SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, March 3, 2025 (Gephardt Daily) — Members of Salt Lake City’s unsheltered community received a measure of relief, and a welcome dose of dignity, Sunday, thanks to the Nomad Alliance, the aptly named nonprofit advocacy group considered by many, including its professional peers, to be among Utah’s most formidable frontline fighters in the war on homelessness.
As a recent recipient of the Crossroads Urban Center‘s “Hell Raisers Award,” the group is perhaps best known for its “Warming Bus” — an emergency shelter on wheels, often seen parked in Salt Lake City’s most forlorn neighborhoods. It’s a space where staff members not only offer warm greetings to all who approach them, it’s also a warm and safe place to sleep on freezing winter nights.
They also provide hot meals, a restroom, cell phones for reaching loved ones, as well as direct links to other, larger, more traditional homeless relief agencies.
And they also provide a buffer zone from the cacophony on the streets, a place of relative calm, a place to center the mind.
The Nomad Alliance’s ‘Warming Bus’ parked on the frontage road near 700 North 900 West, a remote area frequented by members of Salt Lake City’s unsheltered community. The mobile shelter-on-wheels accommodates up to 20 people nightly during the height of Utah’s winter and provided impetus for the ‘Code Blue’ program across the state of Utah. Photo: Gephardt Daily/ Patrick Benedict
On Sunday, the alliance brought the bus to Pioneer Park, where group volunteers, under the watchful eye of founder and Executive Director Kseniya Kniazeva, provided clothing, blankets, catered meals, haircuts, and even showers to the unsheltered. They also offered government phones, a Wi-Fi hotspot, charging stations, and applications for long-forgotten stimulus checks, as well as a syringe exchange courtesy of the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition.
Nomad Alliance’s founder and Executive Director Kseniya Kniazeva. Photo: Gephardt Daily/ Patrick Benedict
While the Nomad supply drive provided material aid for those living on Salt Lake County’s streets, it also focused on mental health, striving to create a stress-free enjoyable outing, a reprieve of sorts, including a DJ who provided music for the sunny Sunday gathering.
Nomad’s volunteers had worked feverishly all of last week and into the night Saturday preparing for the event, something they do monthly. They turned the final push into a family affair, with couples, and even a kid in tow, as they took inventory of donated supplies and readied them for delivery.
Nomad Alliance volunteers at their latest monthly supply drive, held Sunday, March 2, 2025, in Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park. Photo: Gephardt Daily/Travis McBride
Volunteer Shaun Davis, a U.S. Army veteran who joined the Nomad Alliance as part of a court-ordered community service sentence, said he never anticipated working to help the homeless, but he’s found the experience deeply moving. “While working with Nomad, the very first time I encountered a man who was on the street, confused, hungry and nowhere to turn, the simple act of feeding him and the gratitude he showed changed my life forever. I decided at that very moment I’d help this group do whatever they need. I literally put in 280 volunteer hours in about five months after that, and I’ve never looked back. And when I see a turnout like we have today, I’m all the more grateful. I’d encourage everyone to do what they can to take part in what we’re doing. It changed my life. It will change theirs, too.”
Another volunteer, former Utah school teacher and tax consultant Chip Hopkins, lent a hand Sunday by helping those in attendance apply for unclaimed COVID benefits dating back to 2021.
“It’s the kind of money that can turn a life around,” Hopkins said, “and many of those on the streets are simply unaware the stimulus checks exist.”
Over the last several months, Hopkins said, he’s helped an estimated 1,000 unsheltered Utahns receive the $1,400 they’ve long been entitled to, totaling nearly $140K.
As Sunday’s crowd grew to about 100 people, Kniazeva stopped to take a breath, something her volunteers say she rarely does, working days that begin before dawn and usually end after midnight.
“I just think all this proves how important it is that our community comes together to solve this problem, one of the greatest challenges of our time. I really think it’s important that those of us with an abundance help those with the least among us. If you look around, you’ll see that we have a hybrid group here, with average citizens coming together to help, including our volunteers, some who are unsheltered, and bridging the divide. It’s the greatest divide in America right now.”
One of those who turned out to take part in the supply drive celebration was Michele Gilbertson.
She says she “sleeps in a shopping cart, just down the road a ways.”
As far as Nomad goes, “It’s totally awesome they do this, but it’s sad they have to,” Gilbert said. “I was homeless for about 12 years, then lived in one of the low-income apartments, but now I’ve been out again since January.
“It’s been cold, it’s been freaky; you hear gunshots in the air, and then you have cops and security types tell you they’re going to arrest you … and all you’re trying to do is stay alive.”
Nomad Alliance ‘Warming Bus’ managers Bumblebee and Bethany on the nightshift, February 20, 2025. Photo: Gephardt Daily/ Patrick Benedict
