After Democrats blocked former Mayor Dave Bronson’s solution to the homeless and vagrant problem in Anchorage, voters elected a new mayor — Suzanne LaFrance, who had been on the Assembly during the time when Mayor Bronson was attempting to develop a navigation center to get services to the inebriates, drug addicts, and down-and-outers.
With the navigation center blocked by the Assembly, Bronson opened up Centennial Campground for a summer camping area for the growing population of outdoor-living enthusiasts.
Today, as part of our series on Mayor LaFrance’s management of the decline of Anchorage, we take you through the Chester Creek trail and watershed, and the Benson and New Seward Highway rights of way, where vagrant encampments have fouled the land, burning it and moving on to the next unburned area, defecating in the watershed, and leaving litter everywhere in their wake. It’s another of many lawless areas of Anchorage, where criminals have staked their territory and where law enforcement is never seen.
Mayor LaFrance says she plans to spend millions on a pilot project that will set up tiny homes for a couple of dozen people this winter. But in the meantime, the pillaging and fouling of Anchorage goes on.
According to the local media that has written about the tiny home pilot project, the mayor’s special assistant Thea Agnew Bemben said: “This could be unrealistic. But we’re just gonna give it a whirl.”
LaFrance was one of the leaders of the opposition to Mayor Bronson’s navigation center, which was to be located in the area of Elmore Road and Tudor Road, where now the 24 100-foot cabins with no running water are planned.
Click on the links below these photos for previous coverage of the vagrant crisis in LaFrance’s Anchorage.
