In the spring of 1915, a tent and shanty community grew along the banks of Ship Creek, as workers headed north to work on the Alaska Railroad. The conditions were rough and unsanitary, but the workers were there to be part of something and make a living. There was no safety net for the people who set up the tent city.
In 2025, Anchorage still sees tent communities popping up along roadways, trails, and sometimes on the streets themselves. The difference is that those in the tent communities are drug- and alcohol-addicted mentally ill people who are not looking for work, but looking for a fix.
Between 2020 and 2024, Anchorage appropriated nearly $190 million toward fighting homelessness, with no success. The Assembly is now focused on making Anchorage more affordable, in hopes that the street people will find a place to live.
A gallery of Anchorage’s lost souls who make the streets their home, photographed during the past week:
Photo at top of this page on the left is credited by the US Library of Congress to August Cohn, who worked for the Alaska Engineering Commission in 1915-17 as a civil engineer and surveyor. In the photo gallery directly above, Anchorage in 2025 is littered with addicts and forlorn individuals living on the streets, in greenbelts, and inside abandoned buildings.
Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel, who is the CEO of Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, says homelessness is escalating in Anchorage. That has been clear to the public for some time.
At a Friday news conference, Zaletel called for immediate action, although tens of millions of dollars have gone to her agency, and the problem is getting worse.
“Anchorage is facing an escalating affordable housing emergency, with more than 1,000 households at risk of eviction due to rising rental costs and lack of available affordable housing,” Zaletel said.
But the people who are living on the street are not the ones being impacted by rising rental costs, because they could not pay even a nominal amount of rent, due to their personal problems.
$190 million? how many one-way airline tickets to somewhere warm could that have bought?
Every “solution” has already been tried in Anchorage or elsewhere with a 100% failure rate.
The solution is simple – we had this problem after the Great Depression Google Hoover Towns.
The solution.
Enforce the following laws with ZERO tolerance.
Vagrancy.
Loitering.
Trespassing.
Shoplifting.
Public intoxication.
Public urination and defecation.
Panhandling.
Public drug use.
Public drug dealing.
Littering.
Write them tickets.
Fine them.
If the fines aren’t paid or if the committed crime warrants it – arrest and incarcerate them – ZERO tolerance.
Take the resources that the Anchorage police departments uses to harass and extort legal, law abiding, tax paying citizens commuting in the Glenn Hiway.
Do your damn job you worthless, feckless politicians – for once!
Right on!!
Right on. Quit subsidizing homelessness and we will get less of it.
PUT THEM TO WORK OR SEND THEM OUT SIDE TO OTHER STANKUOUS CITYS.
Prisons don’t pay for themselves. I doubt how “simple” your solution is.
To eat ya had to work. Thats way before welfare and handouts. How we have evolved as a society
The municipality has a section on the website to report bum camps, which they ignore.
The Lyons Park and Hobo Camp in east mountain view is large enough to qualify for a zip code. Now on both side of Mountain View drive within a few hundred yards of JBER and now sporting those really attractive derelict RVs. That place should be declared a toxic waste dump and biohazard.
People were better in the early 1900’s, my grandfather live in the tent Anchorage and worked for the railroad. They didn’t have a corrupt incompetent government throwing money at them. Today the government wants you dependent and needy. Don’t do it, it’s slavery.
And where are the multi-billion $ Alaska native corporations?
Aren’t a disproportionate of these street cretins “their people”?
They want to cry racism and discrimination at every turn but are doing ZERO to help their own people out.
Instead they put in on the backs of hard working, tax paying citizens who job, in reality, it isn’t.
Do you have any other proposed solutions for this problem, or are you just going to b*tch about it and “pray” that it goes away? At least Zalatel is trying, as many do. But almost all fail because the problem is so intractable. Constant negativity and complaining doesn’t do anything to fix it.
My distinct impression is that MRAK readers believe that funds spent on the homeless are wasted. Perhaps things would be worse still without those efforts. What I always hear here on MRAK is “ship them somewhere else” so that they become someone else’s problem.
I know you don’t like to see them. Neither do I. But most likely they are here to stay until some fundamental things change in our society, like reduced drug availability, more mental assistance, adequate wages that don’t force people out of housing, and programs to rehabilitate the afflicted.
Meg Zalatel gets rich while the “homeless” who are really just addicts pile up on our streets. She does nothing because she is not solving the problem as it exists. Has she built a detox center? Has she referred serial offenders for prosecution? Has she demanded that the Native Corporations clean up their various populations? No. She just collects and collects. Giving bums money, shelter, clothing and meals just means they won’t be tempted to ever become productive. Nothing forces these bums out of housing except their own behavior, and paying them to continue that behavior solves nothing.
Put your $$ where your mouth is Whidbey Thedog and take a few of them to live inside your home with you.
