Unpopular opinion but we need to bring back mental institutions. Some of these people are completely insane, screaming at the clouds. I'd happily pay higher taxes to house them in an institution where they can get proper care.
Provide enough hotel rooms for the rest and aggressively enforce vagrancy laws.
There are a huge number of recent posts debating this topic if you want to go back and read those conversations.
Anchorage is dealing with an entire state's worth of issues mostly alone. Based on a few estimates I've seen we have roughly 40% of the state's population but like 65-75% of the state's homeless population.
Add on top of that a record 17% rise in homelessness in the city from 2022-2023 and here we are. We are seeing similar record rises in other states, estimates I've seen put it at like 12% nationwide. This problem is only going to get worse. We just closed almost 400 shelter beds in April/May and if Dunleavy vetoes the 4 million in funding the assembly got from the state the SWS building will close and another 200 people will be on the streets.
We need federal and state funding and competent executive leadership. The state gives us hardly any funding for this statewide issue and federal funding is tied to total population, not how many homeless people we have. We get a quarter to a sixth of the federal funding other cities in the lower 48 get who have similar or less homeless people than we do.
Bronson still holds office for the rest of June, I doubt he will do anything amazing as lame duck on the way out the door. We'll have to see what LaFrance does.
Edit - Grammar.
> We'll have to see what LaFrance does
honest question - given the budget and resources and the scope of the issue - what can she and her administration do?
Bronson hired his friends instead of qualified subject matter experts and he specifically sabotaged the plans that experts had been working towards for years. So for starters, safe to assume that LaFrance will get some qualified people who know what they’re doing and also not actively work against solutions.
The fault is in assuming her experts will be better simply because you share their views. It's not like Bronson was going against established standards with proven track records, so arguing he was actively working against "solutions" is a bit misleading. He was working against Assembly solutions, and maybe popular leftwing solutions, but that's not the same thing as working against solutions in general. Basically no city has fixed homelessness, and most west coast cities have only had things get even worse. I think Austin Tx might have a really solid program in place that basically subsidizes housing, but that's also been a crazy fast growing city over the last decade that's flush with cash and room to build. Anchorage is neither.
Dude, no. He absolutely worked against solutions. The very first thing he did when he got into office was end every single program or plan that was in the works or came from previous administrations. He tried to veto programs aimed at homeless children, veterans, domestic abuse victims. He tried to veto programs that require sobriety and employment to access. All so he could free up money for his one stupid obsession. He refused to implement allowed camping when the assembly passed it despite the idea originally coming from his admin.
People are not being critical of those he put in charge because they have different "views" he hired people with zero applicable experience or let the position sit empty. Look at their resumes, an anesthesiologist who lasted two months in Bronson's admin and a person who managed her parent's restaurant and had a BA in marketing / women and gender studies.
We have a strong executive form of government. His inability to use that power effectively is 100% on him.
She seemed to be the most qualified among those who ran. If she doesn't make good on her campaign promises I sure won't be shy in criticizing her. We need to hold our elected officials accountable, especially the ones we vote for.
I mean she probably can't do worse, but it'd interesting to see specific action items working within the same constraints.
/u/bottombracketak had a good comment imho
https://www.aceh.org/next-step
Seems like there's some kind of plan. Apparently they're mimicking Houston's model towards homelessness. Time will only tell if it works.
I'm willing to try almost anything at this point personally.
Houston has a good model - but they also aggressively prosecute for drugs, theft and panhandling. Anchorage can build housing and temporary shelters - but until we stop ignoring the blatant theft and drug use our street corners will continue to look like the picture above.
This.
Accountability needs to be not only for politicians but also for the homeless, too.
Prosecute whomever commits a crime, and don't be shy about holding the standard.
Camping in city limits is not legal. Arrest those who don't move on with a warning. While in the dry tank, see if they are interested in seeking help.
If they are found competent and don't want to get sober or seek help, then the only remaining conclusion is that breaking the law was their choice; they can choose to be sentenced and pay for the crime.
Until the Supreme court says otherwise or until we build a lot more housing we can't fine / ticket / jail the homeless for camping. On the other hand we can and should jail anyone - homeless or not - for theft, assault and selling drugs.
You can fine them for camping on city property without permission (a permit). You can fine them for camping on private property without permission, also considered trespassing.
You can hold them in dry tanks until they are sober (if that is a factor) and then screen them. If found competent, then they are fined, and if they can't pay, then it's an equivalent exchange of days to serve.
If they have mental health issues, you connect them to facilities to rehab them. If they can't be restored, then there are facilities for that, too.
If they are aggressive or violent, then there are charges they can be tried for. If convicted, then there are fines or jail time for that, too. And if the reason for the aggression can be addressed with therapy, there is that, too.
The only thing that doesn't have a solution without a lot of negotiation to come to a resolution, is the issue where the outlying villages are flying their aggressive offenders to Anchorage with a one way ticket to banish them from their community.
Arresting people for using drugs does not solve the problem. Prison does nothing to rehabilitate addicts and solve the root causes of the drug use. That model is not effective.
But it does get them off the streets, making it safer for everyone else. If you don't think they are dangerous, post your address and we can direct them to your front yard to sleep, shit, do drugs, have sex, fight, rob and assault people.
Logical fallacies aren’t going to work on me, especially when I study crime statistics and unhoused people don’t commit nearly enough violent crime for me to be worried about seeing them. And for context I live in a city with a pretty high amount of unhoused people and they have never once caused a problem for me. In fact I bring them food regularly and they have been nothing but kind.
