For the second time this summer, Anchorage officials are clearing out a big swath of public land where a lot of people without homes are camping.
Anchorage doesn’t have enough shelter space for the soon-to-be-displaced campers, which leaves a large vacant lot at the edge of downtown as a likely space people will resettle.
Its neighbors are bracing for the encampment to swell again — and a third wave of public safety and nuisance issues with it, like when the city cleared a Midtown camp earlier this month.
This time, the city is clearing the Mountain View snow dump and Davis Park. It posted the notices on June 22. Crude shelters made of tarps and tents and scavenged materials are among the trees, surrounded by bike parts, wet clothes and blankets, tote bins, shopping carts and piles of garbage. The people living here are supposed to clear out next week.
A few campers at the snow dump site on Tuesday said they had no plans for where to go next.
Their encampments and the others being targeted are on properties that the city leases from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, just outside the base’s fence line.
“The terms of the lease are, we keep it free of trash and camps,” said Mike Braniff, head of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.
The department is responsible for cleaning up lots of these unofficial campgrounds. Braniff said every time the city clears campsites, it’s safety-driven. He said the military was patient and understanding — but that changed recently.
“And then we learned about a week ago, 10 days ago, maybe, that people have been coming and going onto the fenced active portion of the military base,” he said on Tuesday. “And they expect us to take action.”
In an email, base spokesperson Erin Eaton did not confirm or deny Braniff’s statements. Eaton said the base and city work together on security issues.
“Maintaining perimeter security is important whether it’s hikers on a trail through training areas or individuals seeking to camp in close proximity to our fence line,” she wrote. “Our installation hosts assets critical to national security, and any trespassing on the base requires immediate response from our security personnel regardless of whether the individual intended to trespass. We are working with the municipality to avoid potential incursions through improved signage and increased patrols by APD.”
Eaton did not address questions about if the issues with campers this year are new, or a recurring issue.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska filed appeals on behalf of 13 campers. Its lawyers already had appeals pending for three people who were camping on city land in Midtown. The city pushed most campers out of that area ahead of a three-day music festival in mid-June, citing public safety concerns about how the campers and concertgoers might interact.
The ACLU thinks both camp clearing actions are illegal, in light of a 2018 federal court ruling that said it is unconstitutional to punish homeless people for camping in public spaces when there isn’t enough shelter.
ACLU spokesperson Meghan Barker said the city is just moving the problem without meaningful solutions.
“They’re just continuing to clear areas and make it even harder for people who don’t have resources,” she said. “We don’t really know where they are expected to go.”
Rob Cupples thinks he does know: the large, city-owned vacant lot along Third Avenue across the street from a block of vacation rental properties he owns. Cupples has been very vocal about recurring vandalism, property damage, safety and quality of life issues he attributes to the encampment.
On Tuesday, he was running an excavator around a small house he’s renovating for his business.
“I’m doing dirt work around the perimeter of my property in preparation for construction of 350 linear feet of fencing,” he said.
On one wall of the house, he scrubbed the wooden siding down to remove a graffiti tag. Several windows are broken – he said someone shot them out recently with a BB gun.
He said the fencing is his top priority right now. He’s bracing for a third wave of people to come to the neighborhood as the city clears the Mountain View camps. The first wave came when the city shut down its winter shelters. The second, when the Midtown site was cleared.
He walks the encampment regularly, handing out trash bags and trying to build some relationships. He said the number of tents and RVs and cars have ballooned. He used to keep a precise count, but it’s too hard to do now. He estimates there are more than 100 tents and 200 people.
Mayor Dave Bronson and his senior staff visited the site on Monday. In a video, he announced a clean up effort.
“We’re here to remove abandoned cars, tires, garbage,” he said. “This simply has to be done. This city is not going to turn out to be Seattle or Portland or San Francisco.”
Bronson’s team intends to increase police patrols and hire a contractor to install a fence around the site.
Cupples cautiously welcomed the mayor’s announcement.
“My fear is that these things that he intends to implement will not be here in time,” he said. “Well, I know they won’t be, they will not be here in time before this third wave hits east Third Avenue.”
Cupples said down the road, he would consider legal action if there’s no improvement.
Jeremy Hsieh covers Anchorage with an emphasis on housing, homelessness, infrastructure and development. Reach him at jhsieh@alaskapublic.org or 907-550-8428. Read more about Jeremy here.
