Unable to change Hernandez’s mind, the camper slumps over and rests his forehead for a moment against the stack of blankets in his cart. Still, this day in November, he's been directed to reclaim carts around the city library in conjunction with an official cleanup effort, and he moves forward without hesitation. Hernandez says the homelessness he's witnessed during his years with Romac saddens him. “They don’t want to lose items that tie them to housing, tie them to a better time in their lives,” said Matt Melville, homeless services director for Catholic Community Services of Utah. These metal containers on wheels are valuable, costing upward of $200 each, so stores take a significant financial hit when they’re routinely stolen.īut to people experiencing homelessness, the carts act as a kind of life raft - providing storage for the covers and sleeping bags they need in the bitter cold or allowing them to hold onto reminders of a time before they ended up on the streets. Over his past decade working for Romac Services, Hernandez must’ve confiscated tens of thousands of carts on behalf of regional retailers.

And there are no easy answers for dealing with stolen shopping carts - a mundane problem on its surface but one that can tug on issues of fairness and human dignity in Salt Lake City.

He’s just doing the job laid out for him by his employer and the officials above them. Hernandez doesn’t sound sarcastic or unsympathetic. Maybe that’ll persuade Hernandez to relent and let him keep the cart he’s stuffed full of blankets and bags. The man points to the cart’s bare handle, stripped of the plastic cover that would mark it as property of a particular store.

Pushing noobs out of their carts