And let me say that the problem is NOT, however, impossible to solve. This Dog lived in London for many years, and in all of that time I don’t think I saw more than a handful of homeless people. Yes, they are cared for at public expense and in some cases rehabilitated, but they are not lying about on the streets, camping in tents, or living in trashed motor homes.
You can’t eat your cake and have it, too. Either pay to solve it correctly and humanely, or live with it.
‘Emergency’ warning issued as London homelessness hits new records ‘https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/news-and-press-releases/2024/emergency-warning-issued-london-homelessness-hits-new-records
Just googled “homeless in London”, hit “images”. You are completely full of BS.
London is not what it was when you were there, dog. I do not know when you lived there, but it is a cesspool now. Overrun with vagrants.
.
Here’s a test. When you were living in London, what did the homeless situation look like in any other major city? Unless London was clear of homeless while other cities were overrun, they did NOTHING about it. It was the norm at the time.
If you want less of something tax it, if you want more of something incentivize it.
Solutions have been presented.
Donewithit has the answers. It is exactly what has not been tried, but needs done.
I, too am DONE WITH IT.
Homelessness IS a crime when it looks like this crap.
What crime can you and I commit that we won’t be held liable for by law enforcement?
Yet they are allowing these people to commit crimes in front of everyone and they is ZERO accountability.
Home affordability, to the point of zero coat to the occupant, has very little, if anything, to do with the problems we are seeing.
Think about it Whidbey: the more money directed towards an issue, the more of that issue happens.
Broke is a temporary economic condition. Poverty is a state of mind.
Whidby, in my youth I volunteered in what was then called , ” Street Missions” in Juneau and Santa Cruz. These were typically Coffee Houses that provided Coffee, food and safe comfort for folks living on the street.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that aside from the occasional actual ” down in their luck” types that our patrons had severe mental problems.
Wayne Coogan below has singled out Public Schools as the driver of this phenomenon, others hold to the fact that these people are addicts. Both positions are true, at least in part. Many street folks do self medicate to escape their reality. The abuse of alcohol and drugs is merely a symptom of the problem.
What can be done to help these people?
Firstly these folks need real help not a bandaid which only enables more of the problem like what Meg on the Anchorage
ASSEMBLY provides. Real help is getting these folks off the street and in mental
hospitals.
Aside from the above, I think we as a society need to review why we have so many people in this sad state compared to 40 years ago. Hopefully RFK can help
here. But first lets acknowledge that this issue should not be politically motivated.
So how,about it Democrats, can you help solve this?
Well said!
Get rid of Lafrance. $33.00 Per Hour can go a long way. Maybe for homeless citizens. WIN WIN!
Zaletel is trying what, exactly?
What she, and the assembly and mayor are doing is exactly what has been proven a failure everywhere it has been tried. It does nothing except fatten the pocketbooks of the homeless industrial complex, while the problem of homeless grows.
.
If they were to… Oh… I do not know… maybe ANYTHING other than what has already been proven to fail in every other city that tried it, I might be a bit less critical.
.
And, what, exactly is your solution to the problem? Or are you just here to disparage everyone who disagrees with your view?
Whidbey Dog.
Your hero Zaletel is trying desperately to maintain her position as an effective homeless czar is as incompetent as Kamala Harris was a border czar.
However I will give Meg and her cohorts credit for putting up a good fight to Mayor Bronson’s proposed navigation center located near the hospital area with intent to temporarily shelter the vagrants living in the streets, woods and along the very expensive trail system.
It would have been the best chance to assess the bulk of the offenders and mandate treatment for alcohol and drug abuse causing their mental healthy issues but would consequently put and end to Meg’s lucrative salary as “Homeless Czar” the same way Harris lost her title.
They are violating the laws and restrictions we as taxpaying citizens would be fined and eventually jailed for so therefore mandated treatment would be the most humane way to get them the on a positive path or suffer the consequences of refusal.
Suzanne… careful deary, but there except for the indulgence and planning and ultimately profiting of and by Democommies go I!
Whidbey Thedog-what has not been tried yet is to make a law against ‘homelessness’ which actually is legal speak for CHOOSING to live on the streets with no responsibilities but to drug and commit public lawlessness. No, Zaletel and her other NGO cohorts make big $$ from our municipal tax dollars, federal grants, ‘foundations’, and your pretend tears and emotions. The Anchorage citizenry need to take action with their voices and votes in the upcoming April election.
Let’s discuss the root problem. First, there is no such thing as “affordable housing.” That term is similar to saying affordable king crab. It doesn’t exist. “Affordable housing” is actually very expensive housing paid for by taxpayers.
