Duo proposes using former youth corrections campus as haven for Salem's homeless

Show Caption Hide Caption Tents line the sidewalk in front of the Arches building on Commercial Street in Salem More than three dozen tents and tarps housing about 60 people line the perimeter of the ARCHES Project day center.

Gene Pfeifer sees an opportunity to save taxpayer money and put vacant public buildings back into use. Fay DeMeyer sees a chance to build a community where up to 800 homeless people are not just housed and fed but trained to reenter the workforce.

The pair — a local developer and a psychology instructor — are leading the charge to launch a residential program for the homeless at the shuttered Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility campus in southeast Salem.

It's unlike anything ever tried in Salem. And while the approach has been used elsewhere in the country, so far it's receiving a lukewarm reception here.

They call it Hope Crest, a play on the name of the youth facility closed in 2017. The 45-acre property, about 5 miles from downtown, includes 17 buildings on a hilltop surrounded by a perimeter fence.

And it's for sale, listed at $4.15 million.

Two potential buyers backed out after their offers were accepted by the Oregon Department of Administrative Services because the property didn't meet their development needs.

Pfeifer and DeMeyer made their move after the latest contract was terminated.

They established the Hope Crest Foundation, outlined their plan and introduced it to people with clout (business leaders and elected officials) and expertise (advocates and agencies who serve the homeless).

The foundation made an initial offer of $2.1 million for the property Nov. 15 and has since revised it at least twice to $2.7 million — just so it would be taken seriously. Members heard one of the previously accepted offers was $2.1 million, Pfeifer said.

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The group also wanted to stay ahead of what Pfeifer described as mounting "political pressure" to drop the proposal.

As of Thursday, the state had not accepted or declined the foundation's offer.

Pfeifer and DeMeyer envision creating a safe community for the homeless, a place where people could have temporary housing and get all the services they need, including substance abuse and mental health treatment and education and job training.

It sounds like a clinic and college all wrapped into one facility.

"We need to take care of the whole person," said DeMeyer, who has a background in counseling and corrections.

The Hope Crest Foundation hosted an organizational meeting Thursday at First Baptist Church, trying to galvanize support across the city and persuade community leaders to look at this as a viable option for the region's homeless crisis.

Pfeifer and DeMeyer are convinced current solutions aren't working on a large enough scale. They say theirs could potentially serve 800 people a day on a $3 million annual budget.

"Someone could laugh at us really easily at that statement," Pfeifer said.

OUR HOMELESS CRISIS is an occasional series by the Statesman Journal on homelessness in Marion and Polk counties.

► See the entire series at StatesmanJournal.com/homeless

He declined to go into detail about where the $3 million per year would come from or what specifically it would pay for.

"We have received initial communication from a broad charitable source that funding for that may be available for the first two years," Pfeifer said. "However, future sustainability sources would need to be identified. We are working on that."

Homelessness front and center

The pair's proposal comes amid a flurry of activity on the homeless front.

Salem's homeless rental assistance program, started in 2017, is slowly chipping away at the problem by funneling more than 200 people into housing so far. The number of people who are homeless — about 1,800 within the urban growth boundary, advocates estimate — still far outpaces those gains.

The City of Salem is estimated to spend more than $5.2 million annually responding to homelessness issues, at a time when budget woes are pushing city councilors to charge residents a new operating fee and send a payroll tax to voters in 2020.

Recent sweeps at Wallace Marine Park and the dispersal of a decades-old homeless camp on private quarry land next to the park scattered many within the population. With winter approaching, the homeless established a roughly 60-person encampment near the ARCHES Project, a social services provider downtown.

Officials are scoping out places to allow city-sanctioned camping, though councilors passed an ordinance this month that will ban encampments. The ban goes into effect Dec. 16.

Shelters don't have enough capacity to give everyone a bed, and it's illegal to camp in city parks overnight.

Participants would enroll in program

Hope Crest would be more than a shelter. It would bring multiple service providers to a single location, increasing the accessibility and efficiency of resources for people experiencing homelessness in Salem.

