address it because ignoring it is not going to make it go away.”