The Road Home

The Road Home welcomed senior officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Executive Director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab, and leaders from Utah’s Office of Homeless Services to The Gail Miller Resource Center. We were proud to showcase how, alongside partners including Volunteers of America, Fourth Street Clinic, Shelter the Homeless, First Step House, the Utah Department of Corrections, the Salt Lake Coalition to End Homelessness, and others, our work goes beyond emergency shelter to provide coordinated onsite services… including housing navigation, integrated healthcare, behavioral health crisis response, workforce support, veteran services, and barrier reduction resources that help create pathways to housing stability. Grateful for the opportunity to share our work and strengthen partnerships that help move solutions forward!

Giving back to the communities we serve is something that has always been important to us at Bach Companies. Last week, teams across the organization came together for a community service project supporting The Road Home at Palmer Court, a 201-unit permanent supportive housing community serving residents who have previously experienced long-term homelessness. As an entity of Bach Companies, the FourSite Property Management corporate team was proud to participate alongside so many incredible volunteers and partners. Throughout the day, teams worked on projects that helped refresh and enhance the community, including: • Interior prep and painting • Fire lane painting • Weeding flower beds • Laying mulch • Planting flowers • Trimming bushes • Organizing donated household goods A huge thank you to our local supplier partners who generously donated materials and helped make this project possible: Sherwin-Williams, U.S. Lawns, Stoddard Landscaping, and Lowe's Companies, Inc. It was a great reminder that strong communities are built through collaboration, service, and people willing to step in and make a difference. Proud to be part of a company that values both community impact and meaningful partnerships!

Volunteers of America, Utah is doing such incredible work helping people with mental health, detox, and homeless services! Learning more about their Youth Resource Center and all they are doing for youth experiencing homelessness brought me to tears! Thank you friends for all you are doing for our community! Thank you for being such a great partner to The Road Home and so many other community partners! As Reverend James Marshall said, quoting George L. Bell, “You can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up.” Thank you for showing up!

Until Friday, Utah had a majority female state Supreme Court. In a state that consistently ranks poorly for women's equality, this was something to be proud of. These three accomplished, principled women were selected through a merit-based process to interpret and uphold our Constitution. Their CVs would astound you. I'm not going to dig into the upsetting story of Friday's change to the court — Utah News Dispatch has some good coverage you can read. But Women's Leadership Institute had the chance to host all three of these justices to talk about decision making at our Career Development Series. After all, who better to teach us about high-stakes decisions than people who do it for a living? Justice Jill Pohlman described her approach for making hard calls: stay open-minded, do the work and thinking yourself, and approach it like you would a jigsaw puzzle with a few missing pieces. "At some point you've got to take a step back and say, 'This is a pretty awesome picture. … There might be a piece missing here or there, or maybe the edge is just a little bit off, but that's not a me problem. … It's just that life doesn't fit together.'" Justice Paige Petersen talked about the conscious decision to stay true to herself. She softens her language in emails even though leaders are typically more direct, and she's made a deliberate choice to keep doing it. "I'd like to continue being nice and diplomatic, but I am confident, and I did mean what I said." And Justice Diana Hagen — who resigned from the court just days before this event — showed up anyway. Because that's who she is. She's the woman who regularly takes a group of homeless girls from The Road Home camping. She's the woman who, after applying multiple times to the Court of Appeals, wrote down everything she learned and handed those tips to other applicants (including her own competitors). Justice Hagen talked about impossible choices. She talked about the plan she'd had for her whole career, the one that's gone now, and the decision she's making instead to position herself for what's next rather than grieve what's lost. And we all got on our feet for her. I'm grateful to Justices Hagen, Petersen, and Pohlman for their examples. They are role models of elegance, intelligence, and composure — yet they spoke candidly about high-stakes decisions, sharing stories you won't find in any court opinion. We also had an amazing moderator, WLI board co-chair Jonathan Hafen, who knows these women well enough to pull out the absolute best stories (and who also sponsored lunch). Ashley DeHaan noted that the line to meet the justices was longer than the line for lunch. She's right. The justices were practically celebrities after that session. And I'd like to leave you with these words from Jen Hunsaker: Justice Hagen, we do not accept your resignation.