The one-stop design has been working since 2010 in San Antonio, where the 22-acre Haven of Hope campus serves 1,700 people a day.

Like Haven of Hope, Hope Crest would rely on partners to address the root causes of a person's homelessness. Residents would "enroll" in a program for a designated period, perhaps 6 or 12 months. They would receive housing while having access to substance abuse and mental health treatment and education services and job training.

Programs would be tailored to meet the specific needs of the individual while addressing the causes of homelessness. Participants would "graduate" and move toward self-sufficiency with a job and affordable housing. Some may qualify for temporary or permanent work in support of the Hope Crest mission.

Organizers note this proposed program would give homeless people something to do, unlike programs primarily offering shelter. Hope Crest would not be religion-based, but interested churches would be invited to be involved.

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Pfeiffer and DeMeyer said the plan would be to partner with local colleges such as Chemeketa Community College and Corban University and local businesses to provide education, training and mentor opportunities.

The goal for Hope Crest, according to its statement of purpose, would be to help individuals "learn, heal, and grow in dignity, and in most cases, to become supportive of their own sustainability in our community."

Sustainability, passion fuel dream

Pfeifer and DeMeyer are an unlikely pair, but they have a shared passion to fix the homeless problem.

He lives in Silverton and has been a design and build specialist for nearly five decades, following in the footsteps of his father. His company provides both design and construction services.

He prides himself on knowing how to save tax dollars and is tenacious when he sees an opportunity. He was a technical adviser on the Courthouse Square project, for example, helping Marion County save millions of dollars to fix structural defects for half the cost recommended by a consultant.

"I don't give up very easily," Pfeifer said. "If I see something that’s so dysfunctional and costly, I want to see it fixed."

He doesn't think the buildings at Hillcrest need to be fixed or razed. It has usable space that shouldn't be wasted, in his opinion. He estimates it would cost less than $1 million to remediate them so they could be inhabited.

"I didn't want to see the same thing happen as Fairview," he said, referring to the defunct state-run facility for people with developmental disabilities.

Most of those buildings were demolished and the property parceled.

While Pfeifer has compassion for the homeless, DeMeyer experienced homelessness as a child. She remembers her family receiving services from the Salvation Army.

"I get where these people are," she said.

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She's worked in the mental health field and in corrections and currently teaches psychology at Chemeketa.

DeMeyer dreams of one place where all services for homeless people are in one location and wishes the community would stop "feeding them to death."

"We're entitling them to be other peoples' responsibility," she said. "It used to be shameful if you had to beg for money. Now it's a badge of honor; it's a culture."

Multiple people have questioned why she would tackle a project with thorny political and moral overtones. If she were running for office, it might be intimidating.

But she's not.

Resistance to the foundation's plan has been both subtle and overt. It's never been their intention to step on toes, and they welcome input and participation from other organizations.

"We just want to work with the whole system, help it improve and reduce the homeless population," Pfeifer said.

'Hard to say if this works or not'

The Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, a social services provider headquartered in Salem, declined to participate in the Hope Crest project.

"The shelter piece can work," said Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Community Action Agency. "The employment program will not, based on research we have on our homeless population."

People who are unsheltered suffer too much from physical ailments, severe mental health issues and substance problems, Jones said. They need services and permanent supportive housing, a term referring to housing that typically provides people with services without sobriety or other requirements.

People living outside — most of whom "will never work again and will need a lifetime of supports" — need roofs over their heads and access to services, he said.

"What we are facing is not a crisis of failed morality and worth ethic by clients, it is a public health problem," Jones said.

Elizabeth Bowen, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work, said she didn't know of much research on outcomes from "one-stop-shop" types of operations.

"It is hard to say if this works or not," Bowen said.

Programs that help people overcome barriers to getting a job and connect them with employment are important, she said. But housing affordability also needs to factor into any long-term fix for homelessness.

"I don't think we can assume that just having any job means somebody is going to be able to afford housing on their own," Bowen said.

