Aug. 10—After the city eliminated a large homeless encampment on Fairbanks Street last week, another encampment has set up shop in Midtown Anchorage, along a busy stretch of East 33rd Avenue, near a climbing gym, restaurants busy areas, a hotel, a clinic, a daycare center, a dance theater studio and countless other companies and agency offices. A few other camps are also scattered along nearby streets.
The situation sparked protests from businesspeople in the region, who asked the city to remove the camp. They say the area is experiencing an increase in criminal activity, trespassing and drug use, which they say occurred with the creation of the camp.
Homeless residents in the area say they moved there from Fairbanks Street because they had nowhere else to go. There is no area in Anchorage where they can camp in tents, vehicles and RVs, which now line the north side of 33rd Avenue between Old Seward Highway and Denali Street.
Anchorage authorities forced homeless residents to leave Fairbanks Street, between East 40th and 42nd avenues, near the Tudor Road Home Depot, following similar protests by businesses and residents over serious public health and safety concerns. A man was killed in a shooting at that camp in late June.
“They just pushed the issue forward,” said Laurie Mapes, owner of Alaska Premier Health, a clinic on the corner of 33rd Avenue and Fairbanks Street.
People who work and visit businesses in the area are experiencing harassment, said Mapes and Rod Hancock, founder and majority owner of Moose’s Tooth.
The bustling pizzeria at Old Seward and E 34th Avenue is usually packed with tourists and locals all summer long.
Hancock, who also owns the Bear Tooth Theater pub in Spenard, said there has been homelessness near his restaurants “pretty much for 28 years of business and Anchorage — but this was a whole different level,” he said.
This time, it’s mostly vehicles rather than just tents, he said.
“This whole caravan arrived… and immediately you saw a lot of drug activity, people gathering there under tents and things like that, and then coming out really intoxicated on whatever they were using, and harassing customers and employees, and wandering around the premises. and bathrooms and really making noise and scaring people,” Hancock said.
The restaurant changed the way it runs its service area after food thefts, he said.
Mapes now keeps the clinic doors locked 24/7, and staff and patients are escorted in and out.
“I was watching a guy yesterday on my back porch here, getting all his drugs, getting all this stuff ready, taking off the tourniquet. He’s got his aerosol, you know, and it’s sprayed on my porch here. What should I do?” Mapes said on Thursday.
Mapes and Hancock want the city to take action on 33rd Avenue, but they also fear the encampment will move to another area of the city.
“What’s the bigger solution? Because if it was Lowes and Home Depot’s problem before, now it’s Rock Gym and Moose’s Tooth’s problem, it’s going to be someone else’s problem if you just take the whack-a-mole approach,” Hancock said.
In a statement released Friday, Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s office said the situation is “an example of how abatement in itself is not a solution to the problems occurring on our streets and trails.”
“We will continue to abate areas because they pose a significant threat to public safety and because we have the resources to do so. We also recognize the need to have a broader continuum of services available to reduce the number of individuals experiencing homelessness. planning and housing come into play.”
City officials and the police department are monitoring the situation on 33rd Avenue and conducting daily cleaning, the mayor’s office said.
It is also monitoring “several encampments that have safety concerns,” including some near schools, according to the mayor’s office.
“We will have information about which reductions will be published next Monday,” said the statement.
From camp to camp
After enduring several days of heavy rain, people at the 33rd Avenue encampment were relieved by a break in the weather Thursday afternoon.
“My feet and my clothes, I mean physically, from head to toe, I’ve been wet for three days. I’m finally starting to dry out,” said Denali Ketah, who is staying at the camp.
Ketah, 40, has been homeless in Anchorage for about two years and has no other place to stay, she said.
“The encampments are full, legitimately, they are full. So there is an overflow of people. The homeless shelters don’t have room to sleep for the amount of people in the homeless population,” Ketah said.
Under a tarp still dripping with rain, Ronald Coulson sat in a chair outside his trailer, repairing the bike he uses to run errands.
“With me, I can’t go to an RV park because I don’t have money. That’s all I can do,” Coulson said, pointing to his bike.
Coulson, 58, fixes bikes mostly in exchange for food and gas, sometimes for a little money, he said.
“Maybe I work on a bike, three, four days, and normally it takes one person a day to do that. For me, I wrecked my back in a truck accident. years to get disability, and they still haven’t given it to me, so that’s disability for you.”
Six years is how long Coulson has been homeless “this time,” he said. He moved from one field to another, repeatedly.
Last summer, he lived in the trailer of a previous large camp near downtown, on Third Avenue and Ingra Street. When the city cleared the encampment last fall, it moved to Midtown, to a vacant lot near Cuddy Park. The city dismantled that encampment earlier this year and Coulson moved to Fairbanks Street. Forced out of there last week, he is now stationed at 33rd.
He’ll be there for a while, probably until the city reduces the camp, “probably within a week,” Coulson said, guessing.
“I’m usually pretty close to being right about that. Everyone hates me for that,” he added.
For Ketah, the 33rd Avenue area appears safer than the recently downsized Fairbanks Street area. It’s well lit, with businesses and security cameras all around. She didn’t hear any shots there.
“Being here, this is all temporary, I hope,” she said.
Ketah said he wishes there was a vacant lot or area where the city would let them stay.
“There are those of us who are here, who do not steal. We do not vandalize things, items, places of business or anything else. There are many people who try to talk to us and try to come and associate with us that we ignore or ask them to just leave or go although, because we are already stigmatized,” Ketah said.
Some people pass by the camp and cause problems, she said. Some drunk people defecate or urinate in the street, she said.
“We don’t like being here – I don’t,” she said.
‘Chaotic and frustrating’
The Mayor’s Office said the administration has “three main goals in the coming months: 1. Address significant public safety concerns, 2. Implement a pre-winter shelter plan, and 3. Build a reliable and predictable shelter plan throughout the winter.” year and meet housing needs.”
Upcoming plans “will take vehicles and trailers into consideration,” the mayor’s office said. LaFrance’s special assistant on homelessness, Farina Brown, will speak with people in the encampments “to learn more about the factors that make encampments dangerous and how they can be mitigated.”
“We have begun work to ensure we are in a different place as we move forward,” the Mayor’s Office said.
In April, the Anchorage Assembly laid the legal groundwork to create “designated safe parking areas” for homeless people living in vehicles.
The encampments on Fairbanks Street and 33rd Avenue “are the perfect examples of the need for these designated areas for people to hang out,” said Assemblymember Felix Rivera, who represents Midtown.
But the former Bronson administration didn’t create one when winter shelters closed in late May, Rivera said. LaFrance took office in July.
“We’re really in this unfortunate period of transition where all of this, this nexus of issues, is coming together and people want to see action,” Rivera said. “Now we have a new administration that is still recruiting staff, that is dealing with all of these issues from the old administration, and now they are having to try to resolve these huge, critical health and safety issues.”
“This is a horrible situation for everyone,” he added.
The city was able to successfully clean up two other small camps and, with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, moved those people directly into housing, Rivera said.
But when encampments become large and unsafe, like the former encampment on Fairbanks Street, it is difficult for the homeless community and other social workers to come in and offer services.
“And in the absence of a working model for how to deal with this situation, it is somewhat chaotic and frustrating,” Rivera said.
Rivera said he believes the LaFrance administration will make progress, but it will take some time.
Community frustrations over the camps have been growing for years, he said.
“I feel like we’re at a boiling point here and we need something to happen,” Rivera said.
