Tensions in Salem over unsheltered homelessness were high this fall. Downtown business leaders had the ear of city officials, demanding more resources for addressing safety and liveability issues. Homeless service providers agreed more resources were needed, but cautioned against scapegoating peo ple often struggling profoundly. Salem Reporter had been covering the issue thoroughly, attending community and council meetings. But a city action opened the way to dig deeper. Reporters Madeleine Moore and Abbey McDonald did so recently, spending hours in the field with city employees on two teams that work closely on these issues. Their resulting story, published last week, offers a profoundly human look at the lives of people on the margins of Salem, who are often discussed as abstractions. A morning with the city teams prioritizing humanity, patience at Salem’s homeless camps Reporting this story took days of work and drew on both reporters’ deep knowledge of the issues. Moore trudged in the mud at Wallace Marine Park while talking to two police officers who have built deep relationships over years with people living there. She spoke with park residents who had grown to trust the officers, and watched as they warned people about possible flooding and spoke with them about getting into local shelters. McDonald rode shotgun in an all-terrain vehicle with a city cleaning team, venturing out into the brush of northeast Salem to talk about what “cleaning up” the remnants of someone’s life outside actually looks like. Along the way, she met a friendly cat and developed an appreciation for the optimism and sense of purpose these workers bring to their jobs. The groundwork for this reporting began months ago. Salem city councilors decided in October to put more money toward expanding homeless outreach and cleaning teams, at a cost of about $626,000 for six months. Public reaction was mixed. Many people were excited about the possibility of more help. Some people felt the police shouldn’t be involved in homeless outreach at all. Others thought the city was already spending too much money and effort on homeless services.  Moore pitched the idea of riding along with the two teams once they expanded to report how the police and cleaning teams collaborate, and to chronicle their days on the ground in parks and encampments. “There’s a lot of, I think, questions and uncertainty about how law enforcement being involved with homeless people plays out. And so I was curious: what does that actually look like?” Moore said. Also expanding was the city’s Salem Outreach and Livability Services team, a civilian team that cleans up camps and trash after police have posted no camping notices. Moore approached  McDonald, who covers homelessness and housing, about teaming up. Moore spent a morning in December out with the outreach team, while McDonald spent that morning with the cleaning team. “For a long time, we’ve been describing this team in, like, one sentence where they go out and they respond to citations and they clean up after camps,” McDonald said. “That can mean so many different things, so I was really curious to see how they interacted with people.” Each reporter individually wrote up scenes from the field to capture key moments. They compared notes and worked together over two days to knit their accounts together into a final story. That meant debating which scenes to leave in and making sure key details about each team’s work were explained clearly and accurately. It gave an unprecedented look at the on-the-ground work being done to get people into services – and the thoughts of Salem workers who most closely interact with people living in encampments. Both reporters said they saw a marked contrast between how homelessness is often discussed among citizens and elected officials and the perceptions of the workers dealing day after day with Salem’s homeless residents. “They’re able to hold onto the idea that these are members of our community, and some people who only have passing interactions with the homeless community have a lot sharper and less kind perceptions of these people’s lifestyles,” McDonald said. While there are often calls from the public to sweep encampments rapidly, Moore said she was struck that the police officers on the team don’t see that approach as a goal. “We are not in a rush to, for example, clean up Wallace Marine Park. That’s not our job,” Moore recalled the officers saying. McDonald said one fact that was notable was the lack of turnover on the SOS team, despite a mission that might seem challenging and requires long overtime hours. “When I was thinking about what this job would look like, it kind of sounds sad and hard and like you’re facing some of the most tragic elements of our society every day, but all of the team talking to them, they just really loved their jobs,” she said. “They talked about it like it was a mission, and that they felt like they were doing a lot of good, and that they were learning a lot about the community and a lot about themselves.” The story was one of our most-read in recent weeks. We also sent a copy directly to Salem city councilors and Mayor Julie Hoy and county commissioners in Marion and Polk counties. Responses from readers were overwhelmingly positive. “It really opened my eyes to the complex work being done. In my personal line of work, I have had a negative experience with 9 out of 10 homeless, but this article helped me gain a better perspective from their point of view,” one commenter wrote. “That’s all you can ask for with journalism,” McDonald said. Contact Managing Editor Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241. LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED TO YOU: Subscribe to Salem Reporter and get all the fact-based Salem news that matters to you. Fair, accurate, trusted – SUBSCRIBE The post EDITOR’S NOTE: How we reported in depth on work in homeless camps appeared first on Salem Reporter. ...read more read less