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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Homeless
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director, said these challenges have dis-
proportionately impacted women of col-
or. She also said a big misconception
about families experiencing homeless-
ness is that they are not working or not
working hard enough.
Many of the women they serve are
working two or three jobs, sometimes
without having a car.
“Housing has just gotten so expen-
sive,” Lemman said. “It’s just gotten so
out of reach. Vouchers for assistance are
harder and harder to come by. There’s just
not enough affordable housing.”
Balancing homelessness and health
issues
Mikesell said her health declined in
2014, around the same time she first be-
came homeless.
She said she was forced to move out of
her apartment after it flooded, exposing a
mold problem, while working as a house
director for a fraternity at a university in
Corvallis. She lost her position with the
school and her home.
Mikesell said she developed upper-
respiratory problems from breathing in
the mold — an added health challenge to
her struggle with type 2 diabetes, a condi-
tion first diagnosed in 1998.
On her first night of living unsheltered,
she parked her car in the parking lot of the
Albany Public Library but was awoken by
a police officer who told her it was illegal
to park there.
“I thought I was so on top of it the first
time I was going to be homeless. I’d done
the research. I was picturing car camping
and it absolutely did not turn out that way
at all,” she said. “It was survival.”
Mikesell grew up in the Bend area and
moved to Salem in 2002 to attend Corban
University where she studied psychology.
Since then, Mikesell has worked in what
she describes as mostly “low-income”
jobs.
Her health took another hit in May
2020, when she started feeling lethargic
and weak.
“That was right about the time when
my whole body said, ‘I quit,’” she said. “I
didn’t have the energy to cook properly, so
I just ate junk and took my meds.”
Mikesell began having trouble staying
awake throughout the day. It affected her
energy, as well as her eating habits.
“If you get worn down as a diabetic, it’s
hard to have the stamina to be able to
cook well for yourself,” she said. “You just
grab something to eat.”
But Mikesell’s part-time job as a mil-
itary lease assistant with the Oregon Mil-
itary Department became affected by the
pandemic in December. And around the
same time, the owner of the home she
DA
Continued from Page 1A
and wellbeing of the community. She says
her decision to run again for the county’s
top attorney position is more than a desire
to do her job — it’s an obligation.
“If not me, then who?” she said. “I am
the person who knows how to do this job
and I’m not going to walk away from it
now when things are hard.”
Clarkson graduated from Willamette
University College of Law in 1999 and has
worked with the Marion County District
Attorney’s office since 1997. Starting as a
law clerk, she later became a line attorney,
a senior deputy district attorney and trial
team leader for the drug team. But she
said her interest in law came from watch-
ing the TV show Law & Order in high
school.
“I really saw those prosecutors working
with law enforcement and when I
watched that, I thought, I want to do that,”
she said. “And what I saw in the public
safety system is prosecutors are the only
lawyers anywhere ... whose ethical obliga-
tion is to seek justice.”
During her time in office, Clarkson
said, she’s prioritized tackling violent
crimes — including those against children
and women — and protecting the most
vulnerable community members.
“That is a timeless problem,” she said.
“That will always be something that we
have to do. And I will always be prioritiz-
ing collaborative efforts and the training
necessary to do those cases responsibly,
and be able to hold those folks account-
able.”
She also pointed to the importance of
tackling cases unique to the area at this
moment in history. Coming out of the
pandemic, Clarkson said prosecutors in
her office have been buried in cases that
are considered low-level offenses includ-
ing property damage, burglaries, and tres-
passing.
“What makes a community feel unsafe
are those kinds of offenses,” she said. “If I
don’t focus on that and I don’t make those
a priority for us to prosecute, those little
things become big things.”
She pointed to an example of the Mult-
nomah County District Attorney not pros-
ecuting low-level crimes during the pro-
tests in Portland.
“That’s not our process here in Marion
County,” she said. “I think it’s the main
reason why our protest activity was sig-
nificantly minimized compared to Port-
land. When folks came here with the in-
Cindel Mikesell, 42, on her bed at Safe Sleep on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 in
Salem, Ore. Mikesell has faced homelessness on multiple occasions while
working to manage health issues, including type 2 Diabetes. ABIGAIL DOLLINS /
STATESMAN JOURNAL
lived in asked Mikesell to make other liv-
ing arrangements.
That’s when Mikesell realized she
didn’t have the income to get a place of
her own.
She and her cat, Natty, moved into Sa-
feSleep United in March 2021. She said
she learned about the shelter through
WorkSource Oregon, where she was also
connected with a grant-based job doing
data entry for the Santiam Hospital in
Stayton during the pandemic.
“They’ve been really kind to me.
They’re trying to help me find a place to
live,” she said of SafeSleep. “And they’re
awesome because I have food allergies
and they make sure I have food like every-
body else has food at dinner time.”
