As the saying goes, nothing good happens after midnight. It applies to downtown Anchorage, where the city blocks continue to be congested with sleeping or inebriated people often found right at the doors of businesses.
Visitors venturing downtown at night are likely to encounter this scene all summer, as Mayor Suzanne LaFrance finishes her first year in office. She ran on “competence,” accusing the former mayor of lacking the competence to run the city, after having led the opposition against his plans for a navigation center for those without shelter.
Earlier this month, Must Read Alaska gave readers a tour of some of the elaborate shelters being built in the greenbelts of Anchorage, where the city’s trails are no longer safe for citizens to use. Some of the structures have become multi-story sprawling shantytowns such as you might see in a third-world country. That pictorial tour can be seen here:
Downtown Anchorage is where the vagrants without the ambition to set up shantytowns have made their stand, so to speak. The city workers are found most mornings hosing off the sidewalks in front of buildings such as City Hall and the Alaska Performing Arts Center, where human excrement is evident, sometimes smeared across buildings.
Here’s a gallery of what we found late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning in downtown Anchorage:
Mayor LaFrance has not been engaged in solving the downtown vagrancy problem, but she has been busy.
Last week, LaFrance announced the winners of her city snowplow naming competition. The winning names of the snowplows are: The Berminator, Taylor Drift, Blizzard Wizard, Luke Sidewalker, and Bladey Gaga.
“Now – just in time for the plow equipment’s spring hibernation – the ‘win’-ters have been selected and names have been assigned,” her press team merrily wrote on her behalf. “For the Municipality’s graders, Berminator froze out the competition, coming in first place. Bladey Gaga clinched second, and The Big Leplowski and Plowasaurus Rex tied for third. Other winning names for graders include Ctrl Salt Delete, Darth Grader, Knik of Time, Plowabunga, Betty White-Out, Blizzard Buster, Austin Plowers and Arctic Blade.Â
“Taylor Drift was the top name for the city’s sidewalk clearers. Blizzard Wizard and Luke Sidewalker tied for second place, while Flurrious George and Sweeping Beauty came in third. Other winning names include Clearopathra, Pathfinder, Drift Destroyer, Drift Lifter, Edgar Allan Snow, Nunhdecheni (“One that eats snow”) and Snow Big Deal.”
In March, the mayor announced $5 million in federal funds that would be distributed directly to people in the form of housing assistance grants, and in April, she announced that she will create 10,000 more homes in Anchorage in 10 years.
