by Jacob Espinoza

This summer, the city of Salem asked people who live, work and play in Northeast Salem one big question: What's the most pressing problem here?

A survey was sent out and 339 people responded. Homelessness, safety and the condition of streets and parks topped the list.

Behind the survey is a project called Northeast United, and it's entering its next phase right now.

So what does that look like? A small working group of community leaders is deciding the first problem it wants to tackle, with a goal of reaching agreement by December. Over the next several weeks, city staff will take the survey results to every Northeast neighborhood association. If you live in Northeast Salem and want a say in what gets worked on first, this is the window.

I talked with Ashley Dunn, the city's community engagement manager, on the latest episode of the What's Happening Salem podcast with my co-host, Jenn Hays. I also asked two community leaders involved in the effort, Collin Box of Capital Futbol Club and Katie Costic of the Mountain West Center for Community Excellence, to answer a few questions in writing. The survey numbers come from the city's final report on the project. Here's what you need to know.

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Box put it about as simply as anyone can: "NE United is a group of leaders of community organizations seeking to address the most challenging and complicated problems that face NE Salem. These problems aren't able to be tackled by one group, and it is the hope of the group that we can make real headway on change in a way that no one organization can do on its own."

Dunn calls it "more of a process" than a program. The city brings residents, nonprofits, businesses and agencies to the same table. They agree on one problem, dig into what's causing it, and then test a fix.

For this project, "Northeast Salem" covers a lot of ground: everything north of State Street and east of Front Street, out to the city limits. Dunn said the wide boundary was on purpose, to include "all of those who live, work, play, shop" in that part of town.

Full disclosure: I grew up in Northeast Salem, and so did Dunn. She's a North Salem High School graduate who has three kids in Salem-Keizer schools.

The idea started downtown. In 2025, Salem joined the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a program that trains city leaders to solve hard problems with outside partners. City leaders first put the focus on downtown safety.

According to Dunn, two things came out of that downtown work that you may have already seen. One is a team the city calls REACH, which sends a Marion County behavioral health worker out with fire crews on mental health calls. The other is the city's Clean Teams, the crews that clean up public spaces. Dunn said both now work across the whole city, not just downtown.

So why Northeast next? That part is based on hard numbers, not feelings. Dunn said city data shows downtown and Northeast Salem generate more calls for police, fire and emergency services than other parts of Salem. The city's Safe, Clean and Healthy Salem page says the same thing.

What's different this time is who's driving. The downtown effort started with direction from city leaders. Northeast United started with a survey, and a group of community members is making the calls.

"They are making the decisions. They are deciding on what the focus is," Dunn said. She describes her own role as facilitator: "I am not creating the problem statements or the public value statements. I am not driving the direction of the work."

Between July 7 and Aug. 2, the city surveyed 24 leaders of local organizations and 315 community members, in English, Spanish, Swahili and Russian. Staff also set up booths in parks, showed up at community events like Fun Fridays, knocked on doors in about 10 neighborhoods and went on Spanish-language radio to spread the word. About 74% of the people who responded live in Northeast Salem.

A quick label before the numbers: this was an opt-in survey. It tells us how people feel, not what's happening on every block, and it isn't a scientific sample of every resident.

Respondents could pick up to three problems. Here's how often the top ones came up:

Dunn said a lot of what made people feel “safe” came down to, "things as simple as having lighting on your street or (eliminating) speeding within neighborhood zones."

The surprise for her was how much people cared about cleanliness. "Cleanliness contributes to feelings of safety," she said. "When you have a well-manicured landscaped area, you tend to feel generally safer."

Here's a sample of what residents wrote, pulled from the city's report:

The organization leaders mostly agreed with residents, Dunn said, with one addition: "a particular emphasis on youth and youth support."

One survey question asked: Who is working to fix the problem you named? The most common answer was some version of "I don't know" or "no one."

That gap is right where Northeast United is focused. According to the city's report, about 43% of Northeast residents who answered said they didn't know who was working on these problems. In South Salem, it was 20%. In West Salem, about 17%.

