Unsheltered people in downtown Salem have again become the subject of scrutiny as the city considers ways to address safety and livability concerns raised by a group of business owners.

Salem city councilors on July 21 are due to consider a range of plans intended to bolster public safety downtown.

Those include bringing back the downtown police bike team eliminated last year due to budget cuts, using overtime to enhance police visibility downtown, bringing on two additional Homeless Services Team police officers in the next year and partnering ambulance workers with mental health specialists to deal with calls related to homelessness.

That came after Mayor Julie Hoy called for a plan to increase police presence downtown after a mass stabbing at the Union Gospel Mission on June 1. The men’s homeless shelter sits just north of downtown, and nearly all the victims were homeless men.

“I’m interested in the kind of help which meets people where they’re at. Failing systems are failing everyone,” said Hoy in a text to Salem Reporter. “We need legislation at the state level and federal level that actually helps us to help those who need it… before bad things happen.”

Hoy said her concerns are not exclusive to downtown, and include northeast Salem. She did not respond to a request for a phone call to elaborate.

Public discussion about safety downtown in the weeks since the stabbing has largely shifted toward quality of life issues, like vandalism, human waste on sidewalks, drug use and trash — not violent crime.

In a June meeting with city leadership, business owners shared experiences with cleaning up human feces, break-ins and needles near their businesses. 

In interviews and public statements, many property and business owners described a perception that downtown is unsafe and overrun by homeless people as a chief concern keeping potential shoppers and visitors away.

But those who spoke to Salem Reporter shared a range of experiences and concerns.

Some felt that while an issue exists, safety concerns are overblown and that a little kindness toward unsheltered people goes a long way. Others said the lack of police enforcement for low-level and non-violent crimes has forced them to take matters into their own hands, sometimes leading to retaliation from those living on the streets. 

Homeless service providers say that the discussion has largely focused on the challenges posed to businesses and visitors. They say to resolve those issues, Salem needs to shift its discussions to focus more on the origin of petty crimes: a lack of bathroom access, a lack of safe places to sleep and a lack of community empathy.

A January count of homelessness in the region measured a record number of homeless people in the Salem area: 2,154, an increase of 471 people since 2023. Providers said major reasons for the increase include a more accurate count this year, and rising housing costs driving more people out of their homes.

However, according to the count, a higher portion of people are staying in shelters than ever before, rather than on the streets. There’s widespread agreement that hundreds of new shelter beds added in recent years have decreased homelessness downtown.

Unsheltered people are cyclically made the scapegoat when businesses are impacted by broader issues like online shopping and shrinking household budgets, said Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency which operates The ARCHES Day Center downtown.

“You don’t see a whole lot of homeless folks in the downtown anymore compared to what you did five years ago,” he said. “And in fact, at 10 o’clock on any one random weekday morning, if you’re getting out and walking around, you don’t see any evidence that Salem has become this Gotham-like den of crime and iniquity and predation. It’s a false narrative.”

It’s a narrative that tends to rear its head in times of hardship, he said. He called the Union Gospel Mission stabbing a wild outlier that has generated a panic. The man accused of stabbing multiple people had a history of paranoia, delusions and threatening people with knives and cycled in and out of jails and treatment.

“I think there is a lot of hyperbole in this. I think there’s a lot of unreasonable fear. I think that there are probably some folks who see this as an opportunity to exclude the poor and the homeless from downtown. To drive them out,” Jones said. “That’s been a conversation that’s gone on for years, and in the aftermath of this tragic incident it has gotten louder.”

“You don’t see any evidence that Salem has become this Gotham-like den of crime and iniquity and predation. It’s a false narrative.”

Jimmy Jones, executive director of Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency

Police focus on violent crime

Business owners’ complaints about downtown safety have largely centered around shoplifting, public urination and other petty crimes. But Salem police officials in public statements have been far more concerned in recent years about violent crime in the downtown corridor and elsewhere.

