Lifebridge, Haborlight Homes provide update on supportive housing and shelter improvement project

By Michael McHugh at The Salem News

SALEM — The latest revised plans to replace two congregate homelessness shelters on Canal and Margin streets received a mixed reaction from city residents when presented to Salem City Council on Monday.

The Council met with the president of Lifebridge and director of Harborlight Homes to update the public on the project’s plan to create a more dignified non-congregate facility with 70 beds as well as create 41 new studio apartments.

The effort, which is still in its early planning stages with no permits pulled or votes taken, seeks to create permanent homes for formerly unhoused individuals by replacing the existing 12 single-room-occupancy units with studio apartments.

The plan would result in a total of 51 new studio apartments, and a change from 120 shelter beds to 70 non-congregate shelter beds allowing for more privacy and dignity for residents.

To accomplish this, the current project design proposes to preserve St. Mary’s Italian Church on Margin Street. But it adds wings on either side of the building to house the new non-congregate shelter space, the day service center, and the community meals program.

The adjacent Lifebridge building will be replaced with a four-story building to house the new apartments.

“[Non-congregate beds] will provide a lot more dignity to what we’re used to, the days of putting a bunch of people in a large open space in a basement should be done and over with,” Lifebridge Director Jason Etheridge said. “We really need to improve our facilities at Lifebridge and help improve the intensive case management supportive service that we’re currently doing there.”

Additionally, Lifebridge’s recent purchase of the Christopher Columbus Club will allow it to renovate the space for peer to peer support programs, as well as create 12 parking spaces, in addition to the ones under the new apartments. Due to the Club’s requiring exhaustive renovation work, it will be mostly knocked down with historic markers moved and displayed, with a new Club moving to a corner retail space.

The project’s design has already changed drastically from the original proposal presented in April 2022, based on feedback from residents and city departments.

The original proposal included a plan to create 37 homes specifically for formerly unhoused seniors, but that aspect was entirely removed in November 2023. The plan initially sought to create a new outside recreational space that was also removed in the updated proposal.

Another major change is that St. Mary’s Italian Church will stay where it is with added wings instead of entirely demolishing it. The number of new studio apartments was lowered from 50 to 41, a reduction from five stories to four, and Lifebridge’s thrift store is no longer being moved from its current location.

During Monday night’s meeting, members of the public spoke passionately against and in support of the project.

“I share everyone’s concern about helping people who are unhoused and less fortunate than we are,” resident Joanne Matera said. “But I’d like to address the elephant in the room, or the elephant in the city at large, which is that the larger the facility, the more homeless people it will attract, and Lifebridge will be unable to give them a room or bed.”

“Where do they go then? They go to Riley Plaza, they go to encampments, they go to the woods, and they put a strain on our public facilities, police, and fire. We, the Salem residents, taxpayers, and renters are paying that cost. You’re helping one group of people while not helping another.”

“The notion that ‘if you build it- they won’t come,’ is absolutely false,” resident Andrew Lipman said. “It’s incontrovertible that we will become the homelessness nexus of the North Shore. I want to do the best I can for the homeless of Salem, but I feel exploited when they deliberately move Lifebridge closer to the downtown, but remove all of the outside area, thereby turning Riley Plaza into an outdoor living room for people who don’t want to sit indoors at the day center.“

“Putting more homeless downtown and throwing up our hands when we can’t influence our neighboring communities to take care of their own and saying ‘fine, just send them to us,’ is unfair to the rest of the people in Salem.”

Many residents also raised issues with the fact that there still is no representation of Salem residents on Lifebridge’s board, something which proponents said would foster more constructive dialogue about projects like this and concerns between Lifebridge and neighbors.

Both those in support and against the project strongly asserted that if the project is to go through, there should be an option for local preference to ensure that Salem’s unhoused community is cared for first. The process for requesting local preference would begin during the permitting and local funding processes.

“A lot of the parents of my students are housing insecure, and I don’t want them to leave our community,” resident and coach Skyler Ward said. “I don’t want them to have any sort of struggles when they’re kids and they’re trying to learn. It’s just a constant contradiction — we want to help people, we want to get them off the street, but we don’t want to expand a project to help do that?”

“Providing people just a little bit of dignity and agency is huge. They support our local economy, they’re our workers, they’re our neighbors, and I think the worst thing that we can do for them is ignore them.”

Members of the public in support of the project cited the city’s recently amended camping ordinance that prohibits camping on all public property, as a reason for the necessity of this new housing.

“In light of the camping ordinance decision, we really can’t have it both ways,” resident Crystal Brown said. “I think it’d be morally bankrupt to say that people can no longer camp outside- which they really shouldn’t because it’s not safe- but also to not provide housing for them.”

A full project outline with a timeline of design changes can be found on Harborlight Home’s website at harborlighthomes.org/lifebridge-supportive/