A new plywood cut-out of a person in front of city hall is part of a national effort to bring awareness to homelessness.
The social art project began in Charleston, South Carolina where the city collaborated with a design firm to create 430 plywood figures—the estimated number of homeless people in the city at the time.
The figures were then placed in park in front of their City Hall. Now, the project has gone national and every state capital has been asked to put a figure in front of their city hall in solidarity.
It’s a nice afternoon in Juneau and Michael Spoon stands in front of Juneau’s City Hall looking at the abstract figure.
“You can tell it’s a humanoid form,” Spood said. “What is this? A bench?”
The figure is a little taller than Spoon, who’s been homeless in Juneau since December. The figure is hollow to symbolize the invisibility of homeless people, and there’s an image of a bench with a house as a shadow near the figure’s beltline. Spoon didn’t sleep on a bench last night, but close.
“I was sleeping up behind a restaurant this morning,” he said. “It was blowing like 35, 45 miles-per-hour and rainin’—layin’ on cardboard—I had cardboard covering me. I still froze.”
Spoon says he’s been homeless in Juneau six or seven times before, and in several other cities, “Sitka, back in my hometown, Seward, Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, Grimshaw, Milwaukee, Gladstone.”
The figurine is next to the large City Hall sign board. A couple walks by, cameras in hand.
“You got another cigarette on you?” Spoon said.
The man, with a cigarette in his mouth, shakes his head no.
“That’s another issue around here too is the drugs,” Spoon said. “I’m an alcoholic but I try and take a break from it once in a while and keep on trying to find work.”
He also says that violence is an issue, but that it’s the same everywhere. Overall, Spoon says that Juneau seems better than some other places.
“You get to wash your clothes and take a shower at the Glory Hole, and they get fed three times a day,” he said. “These other cities I was in, you only got to eat once a day, and you could never use the shower ‘cause someone was always in there—beat you to it or something.”
Burton: “What advice would you have for Juneau?”
Spoon: “Just keep trying I guess. Find enough resources of what’s around you and try to use ‘em. They’re starting to do the housing thing and stuff. I missed that out on 5 minutes. Some guy beat me by five minutes—he was the last guy to sign up for the housing.”
The housing Spoon is referring to is Juneau’s housing first facility now under construction in Lemon Creek. The 32-unit building, which should be done in May of 2017, is meant for people like Spoon. The idea is that with a stable living environment, people can then address their addictions, get medical attention, find work…
“We’ve had a great community effort in the last 5 years,” Scott Ciambor, Juneau’s Chief Housing Officer, said.
He’s among a group of organizers and planners that have made the housing first project a reality.
“Unlike the figurine which is supposed to represent invisibility and not seeing homeless people as part of communities, we’ve gotten past that hurdle and are making active choices for solutions,” Ciambor said, looking at the wooden cut out.
If Juneau were to fully emulate Charleston’s project, we’d put 216 figurines–maybe in Marine Park. 216, by the way, is the number of homeless people Juneau’s point-in-time survey found in January.
Ciambor is proud of the 32-unit housing first project, but he says we still have more work to do.
“Realistically, that is a small sample targeted to those who are most vulnerable,” Ciambor said. “So there’s still opportunities slightly up the spectrum, more low income, affordable housing, more supported housing that is not as intensive as that project.”
“And some more private market rentals that social service providers can connect with to put some of their clients in.”
A couple walks by and I ask them what they think of the figurine, and realize I am speaking to the choir.
Eddie Snell is off a cruise ship from Florida and is active in his community’s efforts to fight homelessness.
“We should not have large numbers of people roaming the streets without receiving some type of help, in this country, with all the resources we have,” Snell said.
Michael Spoon agrees, but he has a more immediate concern.
“I don’t know where I am going to sleep tonight,” Spoon said.
