Salem-area homeless deaths declined in 2024, preliminary state data shows

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As a snow storm coated Salem late last week, a homeless advocate stumbled on tragedy.

She found a man lying face down in the snow, with his body covered in white. The advocate woke the man up and directed him to a warming center, according to a Feb. 14 newsletter from Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency.

That day, the man escaped a fate that hundreds of homeless Oregonians fall victim to every year – dying on the streets. But preliminary state data shows that deaths of homeless people are declining in the Salem area.

In 2024, the Oregon Health Authority recorded 45 deaths in Marion and Polk counties of people whose death certificates listed their address as “domicile unknown,” meaning they didn’t have a fixed address. That’s down from 50 deaths in 2023.

Deaths of homeless people across the state were trending down in 2024 from 647 to 546, though the numbers of deaths in December 2024 were still “being processed” as of Friday, according to the health authority.

The agency is required under state law to track homeless deaths thanks to a law championed by Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, which took effect in 2022.

January was the deadliest month last year, with 66 homeless deaths recorded statewide. The largest share of such deaths recorded last year, about 45%, occurred in Multnomah County.

The state date listed the most common manners of death statewide as natural causes with 290, and accidental, with 204.

Natural deaths include those from illnesses and health conditions, while accidental deaths include overdoses and exposure to heat or cold.

Patterson said she began pushing for the state to track homeless deaths after Jones told her stories of people who had died in the cold or faced lifelong consequences, such as amputation, because shelters weren’t open. 

She said such deaths have decreased as shelters have become more available. In the last five years, she said the number of beds in shelters and short-term housing in Marion County have grown from around 200 to 1,200. Polk County has also added two shelters in recent years, with plans to open a third in Monmouth later this year.

Affordable apartments added in Salem in recent years include the Yaquina Hall Apartments at 2720 B St. N.E. and Sequoia Crossings at 2950 Broadway St. N.E, both of which prioritize formerly homeless people. A new affordable development, the Gussie Belle Commons, also broke ground last month at 891 23rd St. N.E. 

One of the tragedies that inspired Patterson to push for tracking homeless deaths was a woman who was discharged in January 2023 from Salem Hospital with nowhere to go, dropped off at a shelter that wasn’t open and died of pneumonia in the parking lot.

Patterson serves on a task force focused on challenges related to hospital discharges. In a report this past fall, the group said state leaders need to introduce more medical respite programs that serve homeless people who are “too ill or frail to recover on their own from a physical illness or injury, but not sick enough to be in a hospital.”

Absent such programs, homeless people can be discharged onto the streets, where they’re particularly vulnerable to illness and complications from injuries.

The report also recommended that state leaders make more public guardians available to help people who can’t care for themselves due to mental health conditions and get them into long-term housing that meets their needs. 

“There are many different moving pieces to this. We’ve got to keep bringing that number down,” Patterson said of homeless deaths.

Lynelle Wilcox, who manages the Salem women’s shelter Safe Sleep United, agreed that the state data shows the increase in shelter beds is “making a dent, because we know homelessness is going up,” she said.

Wilcox said more elderly women are coming to Safe Sleep who are newly homeless and “just suddenly with nowhere to go.” Some were priced out of the housing market. Others were caring for a relative who died and couldn’t afford to take over their lease.

“We’re getting more calls than ever before,” she said.

Wilcox said shelters require people to be able to do daily activities such as eating, showering and making their bed without assistance. Those who can’t are typically turned away and referred to services such as assisted living, adult foster care or group homes – but the wait for such places can be long, she said.

As for the man found in the snow last week, “he is doing fine, for the moment,” said Jones, of Community Action, in his newsletter. “But I think it is fair to ask if needs like his will remain a priority in the future.”

Jones wrote that there is a policy conversation taking place in Oregon and across the U.S. about how and when people can access services. Many believe service providers should require people to be sober or receiving mental health services in order to qualify for shelter and housing.

“The problem with that approach, generally, is that it creates enormous harm to people who cannot yet access those services,” he said in the newsletter. “Those barriers, if they were to grow in the future, would effectively bar 80% of the homeless residents of a community from the services that they need.”

Wilcox said many shelters offer a low-barrier environment to allow people struggling with addiction to still meet their basic human needs of safety, food, shelter and dignity.

She said there is a misconception that low-barrier means no rules or boundaries. At Safe Sleep, she said, “you can come in high or tipsy, we’re going to meet you where you’re at, but your behavior has to be acceptable. If you get higher tipsy and get giggly, that’s going to work. If you’re going to get high or tipsy and get aggressive, that’s not going to work.”

Jones said the fact that the number of homeless deaths in Oregon is decreasing, even as drugs such as fentanyl have become increasingly lethal,  is a sign that “what we are doing in Oregon is working.”

He attributed the decline in such deaths to the state Legislature making unprecedented investment in “sheltering done the right way.”

“We still have a lot of work to do, because the homeless crisis continues to worsen, and the total numbers continue to grow,” he said in the newsletter.

Every $100 average rent increase in a community results in a 9% increase in homelessness, according to data published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2020.

“The solutions to the problems are layered, and complex,” Jones said in the newsletter. “They are also simple. We need more affordable housing stock, more homeless prevention, more supportive services, and we especially need to make sure that our approaches are aligned to the last quarter-century of best practice research, which supports housing first, low barrier policies, and harm reduction strategies.”

Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.

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