News from the Continuum

Revised:  December 2018

By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston

DAS Cleanup Notice

Earlier this month, the Salem Housing Authority announced that it no longer could accept nominations for its homeless Housing Choice Voucher lottery, on account of rising rents and not wanting to run out of money before the end of the year.

Last week, authorities conducted another homeless camp pre-cleanup outreach, this one in the woods behind the Mill Creek Best Western.

No service providers showed up, so it was just us, State Police Officer Davie (the camp was on State property), and the DAS project manager.

The only person present in the area was Nikolai.  We talked to him, trying to to mirror the approach we'd seen Salem Housing Authority staff -- Nicole and Sonya -- use, except we hadn't brought any water or coffee with us.  

Nikolai had a slavic accent.  He was clean-shaven and slightly built.  He said his green card had expired.  Yes, he'd been to UGM, but "people drink and stuff", and, anyway, he preferred to be alone.  He was not interested in services, except he'd been to "the food bank" a few times. He'd seen the posted notice and had already moved some of his stuff.  Sgt. Davie ran a wants-and-warrants search and confirmed Nikolai understood he couldn't be there on Monday, and we made our way back to the parking lot.

The MWHITF committees have gotten off to a slow start.  Support Services/Education (Wessel) has scheduled a bunch of meetings (yet to take place), Transitional Housing/Shelter (Starr), Financial (Peterson) and Public Safety (Leinassar) have each met once, Affordable Housing (Bednarz) and Vets (Bobb/Wheeler) have each met twice, and what we think of as the outreach committee (Reeves) has met three times.  (The Health and Housing Committee, so called, is an outside group of health and housing providers who've agreed to "advise" the Task Force at some point.) 

The City Council is reporting "progress" on its metrics-free, homelessness-related, "goals." 
     

Council Goals                                                          Progress Report                                          

Recently, the Salem Housing Authority was approved to participate in a HUD demonstration program that will extend rental subsidies for youth from 18 months to the standard 5 years available to families (Resolution 2187, adopted 6/6/16).  It's also been approved to apply to OHA for funding to create a two-year regional healthcare program (including SHA, Marion County Housing Authority, and West Valley Housing Authority) that will provide HA tenants with the services of three or four "healthcare navigators" (aka "community health workers").

Many now recognize that providing good health care has to go beyond the doctor’s office — especially for minorities and low-income people. Limited access to healthy food, environmental perils, crime, insecure housing, insufficient recreational opportunities and the absence of affordable transportation all can have a huge effect on a person’s health.

These factors, often called the social determinants of health, are hard for clinicians to address during medical appointments. To contend with them, hospitals, community health clinics, public health agencies and some health plans are increasingly turning to community health workers.

See here.  Finally, SHA has been awarded a $466K grant for the veteran housing program reported on here.  Andy Wilch, Phil Dean, Terry Frazier, Dominique Donaho, Grace McCabe, Nicole Utz, Kalena Plath, Heather Jones, Sonya Ryland and Pamala Garrick -- clearly know what they're doing, and the City is fortunate to have such dedicated, forward-thinking folks working in this area.