The report is careful to say this isn't because nobody's doing anything. Plenty of organizations are active in Northeast Salem.

"Residents didn't know who was doing what," Dunn said. "They didn't know what organizations were doing work in that part of the city."

One respondent put it more bluntly: "I don't know that anybody really cares about NE Salem. It's always been poor and oppressed and the rich seem satisfied to keep it that way."

At that July kickoff, the group narrowed their focus to three options: chronic homelessness, prevention and support for young people, and helping residents find services and health care.

No decision has been made on which comes first. The city's report suggested starting with youth because it's more doable, and it warned that residents could lose interest if homelessness looks like it's being skipped. Both leaders I heard from were clear that nothing is final.

"I think it's important not to get ahead of ourselves and describe ideas as decisions," Costic wrote.

Right now, the group of seven is writing what Bloomberg Harvard calls a "public value statement." In plain English: What problem are we tackling, how, and how will we know it worked? Box said the group "most recently made a draft."

Here's the timeline Dunn described. Treat it as a goal, not a promise:

What about money? Dunn didn't point to a dedicated budget. She described the pilot stage as the point where the group would "begin to gather resources and supports." Box said the group also plans to present its work to the Salem City Council "on a few occasions that residents will be able to participate in."

I'll be honest: I'm a "sounds like a good idea, let's try it" person. A process this deliberative tests my patience, and I asked Dunn about the risk that this turns into a study that leads to another study.

Her answer: Slow down now so the fix sticks later. "Sitting in the problem doesn't feel good for most people," she said. "Anything meaningful takes time."

She also said the group can't sit there forever. "You gotta do something because in the doing of something is what actually gives you the tools to learn, adapt, and make meaningful change."

Box named momentum as the biggest challenge. He pointed to earlier efforts, like the city’s Community Violence Reduction Initiative, that had "varying degrees of success."

"I have been a part of several groups like this, and the question really is, 'What is different about this compared to other efforts?'" he wrote. His read so far: "I have already seen, however, that this is a much different effort than the others."

So what's different? In a follow-up text, Box pointed to two things. The first is "the structure from Bloomberg and a successful model with downtown."

"There are some very actionable and structured elements to this that have moved us already beyond simply acknowledging and speaking about issues into something that is more tangible," he wrote.

The second is who's in the room. "Seeing the city manager directly involved with these meetings already makes me feel like it is a priority," he wrote.

Costic said the test is simple. Residents need to see and feel a difference.

"Surveys and meetings are important, but people understandably become frustrated when they participate in community engagement and never see what came from it," she wrote. Success doesn't have to mean 10 new programs, she added. "Maybe it is one or two really visible, sustainable improvements."

Dunn said the survey surfaced something beyond potholes and encampments. A lot of Northeast residents feel they haven't gotten the support they'd like, and that the rest of Salem sees their part of town as a place to avoid.

Costic has lived that. She and her husband are raising their four kids in Northeast Salem.

"When we were looking at purchasing our home, I remember how many people told us not to buy in NE Salem," she wrote. "I remember thinking that the reaction would have been completely different if we had announced that we bought the same house in another part of Salem…And yet, we love our home. We love our neighborhood."

Box said what's stayed with him is "a desire to reshape the story of NE Salem."

"I also think it's important that we don't define Northeast Salem only by its challenges," he wrote.

That last point matters. Dunn acknowledged the survey didn't hear enough from young people or from people experiencing homelessness, and said the team is working on reaching both.

"NE United needs voices beyond the people who normally show up to meetings," Costic wrote. "We need parents. We need young people. We need longtime residents and newer families."

She summed up the whole thing better than I can:

"There is a difference between saying, 'NE Salem has challenges,' and saying, 'NE Salem is a problem.' The first is true. The second is a story I think we have an opportunity to change."

Jenn and I sat down with Ashley Dunn for almost an hour. We get into how the survey worked, what the city learned downtown and Ashley's favorite hidden gems in Northeast Salem.