Northeast Salem business owners share safety, homelessness complaints at city forum

Over a dozen business owners from northeast Salem told city leaders Wednesday they are tired of dealing with issues of public safety and homelessness themselves.

Some said they evict unsheltered people out of their storefronts in the mornings, and know of businesses hiring private security to feel safe in the area.

The meeting at Chemeketa Community College is one of several business forums the city is organizing to hear safety concerns and experiences.

Those who spoke largely complained of unsheltered people sleeping or camping outside of businesses and publicly using drugs.

Homeless service providers responded with calls for empathy.

The impacts of homelessness in Salem have taken the spotlight in recent weeks, after a June 1 mass stabbing at the Union Gospel Mission led to discussions about public safety in the downtown core.

The city is considering a range of responses, including bringing back the downtown police bike team eliminated last year due to budget cuts and partnering ambulance workers with mental health specialists to deal with calls related to homelessness.

But northeast Salem is the other “hot spot” of law enforcement activity, according to Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack, who spoke at the event. He was joined by Salem Fire Chief David Gerboth, Interim City Manager Krishna Namburi, City Councilor Irvin Brown and other city officials.

Officials said community members in northeast Salem requested the meeting.

After city officials presented updates and statistics, the attendees spoke.

Some said businesses have left northeast Salem because they found the presence of homelessness adding to the existing challenges of running a business.

A broker with Commercial Realty Advisors Northwest, which represents the Village East shopping center on Northeast Lancaster Drive, said a large real estate deal fell through due to the effects of nearby drug use.

Another concern shared was the long response times from police and the responsibility that places on businesses to themselves handle low-level crimes and mental health situations.

“We’ve had our trash dumpsters burnt down. We’ve had our arborvitae next to our building caught on fire that was literally about five feet from our building,” said Angela Estrada, co-owner of a senior care facility on Northeast Coral Avenue.

Accounts of experiences with unhoused people were met with sympathy around the room and increasing frustration that law enforcement is not often able to intervene.

Marion County Sheriff Nick Hunter, who attended but was not a speaker, said often unhoused people get only a citation for trespassing and can fail to appear in court six times before being lodged in jail.

People used most of the hour-long event to complain about people living and using drugs on the streets, but some care providers addressed the way business owners had talked about the issue.

Laura Crofoot, board president of Helping Hands Resources, encouraged people to be kind and learn the names of people living near their business to bridge the gap between them.

“They’re not stray cats, they’re human,” she said.

Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, said in an email to Salem Reporter that the city’s meetings are perpetuating stereotypes about homeless people, and community leaders have an obligation to “temper passions and avoid inflammatory rhetoric.”

“The homeless of Salem are Oregon residents and American citizens. They have constitutional rights and civil liberties like the rest of us,” Jones said. “What effort has the city made to engage with them, or do they only serve as the villain in this morality play?”

At the start of the meeting, Namburi, city manager, said she wants to see collaboration on approaching public safety.

“This is a great opportunity for all of us to come together to move forward and find a solution that works,” she said. “What we cannot afford to have right now is the divisiveness.”

Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].

A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE– If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE.