How homeless youth help guide shelter policy in Salem
Aruna Sunflower was a homeless teen who didn’t know she was homeless.
“I didn’t realize that couch surfing was a form of homelessness. I was living away from my parents for like seven months, and then I had nowhere to go, because I wasn’t being a very good friend at the time,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
She sought help from Youth Services at the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, a nonprofit with programs addressing poverty throughout Marion and Polk counties.
During the intake process, her case manager asked if she’d be interested in joining Backbone. Established in 2021, the new board was seeking young people to help decide where to invest federal money to help end youth homelessness in the community.
“I didn’t know I was going to get paid. I just was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go and educate the people and share my experience.’ And then I went to the meeting and I instantly loved it,” Sunflower recalled.
Now 22 years old, Sunflower is board’s secretary. Along with her peers, she has helped shape sheltering for youth in an area that, only a few years ago, had few options.
Sunflower now hopes to help bring new perspectives onto the board, which canceled its last monthly meeting due to longtime members aging out and attendance issues. There are currently seven people on the board, and a majority must be in attendance to hold a meeting.
The board informs the work of the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance, the government organization that decides where to distribute state and federal money for sheltering and support services in the region. The alliance’s board members include city, county and tribal leadership, healthcare leaders, law enforcement and service providers.
Someone as young as 11 years old and as old as 24 can serve on Backbone. Board members need to have current or past lived experience with homelessness or housing insecurity. Board members are paid $25 an hour for their work, and there is lunch at the meetings. Lately, that has been Chipotle Mexican Grill, Sunflower said.
Applications are through a Google form, which can be accessed here.
Board members speak directly to Misty Bolger, the executive director of the homeless alliance who attends every Backbone meeting.
“These are my favorite meetings to attend. There’s just such a high level of engagement and enthusiasm about the work, and there’s a tremendous amount of respect for each other in that room,” Bolger said. “Even when there’re differing opinions, there’s real good conversations that are had, and it’s really nice to see. And I always leave those meetings feeling really enthusiastic and excited.”
When Sunflower first joined, the board was considering applications for local providers that wanted money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program.
In the past five years, Backbone has helped decide where to spend $3.57 million from that program, said Cassie Bay, information and systems specialist at the homeless alliance.
Sunflower joined several different committees and pushed to put funding toward the pitches seeking to address the barriers to access she herself had experienced.
“It felt so personal to me that we were getting new shelters funded. Because there was no shelter for people who were going through exactly what I was going through in that moment,” she said. “At that time, I couldn’t walk, and I was feeling really uncomfortable to go to an adult shelter because … the adult shelters have super long wait lists, are really religious or you only get to stay there at night.”
Backbone ultimately supported funding David’s House, run by the Community Action Agency, which brought the first youth shelter to Monmouth. It was named after David Buntjer, a Backbone board member who died in September 2022, according to reporting from the Statesman Journal.
Sunflower, a graduate of South Salem High School, spent her late teen years moving back and forth between Salem and Portland.
She said being homeless in both cities has given her perspective on the gaps and successes in Salem’s homelessness services for youth.
Among the successes, she said, is Church at the Park’s youth microshelter village on Southeast Turner Road, which opened in 2023, and is mostly supported by state grants. Sunflower stayed during the shelter’s inaugural year when she was 19 years old.
“My time at that shelter was incredible,” she said. “It was very welcoming there. The staff made a really big effort to make sure that I felt safe and to make sure that I felt welcome, no matter what crisis I was going through.”
Due to frequent moves between cities, Sunflower was away from Backbone for several years before returning this past December. She said that she was excited to step back into the work and realize how far things had come in her time away.
One suggestion she made, and saw implemented, was expanding services for homeless youth beyond age 18. She said that, too often, teens were asked to restart their progress with services and case managers after aging out of programs aimed at high schoolers. Now, most Salem programs continue to support youth until they’re 24.
“I was like, ‘Wow, these policy changes that happened were because I was like, ‘Hey, we should look at this. This needs to be addressed. There’s a gap here,’ And the gap was filled. So I feel really, really happy to know that my voice was heard and action was taken from the advice that I gave based on my experience,” she said.
Backbone has also asked those running youth shelters to keep food unlocked and available at all hours, which Sunflower said helps people feel safer.
She said that Backbone’s work means that the programs available for youth are designed by youth rather than adults.
“Older adults, who have never had any experience going through what you’re going through. Who have maybe never even had food insecurity, who live in these big houses with their nice cars, and they’re the ones who are making the policies,” Sunflower said.
In the next year, the youth board will help design the Point-in-Time count, which measures how many people are experiencing homelessness in the region. Bolger said the insight will help them find more youth experiencing homelessness and help ensure the process is comfortable.
The group will also be expanding its outreach in the coming months, and will be returning to table at the Punx in the Park resource fair and music festival on Sept 5.
Sunflower encouraged anyone interested to give it a try.
“It’s a really, really great opportunity for people who want to make a difference in the community and for their peers,” Sunflower 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.
