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In East Salem, volunteers search for homeless people often overlooked

The sun was just starting to warm the mostly empty Winco parking lot on Lancaster Drive when Kris Hardy approached a station wagon parked along the side of the store.

Inside, a woman sat behind the steering wheel in sweats, filing her nails while her partner played with two small dogs. The couple had been living out of their car for months, unable to afford a place to rent.

“I’ve been turned away from every shelter,” the woman told Hardy. No Salem-area shelter takes pet dogs, and the few that accept adult couples without children are full.

Over a five-minute conversation, Hardy filled out a form describing the couple’s circumstances: their birthdates, initials, how long they’d been without permanent shelter. After offering them food, clothing and blankets, she moved on to other cars.

Hardy and her co-worker Janet Dandeneau were among more than a dozen volunteer teams spread across Salem and Keizer Wednesday in an annual effort to count every homeless person in the region. It’s a requirement to receive federal funding for programs targeting homelessness. More people counted means more money.

Janet Dandeneau organizes supplies to pass out to homeless people during Salem’s 2019 point-in-time count. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)

It’s also a chance to talk to people who might not be connected with help. As they surveyed people in cars and on street corners, Hardy and Dandeneau made sure they knew yellow cabs and city buses could take them to Salem warming shelters for free.

“That’s good to know. I’ll pass that around,” said James, an older man who told the pair he’s been homeless for years.

Some groups worked out of shelters or other areas where homeless people gather. But Hardy’s job was a mobile one: canvass southeast Lancaster Drive looking for anyone who might be homeless.

Homelessness is most visible in downtown Salem, and many of the city’s shelters, free meals and other services are concentrated there. But it’s far from the only place people without shelter live.

For those on the outskirts of the city, that can be a problem.

“Everything’s downtown. I wish there was a homeless shelter around here,” James said, smoking a cigarette on the curb of the Winco parking lot.

He said he preferred to avoid downtown because it’s far away and crowded. But that can make it hard to find food or other help.

“I’m not going to walk five miles,” he said.

James, a homeless man living around Lancaster Drive, adds mayonnaise to a sack lunch sandwich after answering questions for Salem’s 2019 point-in-time count. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)

Last year, Hardy said the Winco parking lot was full of people staying in their cars. Some refused to talk to her. Others shared stories of evictions and lost jobs that led them to homelessness.

“Last year I went home and cried after doing this,” she said.

Both women work for Marion County’s rental assistance program, and Dandeneau used to live in her car before getting help through the program she now works for.

They know Salem’s nooks and crannies — the side streets without “no parking” signs where people can sleep overnight without being bothered, the big businesses that tend not to mind car campers, and the dense bushes where it’s easy to conceal a single sleeping bag and a backpack.

“That’s a good campsite,” Hardy said, pointing to a pile of blankets and personal belongings behind a bush near Winco. Its occupant had left for the day, and without peering behind the bushes, his belongings were nearly invisible.

Across Lancaster, the pair knocked on the window of a truck parked by Craft Warehouse.

“Can we talk to you?” Hardy asked. A woman inside rolled down the window, looking skeptical, but quickly warmed once she realized the volunteers had a survey.

She said she and her husband were living in the truck with their three children, who were all in school. Sharing the small space was a kitten, named Sticky Buns for the cinnamon roll pattern on her side.

Sticky Buns craned her neck outside the window, seeking attention.

“She’s already purring,” the woman said, laughing.

Seeking a shelter wasn’t practical for the family, she told Hardy, because no one would take all five of them, much less a small cat. Neither adult had had luck finding a steady job.

“Odd jobs, nothing permanent,” she said.

Sticky Buns, a seven-month-old kitten, keeps a five-person homeless family company in the truck that serves as their home. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)

After about three hours, the pair had counted a dozen homeless people across southeast Salem. One couple lived in an RV with chipped paint that they moved around to avoid police attention. A 65-year-old woman panhandling for cash said she’d become homeless because of domestic violence.

At noon, the team returned to Church at the Park, a mission on Turner Road that serves meals and has Sunday services. DJ Vincent, the volunteer coordinator for the site, said they’d surveyed about 20 homeless people who had stopped in for food.

“It’s been slower here than ever,” he said.

Vincent said the number of people seeking meals and help at the church has increased over the decade he’s been running the site. He wasn’t sure why fewer people were out on count day but hoped the afternoon shift might count more.

Hardy agreed people seemed to be out and about, rather than in their cars.

“I hope our numbers reflect what’s really happening out there,” she said. 

Reporter Rachel Alexander: (503) 575-1241 or [email protected]

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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.