The INN Between

Summary

The INN Between is a Salt Lake City nonprofit that houses adults experiencing homelessness who are too ill for the street or shelter but not acutely hospitalized — for medical respite, pre- or post-treatment stabilization, and end-of-life care in partnership with licensed hospice agencies (official site). It is not a walk-up shelter; admission requires a medical referral and an assigned bed (FAQ).

Legal entity The Inn Between, EIN 47-2329595, is a 501(c)(3) homeless-services nonprofit registered in Salt Lake City, tax-exempt since February 2015 per IRS records (Form 990 record). The organization states it incorporated December 3, 2014 and opened August 17, 2015 in a former convent, later moving to its current 1216 E 1300 S building (FAQ; embedded Deseret News reporting on the official site).

Impact

The work is small in beds but extreme in depth per person. The FAQ lists 80 beds, 28 FTE, and a $98 stated daily operating cost per bed against a $2.6M annual budget — a facility where a handful of medically complex adults receive 24/7 staffing, meals, case management, and either recuperative care or a dignified death with volunteer companionship (FAQ). That is the opposite of breadth at Utah's scale: one building, high touch, long stays.

The counterfactual is concrete. Before this model, terminally ill unhoused people in Salt Lake City often returned to camps and viaducts after hospital discharge; the organization's own materials and reprinted journalism describe that gap as the reason the program exists (official site). Outcomes are self-reported but directionally large for a micro-population: the FAQ claims 184 dignified deaths and 28 "rebound" recoveries to housing through January 2025, while the homepage claims 150+ deaths and 90,000+ medical housing nights for 900+ individuals. Those are consistent, not conflicting — 184 satisfies "over 150" — and the homepage's are simply older: its mission paragraph says "As we near our 10th anniversary" while a banner on the same captured page reads "CELEBRATING 11 YEARS." The counters trail the site's own calendar by about a year. Treat all of them as self-reported narrative counters rather than audited statistics (FAQ; official site).

Permanence is partly institutional and partly replicatory. Financially, the entity has grown from startup-scale 990 revenue in its first partial fiscal year to $1.86M–$2.54M across FY2020–FY2025, with an unexplained $4.24M in FY2019, and net assets above $5M on the most recent ProPublica extract (Form 990 record). How much of that is donation-funded is genuinely unsettled — see Open Questions on the conflict between the 990 and the FAQ's stated budget mix. Programmatically, journalism reprinted on the site calls the effort "one of America's first hospices specifically for people who are homeless" and says similar programs are "being replicated in scattered communities nationwide" — aspirational breadth language that this wiki treats as reported, not verified (official site). The FAQ notes 2025 recognition as an NHCHC Certified Medical Respite Facility and positions executive director Jillian Olmsted as a contributor to national medical-respite guidance, which is plausible evidence of influence beyond one building if independently confirmed (FAQ).

Bet: that housing — not hospice licensure — is the binding constraint for end-of-life care among people experiencing homelessness, and that a licensed assisted-living-style respite home can unlock professional hospice on the street's margin. The model only works if hospitals, hospice agencies, and donors keep referring and paying; the 990 shows little earned program revenue relative to contributions (Form 990 record).

Utah Context

Single-site operation at 1216 E 1300 S in Salt Lake City, explicitly serving adults experiencing homelessness referred from local hospitals (University of Utah, Huntsman, Intermountain), Fourth Street Clinic, shelter providers, and other Utah systems (FAQ). The FAQ reprints the January HUD Point-in-Time counts, which it describes as counting "homeless individuals in our community" under a heading of "Homelessness in Utah" — the geography is ambiguous in the source and this page does not resolve it. Those counts are totals, not unsheltered counts, and they rise from 2,807 (2016) to 4,584 (2025), with the organization noting Utahns over 64 experiencing homelessness rising from 251 to 356. Whichever geography is meant, an 80-bed respite home is tiny relative to it.

Utah's only such combined hospice-access and medical-respite facility, per the organization's own FAQ wording — a claim not independently verified here.

What They Need Now

Clinical and direct-care staffing dominate: the FAQ describes full-time nursing leadership, CNAs present 24/7/365, and compliance with Utah Department of Health regulations for an Assisted Living Type II Medical Respite Facility (FAQ). Around that core sit case management, admissions coordination, dietary staff, and executive leadership.

Volunteers are structurally important — the FAQ reports 400+ volunteers contributing 4,000+ hours in 2025 — for companionship, meals, and facility upkeep rather than clinical licensure (FAQ). Fundraising capacity matters on the 990's account, which puts 93.5% of FY2025 revenue in contributions (Form 990 record); on the FAQ's own account the mix is very different, with government grants at 36%. Which is right changes what kind of help this organization most needs, and the wiki cannot yet say.

Careers board: https://tibhospice.org/about/job-opportunities

Open Questions

• "First in the nation" status is unverified. Journalism embedded on the official site describes The INN Between as "one of America's first hospices specifically for people who are homeless" — not a definitive first, and not confirmed against a national registry or peer-reviewed history (official site). No independent source in this shard establishes primacy.
• Bed count changed over time. A September 2023 Deseret News feature reprinted on the homepage described 50 beds plus 25 eleemosynary recuperative beds; the 2026 FAQ states 80 beds total (official site; FAQ). Capacity likely expanded; exact timeline not captured here.
• Where the money actually comes from is unresolved, and the two cited sources disagree. The FAQ publishes a budget mix of 36% government grants / 35% direct public support / 25% program-related income; the FY2025 Form 990 reports 93.5% contributions and program service revenue of $9,872, about 0.4% (FAQ; Form 990 record). Both cannot describe the same year. The FAQ figures carry no date and may be a projection for full 80-bed operation, or may classify government grants as program-related income. This is not a footnote: a third of the budget coming from government would make this an organization exposed to appropriations rather than to donor sentiment, which is a different fragility than the one this page describes elsewhere. Form 990 Part VIII resolves it.
• Outcome figures are self-reported and differently vintaged. The homepage counters trail the FAQ's January 2025 figures by roughly a year (the page advertises its 11th anniversary while its mission copy still says "near our 10th"). They are consistent with each other, but none is third-party audited, and no hospital readmission reduction or per-patient cost-savings statistic appears in any captured document.
• Assisted-living license details. The FAQ asserts Assisted Living Type II Medical Respite Facility licensure but does not publish a Utah license number — verify against state registry.
• Replication claims. "Scattered communities nationwide" replicating the model is journalist characterization, not a counted cohort (official site).
• EIN corroboration: 47-2329595 matches ProPublica's IRS-derived record for The Inn Between, Salt Lake City, and the organization's own FAQ footer (Form 990 record; FAQ).

Evidence

• Source: The INN Between Official Website · https://tibhospice.org/ — mission, homepage outcome counters, embedded Deseret News history (2015 convent opening, June 2018 move, hospice partnership model)
• Source: The INN Between — Frequently Asked Questions · https://tibhospice.org/about/frequently-asked-questions — licensure type, 80 beds, founding dates, self-reported outcomes through January 2025, EIN, address, budget
• Source: IRS Form 990 Record — The INN Between · https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/472329595 — EIN, legal name, exemption date, multi-year revenue/expenses/net assets

See Also

• Fourth Street Clinic — named referral partner in the FAQ