Secondly, why do people become homeless? Common sense tells us its because they are dysfunctional. They have addictions, hopelessness, inability to hold a job. Why? Look no further than the broken, unionized education bureaucracy. A child gets lost to the academics. He or she falls behind his or her peers. Becomes further disconnected. Finds companionship with similarly disaffected students. Next step, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs. Its a downward spiral that produces an ever-growing crop of dysfunctional, unemployable citizens that cannot compete in the mainstream culture. They end up as hopeless , homeless addicts. Then, we have seen a full-blown industry of so-called mental health professionals evolve to address the problem. However, it only compliments the so-called unionized education industry. Both of these industries are dramatically parasitic failures within our economy.
There is only one solution: the competitive free market. Refer to professors Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. Public education money needs to follow the child in the form of free-market vouchers that give parents the liberty of where and how to educate their children. This must include any private school that meets academic standards–including religious schools. You can identify who the Marxists are by their instinctive resistance to this truthful concept.
That’s two fifths (how ironic) of a billion dollars…down the drain.
Waiting for lefties to take homeless folks into their houses to do something to actually decrease their numbers.
The majority of the “Assembly” will argue that five/fifths of a billion “down the drain” is better than two/fifths.
Waiting for lefties to actually do something as you suggest is like convincing a Dog to quit peeing on fire hydrants….it’s just who they are.
Stop the Drugs Coming In To America
Just Like The CRACK in The 1980’s. Nobody Did Anything
This may have been stated in this thread already but, I’ll add it in anyway. Meg Zaletel’s term ends in April but, not before she’s putting in a plug for “tens of millions of dollars” to address the homeless issue. If nothing else, if funded, she basically guarantees her salary for years to come especially if the left controls the assembly. Recusing herself in past Assembly votes has no effect due to the overwhelming majority of support that she has to do the work for her. It’s Anchorage’s fault for voting this in.
Am I cold-hearted? No. But “loving the homeless to death” has not worked and will not work. Combine that with the COVID (please forgive me for using the filthy acronym) payments and the resulting abuse therein and, you’ve got a recipe for not only the chronically unemployed but those whose willingness to help themselves is stripped away via social entitlements.
Think about this additional factoid: When a camp is abated, who does the clean-up? MOA employees or sub-contractors. In one of Jeff Landfield’s videos, a woman being “abated” at the Cuddy Park location says “You’d better bring in the large tubs/containers.” Really? Entitled much? Well… yes. Out of control campfires? Enter the fire department. Stolen property? Enter APD.
I think we’re all witnessing the trend. This homeless experiment has been tried for years here and even longer in the Lower 48. IMHO, unless and until the unhoused/campers/homeless are made to engage in their own recovery, and unless our willing local government stops assuaging their personal guilt via entitlements, abatements and giving out contracts to Assembly members and former mayors… this will continue.
It’s all been said already, cheaper housing is not the answer; they will choose to spend the money on drugs and alcohol. Stop wasting your tax payer money no solutions that won’t work. Make it against the law to reside in a place that is not yours and arrest them.
Alcoholic 30 years sober
Poor need money, hungry need food, homeless need shelter. Tax billionaires. End the space race among the rich. Tax, not charity. What is missing is truth. No one has a conversation based on facts and evidence. It’s all spin. There is no news, there s infotainment. Start with a look inside yourself not externally toward others
Well, William, you’re indeed looking externally toward others: To tax who you perceive as wealthy in order to fund an already over-funded mess. If you work and/or own a home, feel free to give over and above what you’re personally being taxed or, overpay your property taxes. You also assume and imply that because people in here post facts and frustrations that we don’t tithe to non-profits that help the poor, hungry and homeless.
There is no incentive for Zaletel’s coalition to end homelessness. She would lose her income.
People need to watch the documentary “Seattle is dying” for some answers. They threw billions of dollars into homelessness to no avail. Identify the problem is drugs and alcohol first. At the end of the documentary they show how a city eradicated all these problems, got people off drugs and alcohol, got the training and jobs!
For the People by the assembly…
The pictures are a joke. The vintage pictures show people who work. It states that in several of them. They are not living off the system. How do these people pay for alcohol and drugs. They get money from the native organizations, pfds and social programs. Take that away. Take that $ that goes to Zaletel’s business and build a sanitarium and when they commit a crime, put them in it. Put the drug addicts in jail as well as the alcoholics. Get them off the streets.
Big difference between the sets of pictures.
The 1915 tent cities were not wallowing in garbage, and full of addicts. No, they were not perfectly clean either, but the difference is vast.
There is no reason to care for the homeless when they don’t bother to care for themselves. They can’t even pick up that garbage around them even when there is a dumpster within arms reach.
No more sympathy, it has been tried. Now we just enforce the law and protect the law abiding citizens who work for their place in life. If you wish to engage with them on a personal level, then go right ahead, however those who remain irresponsible for themselves are not to be the responsibility of others to live life for them.
Survival of the fittest. It’s just science. Trust the science.
How much of that 190 million went to the homeless and how much was skimmed off the top by NGOs,like Meg Zaletel? Let’s open her books!!