What’s next for Salem’s response to homelessness downtown
Salem city leaders hope the recently expanded police, cleaning and mental health teams can become a model for homelessness response throughout Oregon, and will be asking the state for money to keep up the work beyond the pilot program.
It’s among the updates provided to downtown business owners and service providers Thursday, Jan. 29, the latest in a series of meetings hosted by the Salem Main Street Association discussing challenges in the downtown core.
The meeting brought about 50 people to a newly opened event space in The Forge, a recently renovated downtown shopping complex. The gathering was largely of business owners and members of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, and others in attendance included Salem City Councilors Linda Nishioka and Paul Tigan, Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack, city administrators and leaders from Church at the Park.
The panelists included state Rep. Tom Andersen, Union Gospel Mission Executive Director Craig Smith, Salem Fire Chief David Gerboth and Krishna Namburi, Salem city manager.
The speakers each gave opening remarks about their ongoing projects to improve downtown, then took written questions from the audience.
A model city for Oregon
In recent weeks, the city has expanded its cleaning and police teams responding to homeless encampments, and launched a new team through the fire department to respond to crises relating to mental health issues and substance use. The city is calling the multi-pronged effort “Safe, Clean and Healthy Salem.”
The Salem Police Department’s Homeless Services Team visits people camping in Salem’s parks and streets, and works to connect people with housing and sheltering resources. They also post legally required notices telling people they have 72 hours to vacate a campsite. They work in conjunction with the Salem Outreach and Livability Services, which collects garbage and responds to illegal camping and dumping.
The Salem Fire Department’s REACH team, a partnership with Marion County, launched on Jan. 20. It provides an alternative to a police car or an ambulance for people in crisis, working to de-escalate situations and connect people to mental health and substance use treatment.
In October, the Salem City Council voted to spend $626,000 on a six-month pilot expansion to expand the police and cleaning teams to seven days a week, which began in January, and to kickstart the REACH team. A $180,000 private donation covered some of the cost of the police team expansion.
To keep up the expanded work beyond the pilot, the city plans to ask the state legislature for $2.75 million. That ask was included in the city’s list of lobbying priorities the council approved in early December. It comes as state lawmakers are contending with an expected budget shortfall and struggling to fund key state programs, including Medicaid and state road maintenance.
“Looking at the city’s financial challenges and the forecast, in order to keep green it’s important that we don’t add new services without sustainable funding,” Namburi said. “Hopefully it’ll work out, but also we will have the data to prove (it). I’m hoping that we can also be a model city for other cities in Oregon. And hopefully the state will support that.”
Gerboth said the Salem Fire Department will be pursuing a grant to sustain and expand the REACH team beyond the six-month pilot without impacting the city’s general fund. The department is applying for the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, said Brian Carrara, assistant fire chief.
“I hope we can get to an expansion. The ultimate goal would be that all of these services working together are creating an environment where we don’t need these types of resources,” Gerboth said.
Gerboth said that, on Wednesday, REACH visited a campsite which had been burned, destroying all of someone’s belongings. They’d been called in after a local nonprofit reached out to the police team, who connected them with REACH.
The camper wasn’t speaking to the nonprofit team, and it wasn’t clear whether they were injured, Gerboth said.
“The mental health professional with Marion County was able to engage with that person, got them to actually speak, to talk. We were able to do a full health assessment and found out there wasn’t a medical need at that time,” Gerboth said. “So we didn’t need an ambulance, but we were able to transport that person to the Marion County Behavioral Health Crisis Center, connect them with services and get them off the street.”
That drew applause from the audience.
Gerboth said the department is collecting data which will be presented to the city and county about the benefit to the community.
“We need to prove, at the end of this pilot program: Is the return on investment worth it?” he said.
Community policing downtown
For years, Womack has pushed to fund a community policing model for additional officers to do proactive policing work. He has sought to put officers on bicycles back in the downtown core, which he said would allow them to build relationships and prevent crime, rather than just reacting.
He said that business owners now have an additional option beyond 911 with the REACH team, but police are still going to field some of those calls when someone’s sleeping in front of a business.
“You’re going to get a patrol officer in a reactive mode, not to downgrade the capabilities of my patrol officers, they’re exceptional at that work, but they don’t have the level of understanding of all the services that are out there, the legalities behind removing an unsheltered person who might be in a behavioral health crisis from that situation. These are complex situations,” Womack said.
Reactive work is also expensive, he said, including hours spent cataloguing a person’s property after police remove it from a place such as outside of a business.
“Then we’re going to take that person downtown to our police station, and we’re going to give them a ticket and let them out the back door,” he said.
He said that dedicated downtown officers would instead be “a consistent, proactive presence.”
Womack said he wants to address homelessness by balancing compassion and accountability.
“We don’t rely on enforcement as the only tool for accountability,” he said.
Though Womack has so far been unsuccessful in funding additional officers downtown beyond the homeless services team’s pilot expansion, the implementation of paid parking downtown may have provided him an opportunity.
Street parking has generated about $1.2 million dollars in revenue in its first six months, on track to outpace the $1.4 million the city had forecast it would generate in the first year.
Namburi said there are expenses to consider, including deferred maintenance and increased security needed at parkades, but there is likely to be around $600,000 left over, though it’s a tentative figure. She said the city also voted to reimburse downtown businesses for parking taxes paid since July, which drew hearty applause from the room.
She said that conversations with city councilors have indicated an interest in putting that revenue toward community policing.
She’s still developing her budget proposal which will be unveiled in April.
Updates from the Union Gospel Mission
Smith, executive director of the Union Gospel Mission, said that his organization serves a unique, and often misunderstood, role in the community. He clarified that they’re a gospel ministry, first, which aims to spread the word of Jesus Christ in the community.
“UGM is a church. It’s incorporated as a church. We operate it as a church. That is our heart,” he said. “Our focus, and our desired outcomes is transformational life change.”
He said that they have around 300 total beds in the facility, but many are empty.
“We’re not full,” he said. “We have a role to play in all of this. We have room, not like some of the other service providers in town who have waiting lists… We are actively trying to figure out how it is that we get folks in the building, because there is some resistance amongst some folks. They just don’t want to stay with us.”
He said they’re working on expanding outreach work, adding more events and partnering with Be Bold Street Ministries to do so.
“We’re not very good at outreach. It’s a real deficit in our thought process, and the way we work, and I just want you to understand that we’re thinking about that. Because we recognize we have resources available that people need, and they’re not taking advantage of. And we want to figure out a way to fill our building,” Smith said.
During the question and answer session, an audience member asked whether the city needs to refocus on requiring accountability and sobriety in its homeless services.
Smith said that is his organization’s approach, but it’s not the only approach. He emphasized that it’s one lane of many.
“Our lane … is different than some other organizations and ministries in town. And that doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just makes it different. Understanding who’s serving who, and how, is really important,” Smith said.
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.
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Senior Reporter Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022, where she covers homelessness and housing. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
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Very informative article…..I may be wrong, but it seems the same topics keep repeating themselves to the same “leaders “
It will be more of the same from these feckless leaders who cater to criminals and drug addicts. And yes, most of them are drug addicts.