The Anchorage Assembly will hear from the public on Tuesday evening about the Assembly’s plan to establish formalized, or “allowed,” homeless encampments in the city.
The plan is modeled after similar ordinances in Denver, San Diego, and Santa Cruz, where tent encampments are established, covered by insurance, and maintained by paid staff. It’s part of a number of solutions to deal with a section of society that has fallen and can’t seem to get up. Other solutions include the purchase of “Pallet homes,” which are tiny structured shelters that provide more comfort than tents.
Currently, random and sometimes sprawling homeless camps have spread throughout Anchorage, causing concern to taxpayers about the filthy and dangerous state of greenbelts and trails, many of which have been overtaken by outlaws, addicts, and vagrants.
As more unemployed people move from rural Alaska to Anchorage, they’re met with a spectrum of services that enable them to live on the margins of society, forming their own networks of people who are satisfied with just the basics in order to pursue a life of recreational drugs, alcohol, crime, and a form of freedom from responsibility.
Sponsored by Assemblymen George Martinez, Zac Johnson, and Kevin Cross, the ordinance amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.125, Title 21 and Title 23 would define and establish sanctioned camps in the Municipality of Anchorage. There would be permits granted to campsite operators, who would be able to provide ancillary buildings for sanitation and emergency shelter. The entire program would be outside the authority of the Planning and Zoning Commission.
Pictured above, a sanctioned camp in Denver, Colo. is one of the examples of what a similar one in Anchorage might look like, according to the makers of the ordinance.
Currently, Anchorage Municipal Code subsection 25.70.040A.1. prohibits camping on municipal land, and section 8.45.010 prohibits trespass on both public and private land. However, this is widely disregarded by the homeless encampments that have spread across sections of the city, and it has not been enforced.
One version of the amended code can be read at this link.
A second version of the amended code would create more limits, so that rather than encouraging numerous sanctioned camps to spring up all over the city, there would be one camp on municipal property as a pilot program. That substitute version of the proposed ordinance can be read at this link.
The public hearing on this item may come toward the end of the meeting, which starts at 5 pm on the ground floor of the Loussac Library, which is at the corner of Denali St. and 36th Ave. The entire agenda packet can be viewed at this link.