Police Chief Trevor Womack said during a meeting with business leaders last month that Salem police are routinely shifting limited resources between downtown and northeast Salem each month to address public safety concerns in the city’s highest-risk areas.

That’s based on the past five years of data showing an overall rise in violent crimes and decreasing property crimes, according to police spokesman Officer Mark Jantz. He cited a 2023 police department study documenting rising gun violence in Salem as the reason for the department’s focus on downtown public safety.

The department’s report noted homeless people were a rising share of gun violence victims and were rarely perpetrators.

A June report by Salem police shows over the past five years, the most common type of crime reported downtown by far was theft of personal property. The most common type of violent crime reported downtown between 2020 and 2024 was aggravated assault, according to the report.

Property crimes reported downtown – burglary, motor vehicle theft, theft of personal property and arson – rose from 505 to 758 over three years before dropping to 461 in 2024, the report showed. The drop-off comes as the police department in recent years has pulled officers away from investigating such crimes to deal with shootings and fatal crashes.

Downtown reports of homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault have fluctuated over the last five years but increased overall. There were 128 such reports last year, compared with 82 in 2020.

Jantz said police review calls for service and crime data monthly to identify areas where officers will “provide extra focus.” 

Womack said at the meeting that while vagrancy and public indecency are unsightly and bad for business, the police department must prioritize violent crime. 

“Our experience is that the unhoused population suffers from a high propensity for substance abuse and mental health crises, which present many challenges.”

David Gerboth, Salem Fire Department chief

The Salem Fire Department last year responded to over 33,000 calls, divided among 13 crews in 11 areas throughout the city.

Most of the calls the agency responds to come from downtown and the northeast, according to Chief David Gerboth.

The crew serving the downtown area responded to over 4,000 calls in 2024, around 12% of all calls that year. Around 2,600 were for medical issues.

Gerboth said 70% of medical patients Salem fire sees are taken to the hospital for treatment. The fire department responds to incidents throughout Salem, but each area poses unique challenges for the agency.

He said around 34% of incidents that the downtown fire crew responds to are related to “our unhoused population.”

“Our experience is that the unhoused population suffers from a high propensity for substance abuse and mental health crises, which present many challenges. We certainly believe there are alternative delivery options to best serve our community in a way that is not just reactive but preventive and addresses these issues more systemically and we are working on funding sources to help provide,” he said.

Whether downtown is chaotic and unsafe, Gerboth said, is subjective to each person’s personal experience. “I choose to live downtown and enjoy being there,” he said.

Downtown business owners have a range of experiences

About a dozen downtown business owners, developers and employees who spoke with Salem Reporter largely agreed that the city has an issue with homelessness and many quality of life concerns, but people differed in how they understood those problems and potential solutions.

Every business owner Salem Reporter spoke to said they felt bad for unsheltered people and were unsure if more police downtown would help. Some supported the idea of having mental health specialists downtown instead of more officers.

Ken Haseltine, the owner of Olson’s Fine Flowers, said he and his employees at 499 Court St. N.E. deal with homelessness downtown at least once a week. He said he supports having the city hire at least one mental health specialist to go out on the streets and find what the city’s homeless population needs. 

“At least once a week. Where they will just be unconscious in the middle of the sidewalk with their pants down, I mean it’s bad … They are mentally ill people,” Haseltine said. “There are some that are reasonable. I’ll go out and say, ‘Hey it’s nine o’clock, it’s time to move on,’ and they get up and go. And then some of them are so out of it that you can’t even communicate with them, it’s just impossible.” 

“I will physically drag them out into the street – I have done it multiple times – and physically remove them from the store.”

Ken Haseltine, owner of Olson’s Fine Flowers

Haseltine said officers will only respond to a call if the situation involves a weapon or there is an imminent threat to somebody’s safety. He said he has heard the same line from police over the years. 

“‘Don’t provoke them.’ This is the line that you get over and over,” Haseltine said. 

Haseltine said he’s frustrated because he feels bad for the homeless people he encounters, but he is also trying to run a business. When police don’t respond, Haseltine said he takes matters into his own hands. 

