For a while, the little trapezoid of green space was home to 10 people.
Cars whizzed by the island of trees as Anchorage Police Sgt. Kenneth Anglin walked through, pointing out the things people had left behind.
“Needles on the ground, just wood everywhere, couches in random spots and then large piles of garbage,” he said.
The number of people experiencing homelessness in Anchorage has gone up in recent years. It’s common to see tents and makeshift shelters along the city’s trails and parks — especially in the summer — and part of Anglin’s job is to clear out the camps. That’s what he was doing last week on the corner of Lois Drive and Benson Boulevard.
It’s called an “abatement” — moving people out of the places they’ve been camping for weeks, months, sometimes years. The city has been doing it for a long time, under many different administrations. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance said it’s an important part of her homeless strategy.
“It's just not fair for those public spaces to be used indefinitely in a way that prevents other people from enjoying them,” she said. “Everyone needs to be safe in our public spaces and have access to our parks and our trails.”
LaFrance said the homeless camps are a public safety concern, since crime tends to increase wherever they pop up. She said they’re unsafe for the people living in the camps as well, but she acknowledged that abatement won’t solve homelessness.
“It's true that we often do see when we abate here, people move a few blocks away,” she said. “And we still have to keep abating.”
She said it’s part of a multi-pronged approach toward homelessness that also includes building housing, crisis care and increasing shelters. Her administration has abated 24 encampments since she took office last year.
It’s hard to compare the LaFrance numbers to those of past administrations because LaFrance has fewer legal constraints. Abatement under prior administrations was complicated by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that it was cruel and unusual to abate homeless camps if the people being moved had nowhere else to go. Then last year, just as LaFrance took office, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the lower court’s decision.
“The LaFrance administration came in, it was right on the tail end of that legal case being settled, which allowed us to move forward with abatement,” said Farina Brown, LaFrance’s special assistant on homelessness and health.
So how does abatement work? Well first, the city keeps track of all the camps around Anchorage. Citizens can also report new camps. And they do, with nearly 3,000 reports so far this year.
The city can only abate one camp at a time, since there’s only one clean-up team at the moment. Since there are more camps than they can get to, the administration has to prioritize. Brown said a lot of factors go into those decisions. For example, if an encampment is in the city's green belt spaces or trail systems, it’s a higher priority, but a lot of camps meet that criteria.
“Someone will call me and say, ‘You didn't abate the camp near my house and I am on the trail system, and that is protected land use,’” she said. “You're absolutely right, but the camp that we did abate is also on the trail system.”
She said she understands why people want camps near them to be prioritized, but with nearly 500 trails and parks in the city, it’s not that simple. There are lots of other considerations. Camps near schools, playgrounds, recreation centers and daycares are also prioritized. And Brown said one of the reasons the administration prioritized Lois and Benson was that people were nearly getting hit going to and from the camp, since it sat between two major roadways.
It can also take awhile to get all the pieces in place for an abatement to happen, Brown said. Lois and Benson was in the works for a couple months because the camp was on state land. Brown said the mayor’s office had to work with the state to get permission to clear out the camp.
Once an abatement is scheduled, the Anchorage Police Department’s Community Action Policing team, which includes Sgt. Anglin, puts signs up in the area. The signs let campers know how long they have to leave, usually 10 days. Outreach groups also go in, trying to get people matched up with services like housing and rehab. While shelters are generally full, Brown said there’s a lot of coordination ahead of an abatement to make sure that there are a few beds available for anyone who might want one. But she said people do often just end up camping in a different part of the city.
“I would love to say that abatement is just going to move everyone that we have a touch point with into shelter or housing. It does not,” she said.
At Lois and Benson, the Healthy Spaces team was picking up trash last week — a damp hoodie, a shower caddie, a single sneaker.
They’re part of the Anchorage Parks and Recreation Department, dedicated to cleaning up homeless encampments after the Community Action Policing team has cleared the people out.
There’s a lot of stuff. Brown said that’s typical since there’s only so much a person can carry.
“What most people will take are their tents, their warm, dry clothing, essential items like that,” she said. “But otherwise, an encampment often has things that people pick up and drag in to make the encampment feel comfortable for them.”
So far this year, the Healthy Spaces team has cleared out nearly 400 tons of trash over the course of more than 10,000 hours of cleaning.
Sometimes bigger camps can take more than two weeks to clean up, but Brown said the one at Lois and Benson will only take a couple days. That means the Healthy Spaces team will be moving on to another camp, and so will Anglin. It’s a responsibility that brings up mixed feelings.
“You're glad that some of the citizens around the area don't have to see this or deal with it, because some theft and crimes occur in the area,” he said. “The not so happy part of it, of removing people from their homes and the things they know.”
The LaFrance administration said it’s working to hire a second Healthy Spaces team this summer so it can increase the amount of camps it can clear.
