SALEM, Ore — After breaking one promise made alongside an unwavering crackdown on homeless people sleeping on its sidewalks, the city of Salem is contemplating implementing another ban tied to another promise.
City officials say they plan to keep this one.
The newly proposed ordinance is, officials hope, a legally sound version of a long-controversial template known at Sit-Lie.
Like other cities have tried and failed to do in the past, Salem city councilors are hoping at their March 9 meeting to pass an ordinance banning people from sitting or lying on sidewalks during the day.
The reason officials think this ban will work while others have failed, is that they’re only planning to enact it if and when they find a suitable shelter space, offering homeless people somewhere to go.
“The proposed ordinance does not have any criminal aspects to it. Basically, the 'Sit-Lie Ordinance' would allow the police to go up to folks on the sidewalk and say 'You can't really be her between certain hours during the day’,” said councilor Jim Lewis via phone Tuesday.
On its surface, homeless advocates hoped efforts like it would be thwarted moving forward by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that deemed cities’ arresting or charging people for sleeping outside unconstitutional.
That ruling was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court decision basically says you can't really do that until you have place for them to go, and that's the connection to the day shelter,” Lewis said.
He added Tuesday no location for the shelter had been identified.
A broken promise and no volunteers
“I can't put up a tent, and I can't close up the things that I own,” said JT, who’s homeless in downtown Salem.
Thursday he woke up soaked in someone else’s urine.
“My pants and my shirt and everything smell like urine,” he said. “It's terrible.”
JT is one an estimated 1,800 people homeless in Oregon’s capitol city, according to advocates’ estimates.
Over the last few years, the state of Salem’s homeless crisis became all the more apparent, as people pitched tents and tarps along sidewalks downtown.
In December the city council, citing public safety concerns and longtime complaints from business owners, attempted to address the issue and the optics of it by banning tents.
In turn, councilors promised to add an additional 140 shelter beds to the city’s inventory, which advocates told them was lacking, by the new year.
A month later, in an effort to provide more places for people to sleep, the city launched car camping pilot program, opening the door for willing landowners to let people living in their cars park on their land.
Thursday, a city spokesperson Kathy Ursprung declined to do an interview about the issue but, via email, outlined the results of both efforts.
Regarding the promised 140 shelter beds: months past their self-imposed deadline, Salem has added 10.
Regarding the car camping program: zero land owners have volunteered to host cars or their occupants.
At meetings over the last few months, councilors discussed and dismissed the option of revoking or loosening the camping ban until they’re able to add the additional 100+ beds.
Officials blamed the gap on a communication error with community partners who initially agreed to host beds but backed out.
Newly appointed City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke, who’s been on the job for four months, called the overall situation “a crisis years in the making.”
The Salem-native added she pitched converting a park downtown into an open space where people can camp, with a tent over their head.
“Unfortunately there just wasn't enough support on council to do it,” she said.
As to whether the city should indeed loosen parameters of the camping ban, Nordyke said, “I think that's a great question for the council and the mayor. I know where I stand on the issues. I am one vote of nine. And my vote was to create a designated camping area that was safe, secure, clean, dry with access to bathrooms. and it did not take effect.”
KGW last week requested to speak to the city’s mayor and manager about the remaining camping ban, the newly proposed ‘Sit-Lie’ ordinance and the broken promise of 140 shelter beds.
Ursprung wrote via email, “Sorry to have to tell you that we will not be giving interviews on this subject until after the March 9 City Council discussion.”
In a follow-up response, she expanded on the city’s other efforts to address its housing crisis:
Our unsheltered neighbors, including those congregating downtown, are known to the city. Representatives of the Salem Housing Authority are in regular contact with them, particularly those downtown, encouraging them to take advantage of the Homeless Rental Assistance Program (HRAP), Salem’s housing first initiative. Since it began, the program has helped 265 people as of Monday night’s meeting, 187 have been housed during that time, about half transitioning to Section 8 housing vouchers. Three unsheltered individuals have come into HRAP in the last few weeks from unsheltered status. Partnering landlords have helped immensely with this program.
Salem Housing and Salem Police have also partnered to create a 24-hour immediate need station that is able to provide food, clothing, shoes, sleeping bags and other needs in an emergency.
So we are working in other ways to help people who are chronically homeless.
'I want to be invisible'
While Councilors and city officials work out which ordinances they want to enforce and which promises they plan to keep, business leaders say nothing tangible has changed for them.
“[Owners say] their stores are becoming bathrooms. their entryways, they have feces, urine. They find people having sex. They find people masturbating,” said Hazel Patton, interim executive director of the Salem Main Street Association.
Looking around Thursday, she admitted the visual cues have shifted slightly.
In other words, the tents are gone.
But the crowds of homeless people who were taking shelter in them remain. Most are huddled under awnings to stay out of the rain.
Patton said she appreciates the problem is complex and that the city’s job is difficult.
“I'd give them a C,” she said, assigning a grade to their efforts to address the issue. “Their heart’s in the right place. I think they're just overwhelmed with all the issues that they have to deal with.”
Meanwhile, JT said he and some friends were hoping to go to Monday’s city council meeting, to learn whether a shelter space has been identified.
It would be a big help in a city that, unlike Portland and other metropolitan counterparts, doesn’t have a low-barrier shelter, where people can enter drunk or high and get a warm bed.
“Tell me where the invisible room is,” he said. “I'll go there. I want to be invisible.”