Tight on staff, funding and shelter beds, Anchorage officials are wrestling with big questions on how the city should handle homeless camps that pose serious public safety problems.
A growing homeless camp fills Fairbanks Street in Midtown Anchorage between a vacant lot and a Home Depot earlier this summer. Neighbors and business owners in the Fairbanks Street area say the city hasn’t done enough to mitigate escalating problems with public health, safety, crime and drug use at the encampment.
Officials have not said exactly when the city will begin abatement, the city’s official term for dismantling and dispersing a homeless encampment.The homeless camp along Fairbanks Street near the Home Depot in Midtown Anchorage, photographed in late June. “We need to focus on housing and services and shelter and making sure people have places to go and ultimately getting to a point where fewer people are camping in the first place,” Scovic said.LaFrance, elected in May, took office on July 1 — just about a week after the Fairbanks Street shooting, in which two menThe encampment runs along the edge of a busy Home Depot off of Tudor Road. It’s also near a small strip mall, numerous other businesses and offices, a liquor store and a hotel.
During abatements in the recent past, the city has offered homeless campers spots in shelters. Right now, that’s largely not possible, especially for encampments where dozens of people are living. “Our abatement policy calls for cross functional collaboration, and as noted in the Transition Report, multiple departments have significant vacancies,” LaFrance said. “We are feeling the impact and working to staff up, and looking to be strategic and responsive with limited resources. Fairbanks Street will be addressed in the near future. Funding is always a constraint, but public safety is the priority.
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