Mikesell said her health improved sig-
nificantly when she began receiving as-
sistance from a team of doctors through
the Oregon Health Plan — including a di-
etician, medication manager and physi-
cal therapist — to help manage and pre-
scribe medications for diabetes.
Mikesell now works the graveyard
shift as a residential site assistant at Red-
wood Crossings, through Salem Housing
Authority. She’s started putting money
into a savings account and says she care-
fully budgets all expenses.
Things have started looking up for Mi-
kesell in recent months. In April, she
moved into a tiny home as part of a pilot
program established by a private land-
owner in South Salem interested in hous-
ing unsheltered individuals.
tent of committing a crime --- not with the
intent of free speech, that should be pro-
tected ... I think those folks learned really
early on not only will you be arrested, you
will be prosecuted.”
Clarkson has been outspoken against
multiple orders by Brown, including using
her clemency authority to retroactively
change prison sentences for approxi-
mately 75 individuals statewide serving
adult-length sentences for violent crimes
that they committed when they were 15,
16, or 17 years old.
In a joint statement last week, Clark-
son and Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast
voiced their concerns over Brown grant-
ing clemency to a Douglas County man
convicted of murdering his teenage foster
child in 1995. Kyle Hedquist, who was
housed at the Oregon State Penitentiary
in Salem, was released into Marion Coun-
ty after citing “community concerns” over
returning to a residence in Douglas Coun-
ty.
“This case represents a shocking lack
of concern by the Governor’s Office for the
safety of our community, disregard for the
transparency of any process and apathy
toward the normal safety protocols for
such an obvious risk,” Clarkson said.
Clarkson says her proudest achieve-
ment as an attorney has been earning
trust from victims and survivors of
crimes, some of whom have maintained
relationships with her long after the case
is closed. As an elected district attorney,
she said she’s proud of the relationships
her office has built with social service
agencies such as Center for Hope and
Safety and Liberty House, as well as the
accomplishments of the prosecutors at
the district attorney’s office.
“We don’t seek attention. We don’t
seek credit. And yet, when I walk down
the hall of my office, I see prosecutors at
work every day just trying to do the right
thing,” she said.
Clarkson has endorsements from mul-
tiple law enforcement leaders and district
attorneys across the state including Mar-
ion County Sheriff Joe Kast, Salem Police
Chief Trevor Womack and Polk County
District Attorney Aaron Felton. Other local
and state leaders including Oregon Attor-
ney General Ellen Rosenblum; all Marion
County Commissioners and City Council-
ors Chris Hoy and Tom Anderson have
also expressed their support for Clarkson.
Meet Salem attorney Spencer Todd
While it wasn’t his only career track,
Todd says he always planned on becom-
ing a lawyer like his parents. Born and
More recently, Mikesell said, she’s
learned how to cook diabetic-friendly and
gluten-free meals and has cut sugar from
her diet altogether.And with a new kitch-
en in her micro-shelter and the owner’s
garden at her disposal, Mikesell said she’s
excited to have the freedom to make
whatever she wants.
“I’d love to cook spaghetti,” she said,
laughing.
Being homeless is a “balancing game,”
Mikesell said. “It’s like if they married
puzzles and Jenga together.”
Mikesell says society tends to separate
homeless people from everyone else, not
acknowledging how close many people
are to the edge.
“Because we don’t know any better
and because it’s something we do as a so-
ciety, we clump. Homeless people go
here. We compartmentalize,” she said.
There are resources — but more are
needed
Advocates say some of the solutions to
ending homelessness are already in the
community, but there needs to be more of
them.
Simonka Place is one of the handful of
places providing female-specific shelter
beds in Salem. They offer 86 beds and
typically run at or near capacity.
Kathy Smith, director of Women’s
Ministries at Simonka Place, said the
shelter stopped doing intakes during the
pandemic and reserve certain beds for
raised in Salem, Todd spent his summers
in high school re-building shelves in the
“bowels” of the Marion County Court-
house records department.
He graduated from South Salem High
School and earned his law degree from
Willamette University Law School in 2013.
While attending law school, he clerked for
his father, Walter Todd, and other area at-
torneys. He currently lives in downtown
Salem with his wife, Kari, who works for
Nike.
Todd says the past eight years as a
public defender translate well into the
District Attorney’s office. He says he
brings a one-on-one client mentality to
victims to help protect and advocate for
them and have important conversations
about their cases.
“As a DA, you’re not the victim’s lawyer,
but you’re the closest thing to the victim’s
lawyer because they’re ... likely only ever
going to have you answering their ques-
tions.”
When it comes to the role of the lead
prosecutor, Todd says he believes in an “in
the trenches” approach and says he wants
to lead by example.
A district attorney should be in the
courtroom, he said. “If I’m asking a first-
year to do a shoplifting case, I should also
be doing a shoplifting case,” he said.
Similar to Clarkson, Todd says large-
scale cases should be prioritized.