“I do it myself. I will physically drag them out into the street – I have done it multiple times – and physically remove them from the store,” Haseltine said.

He said waste in front of his business has been an issue. 

“Then you have the other ones who you come in, and there’s sh— and vomit and food strewn all over. I pick it up and just dump it on them while they are sleeping,” Haseltine said.

He said his aggressive approach could be making his store a target and recalled when a homeless person urinated through his mail slot onto the floor of the shop. 

“I try not to antagonize them because I don’t want my windows broken,” he said. “To be totally honest with you, I’ve just pretty much given up. After three years, I‘ve just given up.” 

Larry Lewis has owned Scott’s Cycle & Fitness, a bike shop at 147 Commercial St. S.E., since 1965, and said homelessness downtown has gotten worse over the past decade. He said his perception is that police are prohibited from effectively doing their job, not that they purposefully hold back. 

“They can chase them out of the store and chase them down the street, but what good does that do? We’ve had that happen probably five times, six times in the last year or two,” Lewis said.

Some business owners have taken a kinder approach with homeless people, offering them food and supplies, and found that as a result, their stores have been largely left alone.  

Bee Decker, the owner of The Freckled Bee gift shop at 220 Commercial St. N.E., said she treats homeless people with respect and now the rule on the street is that her store is not to be messed with.  

Decker said during her years downtown, she has had feces at her door one time, and a couple of unsavory incidents including a man who was spitting on people around her business.

“I think a lot of my fellow business owners could do much better if they would just be kind.”

Bee Decker, owner of The Freckled Bee

Aside from that, Decker said she doesn’t feel unsafe and does not have any serious issues. She said she is not on the same page as some of her fellow downtown business owners when it comes to more police to deal with homelessness. She favors having mental health specialists deal with people in crisis similar to the recently defunded CAHOOTS program in Eugene. 

She also said there is a remedy to a lot of the issues some business owners say they face. 

“Nobody wants to see it, nobody wants to smell it, nobody wants to hear about it, they just want to pretend that everything is fine,” Decker said. “I think a lot of my fellow business owners could do much better if they would just be kind.” 

Taking matters into their own hands 

Local investors and property owners downtown have been vocal proponents for ramping up police to deal with homelessness downtown, some going as far as threatening to withhold property taxes from the city unless it increases enforcement in the area. 

Chris Blackburn of Clutch Industries said while he is not heartless when it comes to homeless people, he expects accountability from those on the streets, and solutions to be offered by the city government. His firm is among the investors developing The Forge and the former JC Penney building.

Blackburn said police data is skewed.  

“Most businesses do not report the damage, the shoplifting, the assaults, littering, loitering, trespassing, defecating/urination, theft, drug use and other illegal activities, since we are told there are no resources to address or prevent these events,” Blackburn told Salem Reporter in an email. 

Blackburn said there are discussions among business leaders about standing up a non-profit or private security team and navigation group that would help businesses address their concerns. 

“Most businesses do not report the damage, the shoplifting, the assaults, littering, loitering, trespassing… since we are told there are no resources to address or prevent these events.”

Chris Blackburn, downtown developer

TJ Sullivan, the president of the Salem Main Street Association, said the perception of downtown as unsafe and overrun by homeless people harms local businesses and makes it harder to attract investors to revitalize and grow the city’s core.  

Part of this issue, Sullivan said, is that cleanup after homeless people is subpar and that filthy streets are unpleasant for patrons. He said his organization is hoping to work with the city to create a new cleaning team paid for using city parking funds.

Sullivan said the crew would use high-powered vacuums to suck up feces and other debris and then power wash sidewalks with cleansing solutions. His hope is to get the program up and running by Aug. 1. 

“Our proposal to the city is, ‘Look, this is a direct way that you can provide a benefit to these businesses, to having their sidewalks and storefronts cleaner than what they are right now, as well as creating a more inviting environment for patrons to come down and enjoy downtown,’” he said. 

