When Lynelle Wilcox first began volunteering at Salem’s warming centers six years ago, she entered them with the wrong perception. She thought that staying out of homelessness was a matter of working hard and saving money.
She’s learned otherwise in the years since, and now is reminded daily as the manager at Safe Sleep United women’s shelter.
Many of the homeless people she’s met are working, living paycheck to paycheck. Many are dealing with abuse, mental illness, disability and trauma.
Among them are a child psychologist who had a stroke and had to relearn how to walk and talk, and teens who aged out of foster care with nowhere to go or were kicked out of their homes for being LGBTQ+.
“(I) heard so many stories that I had to change my mind,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox was addressing attendees at a Tuesday, Sept. 24, town hall on homelessness hosted by the Salem Human Rights Commission. The group aims to address discrimination in the city. Earlier this year, their annual community belonging survey found that 91% of unhoused respondents experienced discrimination in the past year.
The town hall included presentations from the city’s Outreach and Livability Services Team, Marion County’s law enforcement diversion program, the Salem Housing Authority, Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency and Church at the Park.
The presentations were followed by a brief Q&A session where the speakers answered questions submitted by the audience and through an online form. Community members, including city leaders, formerly unsheltered people and staff from services, filled about half of Loucks Auditorium.
A goal of the event was to address misconceptions about Salem’s unsheltered population.
Wilcox, in her opening remarks, told the audience that anyone can become homeless.
“It could happen to anyone who does all the right things, saves the money, and still life gives them more emergencies than their resources and network can support,” she said. “Homeless people aren’t the problem. They’re the result of the system that doesn’t have enough support.”
The resources
For the bulk of the town hall, community resource providers shared introductory information about their programs and the people they serve.
The first presenter, Sgt. Robert Dowd, is a Salem police officer who works on the city’s Outreach and Livability Services Team. The team includes four public works employees and two police officers who meet with area service providers once a month.
It also includes three sanitation workers who last year collected an average of 44,000 pounds of trash each month, according to the city.
Dowd said the team’s goal is to build relationships through repeated visits to people who are living on Salem’s streets, where the team shares information about resources in the community.
“We’re trying to help people find a place to be,” he said.
Josh Wolf from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office then shared information about their law enforcement diversion program, LEAD, which allows people to avoid prosecution for minor crimes if they work with a navigator to address the underlying reasons they’re breaking the law — often homelessness or addiction. The program’s navigators are recovery mentors or alcohol and drug counselors who generally have personal experience with addiction recovery.
Nicole Utz spoke next. She leads the Salem Housing Authority, which is Oregon’s third largest housing agency. Last year, it distributed $28 million in federal funds to help people pay for rent, mostly through housing choice vouchers known as “Section 8.”
Their work serves over 9,000 people in the Salem-Keizer area, Utz said. The housing authority also has an outreach team which visits encampments to share information about housing programs several times a week, Utz said. They also distribute immediate basic needs, like water, tarps and cold weather gear.
DJ Vincent, founding pastor at Church at the Park, shared information about their programs, including family, adult and youth micro shelters housing 250 people. The city established them in 2021 using mostly Covid relief funds, and they recently secured $8.5 million in state funding to remain open until at least next June.
Eight of the residents at their young adult micro shelter on Turner Road are also attending classes at Chemeketa Community College, Vincent said.
Their inaugural micro shelter, Village of Hope, will soon add 40 beds for seniors in need, staffing, offices, accessibility and more showers.
Church at the Park also runs a safe parking program which allows 30 people to sleep in parking lots of partner churches per night. Vincent said over 100 people are on the program’s waitlist.
Vincent encouraged those gathered to get involved.
“A lot of people can pretend to care about our unsheltered neighbors, but you can’t pretend to show up,” he said.
Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, also spoke about Salem’s recent rise in available shelter. His agency in 2017 ran zero shelter beds. Now, they shelter hundreds of people per night.
Jones drew applause when he shared the data for the city’s navigation center, a 75 bed co-ed shelter which provides case management to help people stabilize their housing, mental health and employment.
The agency’s recent report on first year outcomes found that about half of departing shelter residents, 54 of 103 people, moved into permanent housing between June 2023 and May 2024. On average, people left the navigation center within four months.
The agency does outreach to encampments five days a week, including during the heatwave in July where they reported nearly 2,000 interactions, including distributing water and cooling rags. The downtown ARCHES Day Center provides showers, mail service, breakfast, lunch and water.
Other sheltering programs include Taylor’s House, a youth shelter with 10 beds and the Tanner Project with 36 beds for veterans.
ARCHES Inn is a renovated hotel hosting 72 guest rooms prioritizing wildlife survivors, veterans and elderly people. Last year, it served 440 people and 115 of them exited into permanent housing, Jones said.
Jones said that, with the surge in new shelters, Salem likely has as many people living in shelters as there are sleeping outside them.
Jones shared some of the stories of people he’s met over the years.
Six-year-old Jade had been living in a tent at Wallace Marine Park with her mom and grandmother for a year when the outreach team first met her, Jones said.
“Salem Housing Authority housed her. Today she’s in middle school, still housed and still doing very well,” he said.
Two others Jones had met —a man named Brian and a mother of three living in a tent in Cascade Gateway Park — did not survive homelessness. Both died from infections due to a lack of access to treatment.
“There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these stories, and the commonality between those three people simply was this one thing: they were all victims of circumstance. None of them had really done anything wrong to find their way into that particular situation,” Jones said. “They just had a lot of bad luck, more than anything else. But that bad luck, for some people, can turn into a death sentence.”
Q&A
The speakers then returned to the stage to answer questions from the community.
One question came from a downtown security officer seeking tips on how to approach interactions with unsheltered people with empathy, and wondering which resources he could share with them. Utz suggested bringing them water and asking how their day is going, and creating an opportunity for private security to get training with the city.
Another question came from full-time students living in their car wondering why they see millions of dollars go toward homelessness programs but still can’t get help.
Jones said, despite over a billion dollars in the statewide budget to address the issue, that shakes out to about $1 for every $15 of need.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said.
Someone asked about the plan for people who are opting for the homeless lifestyle by refusing help offered to them. The panelists agreed that it’s a common misconception people choose to be homeless. Often, when people say no it’s because they aren’t in the right place to receive help, or they don’t trust that the offer is sincere.
They agreed that it’s about building relationships, and offering help again and again.
See the city website for a list of ways to volunteer and support local organizations for people who are homeless or are at risk of homelessness.
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.
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Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian, where she covered labor issues, health care and social services. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
