City of Salem

Interesting Article , Fiction Story, and Statement from Jason at Lifebridge in the Boston Globe.
The Only mention of Covid Funds was for rental space off Canal St, which was already being rented by Lifebridge.
NO MENTION , OR STATEMENT about the $800,000 Covid Funds used to purchase the Columbus Society Club on Endicott Street for Lifebridge and Harborlight to build their warehouse of pay to stay.

We have many affordable options being built in Salem currently. Time to move to other cities in the NorthShore. We don't need this institutional shelter in Salem. People need to access housing all over the North Shore. R40 Zoning in Swampscott, Marblehead already existing, now build it all over the North Shore!!

Article about Salem from the Boston Globe

One Gateway city trying for a middle ground is Salem, 40 miles to the north of Brockton.

City officials there passed a camping ban last year, but one that only allows encampments to be cleared when the city has shelter space available. Then they used leftover pandemic funds to open a supplementary overnight shelter downtown, which allowed them to tear down a prominent encampment near the waterfront business district.

The new Salem shelter is informal at best, run by Lifebridge out of warehouse space next to a popular thrift store that the nonprofit also runs. The tall open room full of cots gets crowded quickly, said Ethridge, the executive director, and it still feels like there are too few beds. Lifebridge is also working to expand its permanent shelter on Margin Street in downtown Salem and develop permanent supportive housing units on the same block.

Related: Years in the making, a new home for formerly homeless people opens in Jamaica Plain

It’s a temporary solution to a problem that has been long in the making, city officials said.

“Our thinking is that everyone deserves a home, and a tent is not a home,” said Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo. “We’re starting at that point, and then thinking about creating enough housing that folks don’t need to be living in a shelter.

Dear Salem Mayor and City Councilors,

I am writing to follow up on an error that was manually entered into our zoning reporting system, Patriot Properties, and MLSPIN, in January 2025. This error incorrectly changed the zoning from R2 to B1 for all surrounding streets directly abutting Margin Street and Lifebridge.

I received assurances in April and May that this internal, manually entered error would be corrected and updated by the end of May. However, the City only removed the zoning status from Patriot Properties. This is unacceptable as these sites are essential for confirming zoning for all real estate due diligence purposes. The zoning change needs to be fixed and accurately reflected on these sites.

It is unacceptable that this mistake by the Mayor's Office City Councilors, and Zoning Dept has not yet been corrected. We require accurate zoning information and reporting, especially given Lifebridge and Harborlight's attempt to change the neighborhood zoning to allow for the City Block warehouse pay-for-shelter.

Salem cannot simply remove their intentional changes from reporting sites. Accurate zoning must be reported. Why has this issue, first reported six months ago in January, not been resolved? Changing the zoning or public record tax cards and failing to report accurate information is unacceptable.

Lifebridge is trying to build a large pay for stay shelter and housing facility in a residential neighborhood, and the City has now altered our zoning reporting, potentially to facilitate the State's review of this change. Salem must prioritize facts over desires or opinions.

Lifebridge and Harborlight received over $800,000 from Salem, using taxpayer COVID relief funds, to purchase a Social Club in the neighborhood before the approval of Lifebridge's request to change the zoning to 40R. Consequently, Pratt St, Endicott St, Prescott St, Broad St, and High St have all had their reported zoning changed from R2 to B1, and there is now a request for R40 zoning to demolish the recently purchased $800,000 Social Club to construct a large-scale institutional shelter and long-term single housing.

This needs to be fixed immediately

Good morning all - I had a chance to speak with the Executive Director of Centerboard as well as their Housing programming person about their project at the Holyoke Building. I had a number of my own questions and I hope I also got answers to a number that were raised by this group so far. Here are my key takeaways from our discussion:

To level set on the property itself: the Holyoke Building is really two buildings connected in the middle by entrances and an elevator shaft. It is privately owned and Centerboard is leasing the building that is on the post office side of the property - essentially the half the property that sits on Holyoke Square.

Centerboard is planning an interior buildout creating 39 individual rooms for homeless families of various configurations (men, women, all with children). Each room will range in square footage between ~120-220sq ft and contain a number of beds allowed for those sizes. The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities have requirements around spaces etc. There will be no change to the exterior of the building - no additions are alterations.

These individual rooms will be spread across the existing floors of the building and each floor will have at least one large shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. *For what it’s worth, this is the same dorm-like living format of the congregant living at the Woman’s Friend Society - individual rooms and shared facilities and common spaces - and what they have previously run at Bates.

