Seasons of Sorrow, the Plight of Utah’s Homeless Community

Embassy Apartments Burning on early May 12

Debi Raynor awoke abruptly to the sound of people screaming and the taste of smoke on her lips. The Salt Lake City apartment complex that had become her home after the streets was burning.

By nightfall, she found herself homeless once again, setting up a child-sized tent on a patch of grass near Liberty Park, where she slept fitfully on top of a couch cushion covered with a tablecloth.

“I don’t even know what to do, where to go,” she said Thursday, tears streaming down her face as she sat outside the singed apartment building.

Ron and Katherine Barrett had moved into the Embassy apartments from their tent in early 2019, at that time, they had a combined 30 tickets for camping on public grounds, a class B misdemeanor, each carrying a possible penalty of 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

You can replace stuff

This Feb. 1, 2019, photo shows Ron Barrett, 55, and his wife Katherine Barrett, 54, who are homeless, trying to stay warm in their tent with the meager heat from a ceramic pot filled with candle wax. Their cold hands are blackened by the soot rising from the burning candle as temperatures dropped to 12 degrees in Salt Lake City. The Barretts later got into an apartment with the help of a housing voucher, but they’ve now been displaced because of fire

On the day of the fire, Ron had gone for some early morning tai chi about an hour before. When he arrived back at the complex, he said, “the smoke was just billowing out the side.”