City survey finds residents support sustainable parks maintenance, efforts to address affordable housing gaps
Salem City Hall. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Salem residents think identifying gaps in affordable housing and opening a sobering center would be helpful to addressing key issues identified in a strategic plan update the Salem City Council will vote on Monday, according to a recent survey.
Salem surveyed more than 240 people in February to gauge how helpful proposed activities would be to city goals: addressing homelessness, creating community resilience, increasing equity in delivery of city services, building great neighborhoods, and taking action on climate change.
The answers are meant to guide Salem’s Strategic Plan which helps the city set goals for issues that are important to the community like homelessness and helping businesses recover from Covid. On Monday, the Salem City Council will vote to adopt an update to the plan.
In 2017, the city released a Strategic Plan that prioritized providing permanent housing to unsheltered people, a greater survival rate for small businesses and a vibrant downtown with low commercial vacancy.
The city has made strides on several of the goals identified nearly four years ago, like updating its comprehensive plan, building affordable housing and developing a climate action plan.
Residents in 2017 said the city didn’t have an overarching vision or plan for how the city would grow in a community satisfaction survey.
On Monday night, the Salem City Council will also consider adopting a vision for a comprehensive plan update that’s intended to create more flexibility in where things can be built.
Homelessness continues to be a top concern among city residents, with a fall survey finding half of all respondents considered it the main issue facing Salem.
In the February survey, 78% of respondents said addressing affordable housing gaps through the comprehensive plan update, called “Our Salem,” would help reduce homelessness.
About three-quarters of the respondents said opening a sobering center and implementing a CAHOOTS-style model, which pairs a medic with a crisis worker to respond to low-level 911 calls, would help the homelessness issue.
Most survey respondents, 85%, said reducing or restructuring regulations that would inhibit small business growth and continuing efforts to support post-Covid business recovery would help create community resilience.
There was also overwhelming support for a strategy to ensure sustainable maintenance of city parks, with 89% of respondents saying it would help create great neighborhoods.
The city also surveyed people on equitable delivery of services and found 87% thought efforts to expand city services that can be offered virtually were helpful and 81% were in favor of digitizing city records.
More than three-quarters of survey respondents also said upgrading or replacing underlaying technology systems and addressing outstanding deferred maintenance on city infrastructure would help deliver equitable services.
Have a tip? Contact reporter Saphara Harrell at 503-549-6250, [email protected].
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