Three Anchorage Assembly members are proposing to criminalize camping on public land. Assembly member Keith McCormick is one of the proposal’s sponsors. He said the city’s approach to homelessness isn’t working.
“We have to give the mayor the tools that she needs to address this,” he said. “And I think it's disingenuine that we sit here and say, ‘The mayor is not addressing this enough, the mayor's not doing enough,’ and we don't give her the support that she needs legislatively to put into action real change.”
McCormick’s proposal is one of three versions that the Assembly is expected to consider at its meeting Tuesday night. They come at a time when an increasing number of people are becoming homeless in Anchorage, and on the heels of the city clearing its two largest camps.
Right now, while it’s against city code to camp in public spaces, it’s not a criminal offense. The city uses a process called “abatement" to clear out encampments. That usually takes 10 days. It can result in some people going into shelter or housing, but many move to other public spaces and continue to camp.
McCormick said his proposed ordinance would do away with the abatement system, making it possible for police to clear camps as soon as they start to pop up. Campers not willing to enter shelters or housing could be jailed. He said police would have discretion whether to arrest campers.
Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said the proposal is so broad, it raises lots of questions.
“Does this mean when we're driving to a call for service that's considered a lower priority, that we stop every time we see a camp, and now enforce this while we're in route to another call?” he asked at an Assembly committee meeting last week.
He said the city doesn’t have the resources to fully enforce the proposal as written.
“Not only the police department, but then everything down the line, with prosecutors and courts and jail facilities as well,” he said. “So just from an enforcement standpoint, we have to understand that we're going to be able to enforce this in a much more limited capacity than that is written.”
Assembly Chair Chris Constant called the proposal an unfunded mandate. He said he’s not in favor of criminalizing unauthorized camping. But he said he plans to introduce a substitute version of the proposal at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting. It includes a ballot proposal to increase taxation up to $15 million in order to pay, he said, the “very costly effect” of implementing the original ordinance.
It’s been increasingly common for cities to criminalize urban camping since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people can be banned from sleeping outside even if they have nowhere else to go. And President Donald Trump said earlier this year he wants to work with states to ban urban camping. But at the Assembly committee meeting last week, municipal attorney Eva Gardner said the law at the center of the Supreme Court ruling was more nuanced, using a stepped approach that included fines, banning people from an area and, finally, criminal penalties.
She said the mayor’s office also plans to introduce an alternate version of the proposal at Tuesday’s Assembly that more narrowly criminalizes public camping. In that proposal, it would be a criminal offense to camp within certain distances of “high priority areas,” for instance within 200 feet of trail systems, roads, railroad tracks and 500 feet of schools, daycare centers and playgrounds. It would also be a criminal offense to build structures on public land. All other public camping would continue to be subject to abatement.
The public comment period on the original proposal and Constant’s version is planned for Tuesday’s Assembly meeting. The Assembly will decide when to hear public comment on the mayor’s version once the proposal is introduced.
