Brad Jensen

Brad Jensen has lived in Salt Lake City most of his life and has been homeless off and on for the past 15 years. This current stretch — about two-and-a-half years — is the longest he’s gone without a home.

“[My dad] got sick real fast and died within a month. And then I ended up having to spend my savings for his funeral and medical costs,” Jensen said. “And it totally wiped me out. I lost my place.”

The two had a lawn care business. While Jensen tried to keep it going after his father passed, he kept running into challenges. His dad’s truck broke down, then his equipment got stolen. “I just kind of gave up on it. I still have like three [clients] that are my really long-term places, but I only do like weeding and flowers and stuff like that for them now,” Jensen said.

Every morning Jensen wakes up and strategizes: Where will he go? What does he need to accomplish?

“Sometimes I have commitments,” Jensen said, remarking that day he had two bracelets to sell at Liberty Park later on. “My priority is to do this tai chi, get smokes, get something to eat.”

“This is out right in front of the folk arts building in Liberty Park. And they were having a folk arts festival, and I thought this was really cool. This was really interesting. These guys were from Peru. That was kind of neat. … But that was another free concert. I just do all this free stuff, you know?”

“That’s a bigger group of people here. See, this guy’s hiding his face. He don’t want to get photographed. But this is kind of like my little group of people. We hang out when we don’t have anything to do. We just sit around and talk and play music. But that’s kind of what I do.”

(Brad Jensen | Special to the Tribune)

People gather in the trees above Red Butte Garden to listen to a concert at the amphitheater.

“I was looking at this bridge as, like, this is an opening to a new day of me. What am I going to do today? And that’s how I was trying to strategize what I was going to do. I was thinking about where am I going to go once I got on the train back downtown somewhere. I was thinking, ‘Which stop am I going to get off of? Where am I going to go? Well, let’s get off at Trolley and walk down to Liberty Park and see what happens.’ ”