At a recent Juneau Assembly meeting, Juneau property and business owners testified that interactions with unhoused people camping near the airport have been escalating.
“We get attacked,” said Tiffany Koeneman, an employee at Alaska Glacier Seafoods. She told Assembly members that she and her coworkers were recently threatened by a man with a knife.
“So we had to call JPD,” she said. “We have people out there loading vans, but that’s not the worst of it. I mean, the safety part of it, somebody’s going to get hurt.”
Scott Jenkins owns property near Teal Street Center, which is home to many services for Juneau’s vulnerable communities. He told the Assembly he worries about safety and public health and listed some hazards.
“Blocking the sideways leaving trash everywhere, shooting up drugs outside people’s windows, needles in the ditches and in our vehicles, piles of human crap in and around the creek area on our property,” he said.
He said the encampments have begun to affect the way he views the neighborhood.
“People camping is one thing, but should they be able to claim ground anywhere they wish, as long as it’s not private property?” Jenkins said.
The answer to his question is “not really.” Juneau city policy allows for dispersed camping only on unimproved public land. A 2024 Supreme Court decision gave cities even more latitude to suppress homeless encampments when it said cities may ban people from camping in public places.
Now some Juneau residents are asking that the city crack down on encampments. But city officials say increased policing won’t necessarily help.
Instead, the city has given guidelines to the police for how and when law enforcement should intervene — like after an encampment has caused problems for the surrounding community.
“The police isn’t going to solve homelessness,” said Juneau Police Deputy Chief Krag Campbell. “But if we can help them, you know, do some basic needs that might help out other members in the community.”
Campbell said JPD offers help with disposing of trash at the encampments—but he said it’s hard for police to respond to calls where a resident reports illegal activity at an encampment. Often the only evidence is what that caller said.
“Those are really hard ones to handle as police because by the time you get there, they’re probably still not engaged in that behavior,” he said.
And he said that when people call in, they have to testify and sometimes press charges in order for a case to be prosecuted. He said sometimes, callers don’t want to get involved beyond the initial call.
“They want that person gone,” Campbell said. “They want that person arrested, but they don’t want to be the mechanism to make it happen”
Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said the Supreme Court case means Juneau police can enforce city limitations on camping that have been in CBJ code for years.
“We utilize that carefully, and I would say both compassionately and firmly, when we need to utilize it,” he said.
Barr said JPD generally begins to get involved when an encampment continually creates problems, whether that be trash build up or open drug use. He said the city focuses on individual people or camps that repeatedly impact other people using the area, instead of widespread clearing of encampments.
“The code says what it says,” Barr said. “And at the same time, people have to be somewhere.”
Juneau used to have a city-run campground near downtown that unhoused people could live in in the summer months. Last spring, after considering moving the campground, the city closed it, and instructed people to dispersed camp — to sleep on public land.
Barr said data on the number of unhoused people living in Juneau is very limited, but it shows there are more people living outside now than in the past. And he said that’s true nationwide, as affordable housing becomes more scarce.
“Which is unfortunate,” he said. “And of course, something we don’t control at the local level, but that is a reality that we have to deal with at the local level.”
Kaia Quinto directs the Glory Hall homeless shelter in Juneau. City officials say encampments tend to cluster around the shelter because it offers services and Quinto agrees.
“I think the Glory Hall staff as a whole, you know, we’re feeling very uncomfortable,” she said.
Quinto said just last week, two staff members were assaulted. She said JPD has been stepping in to help police the area around the shelter, and it’s helped her and her staff feel safer. But she said the calls for increased policing of the area don’t really make sense to her.
“JPD is doing all they can, so I think, like, I really don’t know what else they could do,” Quinto said. “It’s very clear to me, at least, that they’re doing everything they can.”
Quinto said some unhoused people using the Glory Hall’s services have told her that they feel like they have nowhere to go. They’ve been asked to move over and over again.
“It’s very obvious that we have more people who are unhoused than we have shelter beds,” she said.
And until that changes, she said she doesn’t know of any realistic solutions to the increased encampments and threats her staff face.
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