Five of the six shelter options printed on the back of Salem police camping removal notices are dead ends, pointing unsheltered people to disconnected phone lines, a closed shelter and a vacant lot, according to a Salem Reporter investigation published Wednesday, Aug. 5.
Interim Police Chief Brandon Ditto acknowledged the problem in an interview Tuesday and said the department drafted an updated notice to present to service providers at a monthly meeting Thursday, Aug. 6.
The bright orange notices, stapled to trees and attached to tents and grocery carts across the city, order campers to leave on the front. The back lists six "short-term shelter options." But the notice is a 2020 version last reviewed in 2023, and the landscape of Salem's shelter system has shifted dramatically since then.
Among the listings: the ARCHES Project Resource Center, a day center that has no shelter beds. The Salvation Army's Lighthouse Shelter, which closed in January after 60 years of operation.
The Union Gospel Mission men's shelter, listed at an address the mission left in July 2021. That address is now a vacant lot. A youth program called HOST that hasn't offered short-term shelter since 2017. And a family shelter phone number that reaches a disconnected line.
"It was good that this was identified. But that's a real problem," Ditto told Salem Reporter on Aug. 5. "Especially when you're getting a review that's not entirely correct, and whoever got their eyes on it at the time and said 'Yeah, that looks good,' didn't even check and verify."
Stephen Goins, chief operations officer of Northwest Human Services, which ran HOST, said in an email he was surprised by the listing, calling it "like 2014-2016 HOST information." Craig Smith, executive director of Union Gospel Mission's Simonka Place in Keizer, said he wasn't aware his shelter was listed with incorrect age restrictions. The notice states "NO BOYS OVER AGE 11," but Simonka Place accepts boys up to 15.
Neither Goins nor Smith knew their organizations appeared on the outdated notices.
The only listing that functions as an actual shelter option is Simonka Place, which Smith said is often full. He recommended calling first thing in the morning to secure a spot.
What the city spends
The Salem City Council voted 6-0 on June 23 to approve the fiscal year 2027 budget, which allocates $1.2 million toward the Homeless Services Team and extends its seven-day-a-week pilot program. City leadership pitched the expansion as a way to connect more unsheltered residents with resources.
If a Homeless Services Team officer posts a notice but cannot locate the person before moving on, the notice is the only communication about resources that person receives from the city.
Ditto said his officers prefer face-to-face conversations and that one-on-one interactions are central to the team's work. He called it "exceedingly rare" for a site to be vacant when officers post notices.
Updated notice in the works
Ditto said the new notice would include the 211 information line and a QR code linking to a maintained resource list, an approach he said would avoid the need for frequent reprinting as services change.
He said the goal is to stop making it harder for unsheltered people to navigate available systems, adding that without a fix, the problem will keep recurring.
Ditto, who became interim chief in May, said he has been working to implement annual reviews of department documents. The camping notice language was already set for review in the coming year, he said.
The city is also negotiating a contract with the Oregon Department of Transportation to expand camp removals onto state property. ODOT has said the city is already authorized to do outreach on state land without a new agreement. No timeline for formal adoption of the updated camping notice has been announced.
