Marion County officials are spending $14.3 million to build a new Health and Human Services building next to the existing location on Northeast Center Street. County officials say it’s a one-time investment that could help save hundreds of thousands in annual costs for space currently leased across several different locations.[Read More…]
Ardeshir Tabrizian
Contracted state hospital worker punches patient following racist slurs, hospital reports say
The Oregon State Hospital on May 28, 2021. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter) A contracted worker at Oregon State Hospital last month punched a patient who moments before had hurled racist slurs at the staffer. Erik Banks, the contracted mental health technician, was “removed from our facility and instructed not to return,”[Read More…]
Salem area gets federal housing funds for homeless, domestic violence victims
Jayne Downing, executive director of the Center for Hope and Safety, stands in the building’s office in 2019. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter) Marion and Polk counties are getting around $1.3 million in federal money to help get people who are homeless or victims of domestic violence into stable housing. In addition[Read More…]
Man who died after confrontation with Salem police was homeless, had lifelong mental illness, family says
Rachel Coble saw her brother two weeks before he died in a confrontation with Salem police officers. After living in his car at Northgate Park for a year – and decades of struggling with addiction – Richard Meyers looked well. Meyers told Coble he’d been seeing a woman who he[Read More…]
State hospital embroiled in contempt proceedings for not admitting mentally ill people court-ordered to get treatment
Attorneys have brought nearly a dozen contempt of court proceedings against Oregon State Hospital in the last three years, arguing hospital officials didn’t admit people with mental illnesses to get treatment ordered by judges. In four instances, judges found the hospital and Oregon Health Authority, its parent agency, in contempt[Read More…]
Salem’s wait list for housing vouchers dwindles, but years-long pause on new applications still stands
More than three years after Salem stopped taking waiting list applications for public assistance to get into housing, residents will still have to wait up to four years for an affordable place to live. As of Oct. 28, 7,578 people from 3,207 households are on the Salem Housing Authority’s waiting[Read More…]
Salem sobering center stalled by lack of funding
Ashley Hamilton, program director of the ARCHES Project, shows Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, recently donated supplies that are currently stored in the building’s unused sobering center on May 7, 2020. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter) A downtown Salem facility built last year to be used[Read More…]
State appeals court orders reversal of Salem man’s 2004 aggravated murder conviction, death sentence
The Oregon State Penitentiary on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter) The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday ordered that a Salem man’s 2004 aggravated murder conviction and death sentence be reversed and sent back to the trial court after finding that defense attorneys didn’t investigate evidence pointing to[Read More…]
Local art and poetry exhibit slated for October in Bush’s Pasture Park
“Dusk at Baskett Slough,” painted by Salem artist Deanna White. Salem’s outdoor scenery will be rendered in watercolor, acrylic and verse at an exhibit opening Friday. For the 23rd year, Salem nonprofit Artists in Action will display its annual Paint & Write the Town Exhibition, this time at a larger[Read More…]