Correctional campus closed in 2017

The Hillcrest campus, with beautiful century-old brick buildings, is shrouded by trees on the southwest corner of Reed and Strong roads.

It's perched on a hilltop in the Morningside Neighborhood, just south of the old Fairview property. It's a slice of south Salem that would appeal to any developer if not for the daunting task of razing 17 buildings with undoubtedly remediation issues.

The former state-run youth correctional facility was shuttered Sept. 1, 2017, after it was deemed too costly to upgrade to modern standards. Oregon Youth Authority decided it was more cost-effective to move all youth, staff and programs 25 miles up the road to MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn.

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Hillcrest opened in 1913 as the state's first reform school for girls. It became a co-gender facility in the mid-1970s, then all-male in 2008 when a correctional facility for female offenders was established in Albany.

Hillcrest had the capacity to house 254 youth, although DeMeyer said there's room for 480 beds. The property and its buildings, marketed as having more than 207,000 square feet of rentable building space, includes multiple living units, large dining center, library, classrooms, health clinic, wood shop, mechanics shop, gymnasium, weight room and outdoor swimming pool.

The Department of Administrative Services declined the Statesman Journal’s request for a tour of the campus.

"We do not typically offer tours of properties for sale, unless they are to interested buyers," spokeswoman Liz Craig said in a Nov. 26 email. "Given limited staff resources over the next couple of weeks, we are not able to accommodate a tour at this time."

Pfeiffer and DeMeyer visited the site three times for official walk-throughs, taking different groups of people each time, including elected officials.

Oregon Sen. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, joined them for one in late October. While she knows the Hope Crest plan only in broad terms, she's intrigued by their vision and believes the concept needs to be explored and that it could be part of the solution to the local homeless crisis.

"I think they're onto something, but I just don't know how to get there, unless there's some way of paving a smoother path through cooperation among governments," Thatcher said. "That’ll be the biggest barrier — the red tape."

The optics may be difficult to get past, too.

A prison-like chain-link fence lines the campus. Some will see Hope Crest as a plan to move the homeless out of downtown and lock them up.

Pfeifer and DeMeyer say the homeless people who participate in their proposed program could come and go freely, but that there would need to be some sort of sign-in, check-out process for their safety and the safety of others.

In conversations with homeless people, they've received some negative feedback.

One man told Pfeifer, "you’re trying to put us in a work camp."

Making the pitch

Pfeifer and DeMeyer have been busy this week, spreading the word about their plan.

They made their pitch to business, civic and law enforcement leaders during a Thursday morning meeting at the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce.

"I’m just awfully cautious," Tom Hoffert, the chamber's chief executive, said in an interview after the meeting.

Hoffert wants to know what the intent of the state, as the current owner, is for the land. He said he has yet to hear anyone from state government say they are relinquishing the land to serve as a landing spot for homeless rehabilitation efforts.

Later Thursday evening, Hope Crest organizers held a meeting at a downtown church. DeMeyer sent informational emails to more than 600 people, and about 50 showed up.

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The crowd ranged from a homeless man in the front row named George who lives in a tent on the sidewalk at ARCHES to a staffer from United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley in the back row who is interested in learning more about the concept.

"We're not waiting for the powers to be to act," DeMeyer told them. "If the city doesn't give us grief — and I say this with my warm and fuzzy heart — we'd like to see this done in 90 days."

The concept has captured local leaders' attention. Among them is Sen. Thatcher, who envisions a multi-faceted approach to homelessness.

"I don't think anybody who says this solution is the end-all be-all is being truthful," Thatcher said. "There's not going to be one solution, but many."

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Capi Lynn is the Statesman Journal’s news columnist. Her column taps into the heart of this community — its people, history and issues. Contact her at 503-399-6710 or clynn@statesmanjournal.com.

Jonathan Bach is the Statesman Journal's City Hall and business reporter. Contact him at 503-399-6714 or jbach@statesmanjournal.com.