Record number of homeless people counted in Marion, Polk counties

Higher rents and fewer housing options are forcing more people into homelessness in Salem, nearly half of them for the first time in their lives. 

That’s according to this year’s Point-in-Time count, an annual effort to measure the number and experiences of people who are homeless in Marion and Polk Counties by surveying them out in the community during a week in January.

The count also shows success with Salem’s effort to shelter people. More homeless people were staying in shelters than out on the street, in tents, RVs or in cars combined.

This year’s total for the region: 2,154 people. It’s an increase of 471 people from 2023, the last time the region did the count. Of this year’s total, 953 people were not in shelters.

“It is bigger than any number we’ve ever had before,” said Jimmy Jones of this year’s count. Jones is the executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, which provides much of the region’s homeless services.

He said the increase is due to several factors. One is that organizers did a better job counting this year, especially in Polk County and in the northern part of Marion County. The Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance, which organizes the count, put a concerted effort toward improving the method this year by pairing services with useful services for unsheltered people. 

But the most telling data point, Jones said, is the amount of people who reported that they were homeless for the first time in their lives: 47%, or more than 1,000 people.

That figure, coming from the person’s self-assessment, can include people who have been homeless for multiple years in a row since first losing their housing. Fifty people reported becoming homeless within the last three months.

“You have a lot of people who probably don’t have a substance abuse issue, mental health issue, criminal issues or things of that nature. They’ve just been driven out of their homes by high costs, inflation and rental increases,” Jones said. “That is a function of a bad economy. It’s a function of an economy that is not making sure that wealth is being distributed properly, especially that low-income people have living wages so that they can continue to afford to live.”

Jones said that, largely because of housing costs, low-income people are stretched thinner than at any point in the last 20 years. The clients he serves are choosing between buying food for their kids or medicine for their health. 

“That 47% number is shocking and big. And what it tells me is that we can expect further increases to happen,” he said. 

Another glaring, but unsurprising, statistic is that about 42% of unsheltered people have been homeless for three years or more, said Jeremy Gordon, Polk County commissioner and chair of homeless alliance.

The Point-in-Time Count is widely considered to be an undercount by those who work in homeless services, due to its limited timeframe for counting and methods that require finding people out in the community.

The federal government doesn’t count people who are couch surfing as homeless, for instance, despite it being considered to be a form of homelessness among providers. Gordon said they counted couch surfers for their own local records this year, and it included 150 Pacific Islander people couch surfing, a demographic local agencies have been trying to improve outreach to. Gordon said rural areas also tend to have high rates of couch surfing.

“There are folks who fall in between the cracks,” Gordon said. “(Federal) definitions don’t always fit nicely to people’s reality.”

The data also shows some of the impacts expansions to sheltering options have had. This year, 44% of people surveyed were unsheltered, meaning they were staying in tents, RVs, cars or on the street. In 2023, over half of the region’s homeless population was unsheltered.

“That’s a big deal,” Jones said, especially because of Oregon’s poor rates of unsheltered homelessness, and historical lack of state investment in accessible sheltering options. For many years, available shelters were considered high-barrier, requiring sobriety, disallowing pets and other measures preventing many from staying. 

Jones said state funding has allowed for new, low-barrier developments like Salem’s navigation center, Project Turnkey and micro shelters.

Jones said low-barrier shelters are an expensive – but very effective – way to reduce homelessness. In its first year, half of the people who stayed at the navigation center moved into permanent housing afterward, a comparatively high success rate.

“So we have people now in shelters at a much greater percentage than we’ve ever had before,” Jones said. “And that is really important, because we have them there. We know where they are, we’re working with them constantly to reduce barriers to get them into housing, to find good outcomes for them, and we’re turning those shelter beds over and bringing new people in all the time.”

Gordon said that the Point-in-Time Count data isn’t well-equipped to track the region’s progress on its own. 

“One of the stories it doesn’t tell is the amount of people we’re able to serve. And that number has gone up quite a bit,” he said.

State money has helped 600 households in Marion and Polk counties get off the streets and into shelters and apartments in the past two years, according to a recent report from the homeless alliance.

Marianne Bradshaw, who coordinated this year’s count with the alliance, said there was a noticeable increase this year in homeless households with children. The count included 164 children and teens in shelters, and 86 living in tents, cars, RVs or on sidewalks. 

Bradshaw said that’s an increase the community has been bracing for because of statewide trends. Recent responses include the opening of Church at the Park’s family site in Dallas, and ARCHES Nest in Salem, providing shelter beds for families with children and teens. 

Surveyors ask people where they slept the night of January 22nd. About a third said they slept in a vehicle. Bradshaw said she interviewed a young woman who, between fifth and eighth grade, slept alongside her mom, uncle and three other kids in the trunk of their car.

Bradshaw said stories like that from the Point-in-Time Count highlight opportunities to improve services in the community.

“What does that look like, to connect with folks sleeping in a car? Sometimes they don’t want to be found, they’re trying to stay off the beaten path,” she said. “How do we provide services, and what do they need?”

Bradshaw said she appreciated the community’s help to improve the count methodology this year. Overall, there were 200 volunteers and 17 outreach events where thousands of pairs of socks, hand warmers and hundreds of beanies and blankets were handed out.

“We’re not going to find everybody,” she said. “While I would never claim that this (Point-in-Time count) is 100% accurate, I feel like we have meaningful data that we can look at and think about trends and use it in combination with other data sources that we have to understand current realities and make smart choices.”

Jones sees a clear pattern, with needed solutions including more housing for seniors on fixed incomes, people with disabilities and people of color who face outstanding challenges competing in the housing market. Seniors are among the fastest growing demographics of homeless people.

He said he hopes that the city of Salem will continue to commit to low-barrier shelters and promote a housing-first model which gives someone shelter before treatment for addiction, which has been proven more effective. On a national level, the federal government appears to be moving away from that longstanding approach.

“My worry is that the gravity of the conversation, both at the national and the state level, will pull people into other, failed, solutions. I just hope that they’re able to keep their eye on the ball,” Jones said.

Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.

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