“Prison exists for a reason,” he said.
“You have to be held accountable for bad
crimes at the highest level — for child sex
abuse, for murder, for those kinds of
things.”
He doesn’t want to ignore low-level
crimes, either, because small problems
have a way of escalating.
But all cases should be prosecuted in a
meaningful way. And the largest problem,
Todd says, is the district attorney’s office’s
current approach to justice: spending too
many resources to send as many people
as possible to prison for as long as possi-
ble.
“It’s enormously expensive to send
someone to prison. And it takes them
away from the community ... and it also
makes it so that can’t work,” he said. “The
longer you are in prison the harder it is for
you to get a job when you come back. If
you’re a single parent your children go into
the foster care system and become a high-
er risk to engage in criminal conduct, as
well.”
Instead, Todd says the district attor-
ney’s office should strive to understand
what convictions should result on a case-
by-case basis; the office should also seek
alternatives to prison sentences, and in-
their long-term recovery program and
families.
“In the last three years, we’ve averaged
turning away 1,285 women and 616 chil-
dren,” she said. “That’s really when we
started counting. It was three years ago
that those numbers started skyrocket-
ing.”
Simonka Place has family rooms com-
plete with toddler beds and cribs, an out-
door playground, a dayroom and dining
hall serving three meals a day.
Smith said she sees a dire lack of ser-
vices.
“The biggest issue that we have en-
countered in the last two years has been
the mental health component,” Smith
said. “There’s just not enough support
and services for homeless women with
mental health issues.”
Smith also pointed to a high level of
trauma among their clients. She estimat-
ed that about 80% of the women they
serve have survived sexual and physical
violence. Many still face violence while
homeless.
“That’s why women aren’t as visible on
the streets, because they are hiding,”
Smith said. “They’re finding places where
they can’t be seen as a means to protect
themselves.”
Despite the record-high numbers and
lack of some services, Smith said she sees
hope in stories like Diaz’s.
From September to December 2021, 65
women and 19 children in their program
found stable housing.
“That is amazing — just think about
those 19 children who are no longer
homeless, are no longer wondering where
they’re going to be sleeping at night,”
Smith said. “They wake up in the morning
and go to school. Their moms are involved
in volunteering in the schools or working
there. It’s just a really wonderful thing.”
Salem Safe Parking Network by
Church at the Park is another resource for
individuals sleeping in their cars. It pro-
vides a safe place to park.
John Marshall, who manages the pro-
gram, said they currently have six sites
that provide fewer than a dozen parking
spots each.
In late March, Marshall said, they had
304 households on their waiting list. He
said about half of those have a woman
listed as the “head of household” on the
entries.
Work continues to install micro shelter
villages in every ward in the city. Commu-
nity donations have funded more than
150 shelters, but a proposed site near
downtown is stalled due to legal push-
back from neighbors and the City Council
has struggled to find additional locations.
The waiting list for the micro shelters
has more than 400 people on it.
Coming next week: How Oregon
youths are caught in cycle of homeless-
ness
vest in new and existing social services.
“We as the public want to be safe. We,
as the system, need to hold someone ac-
countable, there has to be some level of
punishment to stop bad conduct,” Todd
says. “But what we really want is that per-
son to never offend again, get sober, get
well, get whatever their issue is resolved
and be a working, good parent in our soci-
ety. We’ve got to prosecute with that goal
in mind instead of, ‘guy did something
really bad, let’s try and send him to prison.’
“
Todd also says he believes in equal ac-
cess to justice; receiving more input from
victims to resolve their cases, address
their trauma and heal; and giving judges
more decision power over plea deals.
“Victims need a better lawyer,” he said.
“Good leadership starts with the person at
the top doing the hard work and working
harder than everybody else at the office
and that’s why people should vote for me.”
Todd has garnered endorsements from
state and local leaders including State
Representative Teresa Alonso-Leon, Sa-
lem City Councilor Jackie Leung, Cher-
riots Board Director Ramiro “RJ” Navarro,
and former Oregon Governor Ted Kulon-
goski. He has support from multiple first
responders and members of the legal
community.
Paige Clarkson
h Age: 48.
h Residence: Salem.
h Family: Husband, Jason Van Meter;
four children,
h Occupation: Marion County District
Attorney
h Previous elected offices: Marion
County District Attorney since 2019, first
appointed in 2018.
h Campaign contributions: $111,352.50
h Total for campaign: $42,513.25
Spencer Todd
h Age: 33.
h Residence: Salem.
h Family: Wife, Kari.
h Occupation: Public defender.
h Previous elected offices: None.
h Campaign contributions: $168,361.21
h Total for campaign: $153,773.63
Virginia Barreda is the breaking news
and public safety reporter for the States-
man Journal. She can be reached at 503-
399-6657 or at vbarreda@statesmanjour-
nal.com. Follow her on Twitter at @vbar-
reda2.