In the basement of a red-trimmed house with cedar siding on Telephone Hill, John Ingalls played a carbon fiber bass flute on Tuesday afternoon. He’s rented this space for decades.
For the last 15 or so years, he’s been making flutes on the hill in his well-loved shop. There’s hardly an inch of open space on the tables and walls in there, all filled with tools, varnishes or half-finished flutes.
“It’s amazing the things that have happened in this little shop here — all the things we’ve built,” he said, looking around.
But before next Wednesday, all of it will need to be packed up and taken off the hill. In December, the city plans to demolish the homes in hopes of making way for newer, denser housing. The city does not yet have a developer signed on to the project.
Juneau is facing a housing crisis — there are simply not enough homes to keep up with demand. Alarms of a crisis date back more than a decade. The Telephone Hill redevelopment would add more than 100 new housing units to downtown.
Sitting in his dining room alongside some of his neighbors on Tuesday evening, Ingalls said this isn’t the first time he’s had an eviction scare on the hill.
“When I was younger, I sort of had a plan if I got evicted, that I would build a platform and scaffolding up on the roof, and hang up on the roof with a squirt gun,” he said, laughing.
All the people living on Telephone Hill are renters, and have been since the state took ownership of the neighborhood in the 1980s. It was originally intended to be redeveloped to build a new Capitol complex there. But that didn’t happen.
The state transferred the land to the city two years ago. Last year, the Assembly voted to redevelop the neighborhood.
Joe Karson just turned 80 years old. He rents an apartment on the hill.
“My history on the hill goes back quite a length, but I’ve actually been in this particular unit for 20 years,” he said. “That’s enough to make it a home.”
Karson said he’s been struggling to find new housing since the Oct. 1 eviction notices went out almost four months ago.
He said he’s applied for a spot in senior living facilities, but was told the waitlists are at least a year long. He said he’s looking for other options, but is still holding out hope that the Juneau Assembly will reverse course.
“That’s my home,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. As far as affordable housing goes, to tear it down, it’s totally counterproductive to what they say that they want to do.”
Karson isn’t alone. Other Telephone Hill residents find themselves without a plan.
On Monday, dozens of residents attended the Juneau Assembly meeting to protest the city’s plans to evict residents. The Assembly could have chosen to rescind the eviction notices sent to residents at the meeting, but it did not do that.
Instead, multiple members, like Alicia Hughes-Skandijs, shared why they stood behind their decision.
“I love that neighborhood too, but I truly believe in my heart that to take a property that has a smaller number of houses on it and trade that for more dense housing is a right move for us, for where we are in our housing crisis,” she said.
As far back as 2010, a study by the Juneau Economic Development Council pointed to a lack of housing in town as a barrier for low-income and homeless populations to find and afford apartments.
Juneau’s city attorney, Emily Wright, said the city is prepared to take legal action against residents who do not vacate by the eviction deadline.
“Everybody on the Hill received an eviction notice for October 1,” she said. “If they don’t leave their homes by October 1, the city would initiate a legal action against them, the same as any landlord-tenant situation in Alaska.”
Back on the hill, Ingalls’ partner, Rachel Beck, said she and Ingalls own a home they’ll move into after the eviction notice. But, she said, they’d rather stay. She said Juneau is losing much more than just a couple of old houses — it’s losing history.
“To me, it’s like throwing away your grandmother’s jewels,” she said. “This is a really special place.”
The neighborhood is one of the oldest continuously occupied areas in Juneau. It has a history for Beck — she gave birth to her children there. It has statewide significance, too. Alaska’s first commercial telephone service started out of a house in the neighborhood.
“I think for Juneau, it’s important to have reminders of our past,” she said.
But she fears that once the demolition begins, the memory of the neighborhood will fade, dwindling to just words on a plaque – the only reminder of what once was.