Approaching with empathy

Lynelle Wilcox, director of the SafeSleep United women’s shelter, spoke to Salem Reporter in her personal capacity. She said that the focus on businesses ignores the violence and humiliation that homeless people experience trying to survive downtown.

Studies throughout the country, she pointed out, say that homeless people are much more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators. The Salem community is still shaken by the murder of Russell Mikolas, a homeless man with disabilities who a teenager beat to death near Northeast Lancaster Drive in June 2023. 

Wilcox said the homeless men she’s spoken with are especially hesitant and embarrassed to share their experiences, which include random beatings. Those crimes often go unreported and thus aren’t reflected in police crime data.

“Men who’ve told me they were sleeping on the sidewalks, in sleeping bags. When the bars went out, other men would come along and just piss on them. And they wake up to being peed on. Probably four men told me that, and were in tears and said they couldn’t talk about it anymore. It was just so humiliating,” she said. 

Last year, 91% of unhoused people who responded to the city’s annual community belonging survey said they’d personally experienced discrimination in the past year. It also found that they’re less likely to report bias crimes to the police.

“Men who’ve told me they were sleeping on the sidewalks, in sleeping bags. When the bars went out, other men would come along and just piss on them.”

Lynelle Wilcox, homeless shelter director and advocate

“They say ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’ but people look at homeless people and do that all the time. They look at us like we are bad or lazy or criminals,” one respondent wrote in the survey. 

Wilcox said the city can’t make any progress on the issues downtown, for both unsheltered people and business owners, if it doesn’t address basic needs. She said every livability crime, from someone using the bathroom in front of a business to drug use or a verbal threat to a passerby on the street, can be linked to a lack of resources.

Wilcox said that theft is another indicator of a larger societal issue. People who steal are often trying to get cash to meet a basic need. In the cases where they are getting cash for drugs, she said, that’s an indication that the community needs more rehab and detox options.

There aren’t many bathrooms available to unsheltered people, said Jones of Community Action.

The Day Center his agency operates at 615 Commercial St. N.E., which closes in the evenings and overnight, is one of the few places unsheltered people can go to use the restroom near downtown. Most restaurants and businesses require people to pay before giving out a bathroom code.

“You’re talking about a population that is, for the most part, older and very sick. So a lot of times they have kidney issues and other health problems that make it very difficult for them to walk two miles and find an open restroom,” he said.

Jones said his agency supports the mayor’s ask for more police downtown, which he said could deter attacks against unsheltered people and build relationships with providers. He said he wants conversations about downtown’s issues to focus on proven effective solutions, like supporting housing and sheltering efforts.

He also said treating people with dignity goes a long way. 

“The homeless issue is the canary in the coal mine, in a lot of ways. It’s the symptom of a society that’s not doing well not only economically but also, in some sense, spiritually. In my experience, most people reflect the attitudes with which you present to them,” he said. “Most people who are treated with empathy and kindness and compassion, even if their behavior is being corrected, they respond with empathy, kindness and compassion. So some of this can just be solved with a little bit better public relations on the part of everybody.”

Wilcox said she’s not opposed to the city’s pursuit of more police downtown, if they’re focusing on building relationships with people and sharing resources. But she wants a clearer idea of what enforcement will look like.

She said handing out tickets won’t help anyone, and she wants to see more bathrooms and more community discussion about the root causes of issues.

“What is it you’re enforcing? You can’t poop here, but there’s no bathrooms anywhere. You can’t sleep here, but there’s not places for everyone to sleep. You can’t have a fire, but there’s no place to be warm,” Wilcox said. “I’m not saying that any of those things are OK. I’m saying they’re the result of us not having enough resources in our community to enable everyone to have some basic human needs met.”

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

Mayor Julie Hoy wants more police downtown after stabbings at Union Gospel Mission

Responding to business owners, council to discuss expanding police, medical service downtown

Salem police cutting downtown, behavioral health teams

The problems and promise of downtown Salem

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

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