Centerboard will have 2-3 case workers providing services during the day, a Director of the program onsite during business hours, and 2 overnight staff = 24-hour onsite coverage at the facility. In addition, the team expects to also hire third-party security, including early morning and after 4pm. This security is for the protection and stability of all involved, particularly the children, but they will also walk the property and ensure no issues are caused by anyone outside the building - which includes anyone who is not a resident of the Centerboard units.
Each family that is placed in these units by the State is given an “intensive orientation” upon their arrival. These orientations include how to be good neighbors and live in community as well as the review of the programs own rules and requirements.

Due to the changes in State right-to-shelter laws beginning in April, families are only allowed a maximum stay of 6 months but during that time they work daily with case managers on getting and keeping kids in schools, workforce development for the guardians/parents and to find housing through available programs.

All the adults in the families that arrive at the Centerboard units will have already had a CORI run and will not receive services if they have any of the criminal activities in their CORIs that disqualify them for services.

There are very strict visitation procedures and rules - check-ins/outs, set times etc so the only people coming into the space who are not staff or residents are also known and time and access controlled.

The only entrance used for the program will be on the parking lot/Gedney St. side
The residents of the program will have access to the underground parking garage onsite though generally there are not many cars that come with these unhoused families.
Centerboard anticipates this build out taking place over ~4 months after permitting and will begin to have families arrive shortly thereafter. The first permit was already submitted to the Building department and I believe is in review still.

RE: the Bates complex Centerboard program: there were 108 families at Bates. In the 18 months that program ran, Centerboard reported to me that there were only about 3 calls to the Police and no major issues reported with the exception of one mental health issue that required CIU support. That program also saw predominantly migrant families (76% of those 108 families), but they do not anticipate that high a percentage in this program due to new citizenship requirements, as I understand it.

This physical location centers these families within walking distance to two of Salem's largest employers (many of these adults have ended up working at the Hospital), the MassHire offices, the Community Health organization in the point, public transit, a grocer, the Middle School, and more which further supports their efforts and helps these families leverage programs that will get them back their feet and out of homelessness.

Centerboard transitioned 500 families in 2024 out of homelessness.

There will be a press release coming out in the next few business days about the program and I will share it on this thread when I receive it. I let the Centerboard team know I would be providing you all with this update and they are happy to answer any questions there may be. They are eager to be good neighbors and to inspire good neighborly behavior in their clients. I've asked if they would be willing to come to a meeting with you all as well to help answer any questions.

Here's how I'm thinking about this as of my conversation with Centerboard, and I'm happy to meet to discuss live and listen to your thoughts too - The behaviors you're currently seeing which have been outlined here in this thread are being perpetrated by a highly-impactful but relatively small percentage / minority of unhoused and transient people in Salem. Most of the reasoning they are accumulating in the Holyoke/lower Chestnut area is (in my opinion) largely because the Holyoke property and the lot across the street and the new residences at the corner of Summer are all empty and dark places with no consistent residential or business activity. In my mind, having a program like Centerboard's family shelter units could possibly decrease the behaviors you're seeing - Centerboard doesn't want the unsafe activity around their client families/children in transition either. There are very real issues you all are facing - and you're not alone in this as GESNA neighbors and Broad St neighbors have also attested to. But I also don't think this program will add to those issues. In fact, I'm hopeful more residents in that area - even those temporarily there for 6months while in transition - will have a positive effect on the area by increasing activity and the presence of children and families will organically move some of these more unstable behaviors elsewhere.

I also don't want to conflate the *potential LifeBridge and Harborlight development with this program. For one thing - *IF the LB and Harborlight project does move forward, as we heard in the COW meeting, that is years away and contingent on State and local approvals, financing etc. By the time that project would be finished, this program will have already been running for multiple years. They serve very different needs and clients. I do agree that these things all need to be taken into account in aggregate when we think about the long-term changes to the neighborhoods and Salem holistically, but I also think it's incredibly important to recognize that these are not the same things and they would not have the same effect on the neighborhoods involved.

As said above, I'm happy to meet with you all. I think we should meet with the CIU as the GESNA neighbors have as well so that we can discuss what you're all seeing in the neighborhood. I'm also hopeful we'll have a chance to connect you all with Centerboard too. They mentioned that they have done Open Houses of sorts where neighbors are welcomed into the facility to see how it all works. They said they'd circle back with me on that. In the interim though Capt @John Burke and Sgt @Sean Andrus, could we work together with this group to meet soon?