News from the Continuum

Revised: January 2019

By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston

From TSA's Website

Back in July, we reported that The Salvation Army's Lighthouse Shelter was discontinuing its transitional shelter program, effective August 1.  Going forward, TSA plans to operate Lighthouse Shelter as an emergency or overnight shelter, with no in-house case management.

The decision to terminate the program was reportedly due not to changing demands of our community, but rather to a funding shortage of several hundred thousand dollars, as a result of the death of a substantial donor.

As of mid-August, the shelter still had about 40 guests remaining in the transitional shelter program and 6 guests in the overnight program.  TSA hopes to continue to support the 40 "grandfathered" guests until they can be stably housed.  The expectations of each group differ, and their beds are set off from one another within each room, one for men and another for women.

Notice in the July SIT Newsletter

Newcomers must go through an intake process that involves a criminal background check (Seattle just recently voted to bar landlords from using criminal records to screen tenants).  Initial assessments are done between 1 and 3 p.m. over at TSA's Family Services building at 1977 Front Street.  Some are asked to go down the street to The ARCHES Project for further assessment using the VI-SPDAT. 

Guests accepted into the new overnight program must check in by 5 p.m. and pass a daily UA.  Dinner is at 5:30. Employed guests who've provided staff their work schedule are not required to check in by 5 p.m., do not have to strip their beds in the morning and may leave belongings in a locking two-drawer unit under their beds.  In addition to dinner, services include breakfast (continental), showers, laundry (sign up), and a sack lunch (sign-up).  Guests need to depart by 8, and may stay a maximum of 90 days within a 6-month period.

Lighthouse Shelter has a maximum capacity of 83, but staff say things start getting pretty tight at around 65.  With a cushion of about 10 beds for emergencies (e.g., an apartment bldg goes up in flames), that leaves 15 beds for guests in the overnight program, at least until the transitional beds come available.  The aim is to have about half the overnight program beds reserved for men and half for women.

Flyer Circulating in CANDO July 31st

With the Lighthouse Shelter limiting lunch service to program participants, ARCHES has seen an uptick in the number of sack lunches they're handing out (about 400/day), and they're also VI-SPDATing more people.  Because the day shelter still is not open, people have to eat their lunches outside, but they may go inside to be assessed.

On August 2d, MWVCAA's executive director Jon Reeves told us,

Our drawings for those plans [to renovate the first floor] are being finalized now and we hope to be back up and running at full capacity sometime in November.  In the meantime, we continue to operate and connect people in need to available resources.  The people who use our services have been notified of these plans and we are working to address any hardship caused by our short-term limitations, which will in the long run allow us to create a one-stop-shop for homeless services in Salem.

We asked Reeves what sort of things MWVCAA was doing to address any hardship caused by closing the day shelter, but he declined to answer.

ARCHES staff report 39 consumers took advantage of the City cooling center at 770 Commercial Street during the recent heat wave (August 1-3).  In a Willamette Wake Up interview, Mayor Bennett said the City is considering using that same location for a sobering center.  The Mayor said the project had taken longer to come together than he had hoped, but the City Manager assures him "we're moving forward."

MWVCAA has finally posted the 2017 Point-In-Time Count report, and a corrected PITC report for 2016.  In 2016, 733 homeless households, (546 sheltered, 187 unsheltered) consisting of 856 individuals were counted.  In 2017, 871  homeless households (584 sheltered, 287 unsheltered) consisting of 1,151 individuals were counted.  Community Resources Program Director Jimmy Jones attributes some of the increase to this year's effort to count homeless persons living "up the Canyon", something he says had not been done for six years.  He asserts that the count methodology needs a complete overhaul and that he and his team will be having "conversations later this month" to plan the 2018 PIT count.

At the Emergency Housing Network last week: "Transgender and LGBTQ issues under Fair Housing Law."  The presentation and discussion that followed left participants with concerns that transgendered adults who are not victims of domestic violence do not have access to emergency shelter in Salem, which suggests that some local shelter policies may be in conflict with state and local anti-discrimination laws.  To be clear, the issue is state and local anti-discrimination laws, not whether shelters comply with HUD regulations.  The fact that an organization accepts no government support, aside from, say, its property tax-exemption, does not relieve it from having to comply with state and local anti-discrimination laws. 

We checked with local non-DV, adult emergency shelters, TSA and UGM, to see if there is, in fact, a problem.  TSA's Social Services Director, Jason Ramos, told us that the Lighthouse Shelter has individual rooms available on a confidential basis for guests who do not feel comfortable staying in either the male or female room.  Guests still have to pass a criminal background check and a daily UA. Our contact at UGM told us she would have to check the policy before answering, but we never got a response.  Looks like we have a problem.