Salvation Army to close Lighthouse Shelter

The Salvation Army Lighthouse Shelter will be closing at the end of January, after 60 years giving people respite and a fresh start after living on the streets of Salem.

The shelter’s 25 current residents won’t have their stays cut short due to the closure, said Captain Jeff Walters, who has led the Salvation Army of Marion and Polk Counties since last year. Lighthouse is a transitional shelter with 90-day stays, and the closure will come after clients are done with their planned programs.

The decision came due to yearslong financial challenges that predate the Covid pandemic, Walters said. He said they closed the shelter so they wouldn’t have to cut other programs that serve people in need, including their food bank and their work helping families connect with employment and navigate social services.

The closure removes a sheltering option in the community amid rising homelessness rates across the state and increased public attention on the visible impacts of unsheltered homelessness in Salem. 

“No one wants to close a shelter like this,” Walters said. “Especially in this area. It’s a problem. Homelessness is a problem, and it seems to be getting worse … No one wants to do this. However, it’s the right thing to do right now.”

The Lighthouse Shelter, located at 1901 Front St. N.E., first opened in 1966 and has served various niches over the years, including focusing on veterans. In recent years, it’s been a 90-day transitional shelter for adult men and women, with a program designed to help people stabilize, stay sober and get connected with services before moving into housing or with family.

That included a woman who, around two years ago, stayed at the shelter during a rough patch in her life. While getting help herself, she began volunteering at the Salvation Army’s food pantry during her stay. She still volunteers there, Walters said.

“You see the sort of transformation of folks when they get plugged into a safe place and they feel like they belong. They want to give back,” Walters said. “There’s a lot of other stories like that.”

Lighthouse wasn’t a low-barrier shelter and required sobriety and routine breathalyzer tests. Walters said it filled a niche need in the community for people in a more stable place to start working and moving into permanent housing, with support from case managers to make connections. Most clients were referred from other organizations, or came from the street after hearing about the program.

“We would get folks that come through low-barrier shelters, but are ready for that next step. We’re kind of like a middle ground,” he said.

At the time of closure, the program had an average of nearly 70% of its clients moving from the shelter to a positive destination, Walters said, which includes permanent housing, sober living, shelters such as Church at the Park.

In the past, he said that Lighthouse had been bustling with staff and clients, but both have declined over the years due to financial issues. Despite having the capacity for around 40 people, Walters said they’ve been hosting fewer people due to low staffing. 

The five employees working there will have the chance to apply elsewhere in the organization, Walters said.

“This has been the hardest part for us because these staff, these are our people, man,” Walters said. 

All current shelter residents have jobs. Walters said case managers are planning to move them out to safe places, like through Church at the Park or the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, or with their families.

“We take that stuff very, very seriously and it’s really the closest thing to our heart is just to make sure that this closure doesn’t do more harm than it needs to,” Walters said.

Walters said costs have been increasing for several years. Before Covid the shelter lost a major donor. The shelter is mostly donor-supported, Walters said, with some support from government grants. Despite fundraiser attempts, Walter said the costs got unsustainable.

“We accumulated monthly and then annual deficits that got so steep that, in time, it was starting to affect the other programs that we’re running,” he said, including a food bank and case management. 

Walter didn’t have the shelter’s operational costs readily available before deadline, and estimated the sheltering program accumulated about $500,000 in deficit.

They also struggled to maintain the building, which he said had sections which were old and not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. They also faced major upkeep costs and deferred maintenance issues, which factored into the decision to close.

“Like the HVAC and the roof, and everything else you can imagine that makes it very difficult to just keep the building in good standing,” Walters said. “Because we’re providing home and shelter to these folks, these friends of ours, and God forbid we put them under a roof that’s leaking, or a building that’s dangerous.”

He said their board will be deciding what to do with the building in the coming months, and every option is still on the table.

“Whatever happens, it will be missional and it will be in line with what the community wants us to do. If it’s possible and it’s sustainable, we’ll make it happen,” he said.

The closure means that the Salvation Army will consider ways to shift resources to its other services, including potentially adding an additional case manager. He said long-term sustainability will guide any expansion decisions.

He said that the food pantry saw a tripling in demand over the holidays, and the high volume has continued into the new year. He said they distributed over 38,000 food boxes last year. Marion Polk Food Share reported a similar surge after November delays to monthly benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“We’re not going to stop doing good. We’re not going to stop providing services. If anything, we’re just shifting all of that energy into what we’re already doing well,” Walters said. “And then, of course, if the opportunity arises where we can return to sheltering, we absolutely will.”

The Salvation Army will continue its program offering emergency financial assistance to families to help cover rent and utilities. Last year, they supported 415 households with rent, and 769 with utilities, according to Walters.

Walters said he’ll hear out any funding opportunity to reopen sheltering services in any form.

“We’ve done every type of sheltering, or transitional living, or sober living, recovery programs. Anything like that would just be phenomenal,” he said. “I remind folks: I’ve seen this happen before in other communities, where you go through this (closure) process and then suddenly an angel shows up and makes all the difference.”

In December, Walters said he sat down with the final cohort of Lighthouse Shelter residents and gave them the opportunity to ask any questions about the closure. One man told Walters that the shelter had helped him get to a place where he had a job, and was able to see his daughter again.

“That’s huge for me. I’m a dad,” Walters said. “Every one of these folks have a story.”

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

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