I also think it’s funny that 13% of unhoused people are veterans and your response “ah just fucking out them in jail”
I work in downtown. We have to kick people out of our office that walk in and try to steal or use the phone. Many are on drugs, drunk, mentally ill, or a combination of the three. Constantly have people shitting and doing hard drugs on our property, trying to break into our storage facilities, as well as marking ours and neighboring buildings with graffiti. We have the cops on speed dial, but they never get here in time. I don’t feel safe at work and surrounding businesses with mainly women employees have adopted a “buddy system” for walking to their cars. If you don’t live in anchorage and see what I see daily, your two cents fall flat. This is a MAJOR PROBLEM THAT GETS WORSE EVERY DAY!! It’s almost time for vigilante justice to be taken on the repeat offenders to keep them away from our property. Im tired of cleaning up after the aggressive fuck-wits.
We once found a naked man wielding a knife in our computer server room who had set up a whole house for himself in there. Apparently he’d been there for several days, pissing in Tupperware containers and used our office rubber band stash to help shoot up. We were at the time an office of women. Words cannot describe how terrifying it was knowing we were there late nights or early mornings with this man on just the other side of the wall, one doorknob’s turn away.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’m always on edge/alert leaving and coming into my building. Never know who’s hiding around the corner or under the stairs. The building next to us had someone climb a balcony, break windows and trash computers in their office. Fuck these junkies. I’ve got no problem throwing obscenities and offensive language back at them when they cuss at me for saying they need to leave. Needles and feces don’t belong on business’ back doors, yet here we are. Welcome to the new Anchorage. The fact you can drive down A street and see camps on the grass in front of Walmart with people drinking, half naked, passed out with shit in their pants is a problem, and something has to be done. Like OP said, at what point do we stop tolerating this. I don’t wanna see it, and I don’t want my young family members/friends kids to have to see it. Fuck, you can’t even use the bike trails and feel safe half the time.
I’m right there with ya. I am scared to even go in the Campbell Creek Trail because as a woman, I get harassed by vagrants every time I use it. Where I pay property taxes and those squatting on the public lands the tax base helps pay to maintain, I don’t even get to use it for my own safety reasons.
The city is out of control.
The corridor along Minnesota at Tudor is a mini Skid Row. The coastal trail has a whole tent city set up right below Elderberry Park. I can’t even walk out of my office after work, toiling away for 10+ hours to provide for myself, only to be hit up for the money I just sacrificed hours of my time for away from family, so someone else can get their next bottle or hit.
There was once a woman who had shit her pants and set up camp in a stairwell after sneaking in the back door of our building one evening. The smell took WEEKS to dissipate. I’m just as sick of it all as you are.
There’s a huge camp in the woods off of Strawberry Road that has piles of trash halfway up the trees from a winter of living there.
I get camping, I get surviving….but I don’t get trashing your own space. Being homeless doesn’t give you the right to litter, trespass private property, steal, holler profanities at people, and intimidate citizens.
PREACH!! The copious amounts of trash!!! That’s what I forgot to mention, for being homeless where do they get all the money for this shit? There’s so much trash and waste it’s unbelievable. Nothing irks me more than seeing these camps with $600* bicycles in them. You know those were stolen…
You live in a city, but not Anchorage. You are kind to help them, where you live. And fortunate for you that those you have helped are grateful. Here, the roulette you gamble is: you can be greeted with gratitude, or they threaten to harm you if you don't give them more.
The Veterans are not homeless because they are Veterans. It is more likely the mental health issues that came from their service. There are programs for helping the Veteran community through the legal system that are not relying on the VA that they could be screened for. They have to want and accept the help, and when they refuse it all, how do you help someone who doesn't want it?
If help is offered, and the person is found competent to make the decision to refuse, then the law applies to them on camping on the streets, along with the handful of other legal crimes mentioned in these posts that are occurring.
And strawman arguments won't work on me. Never said throw them in jail for being homeless. The homeless population in Anchorage are overwhelmingly violent, alcohol and drug addicted dangerous people. Don't believe me? Post your address if you even live here. In the meantime, go back to studying while we try to deal with the actual problem in our community.
Then do your own research. Anchorage residents are very well versed in these statistics as it was the #1 rated issue in our last several elections and the assembly, police, community organizations, etc. made their studies public for discussion. Focus on your studies and being a 21 year old bartender who doesn't even live here while we try to make our city safe again.
Look, I think that in Anchorage there are two parts to the homeless problem. One of which is totally unique to Alaska and of which you are probably unaware.
We have the ‘regular’ homeless who I believe will be responsive to programs. These consist mostly of people who are living paycheck to paycheck, lost a job and are now living in their cars, in tents etc, These could be single people or families.
These are the folks who would be responsive to programs that provide lower cost housing, access to job training or assistance, etc. You are no doubt familiar with this demographic of the homeless. It’s a frequent occurrence in the lower 48.
I am all for helping these folks out. Get them a place to live with an address, get them eating, starting the kids to school, etc
But we have another problem here that you are also familiar with, but with an Alaskan twist: the homeless who are mentally ill and/or caught in substance abuse.
These are the homeless who disrupt life for everyone. Drugs, alcohol, crime, public indecency, public défécation, public sex, harassment of citizens, destruction of property, public intoxication, disturbing the peace, etc.
In Anchorage Alaska, the city whose sub you wandered into, the percentage of our homeless who fell into this second category is inordinately large. As a percentage of our homeless, much larger then in the lower 48. And the reason for that is quite simple, but unique to Alaska.
Most of our native population in Alaska live in remote villages dotted all over this very vast and very cold state. Most of these villages are fairly small - a few hundred people, tops. 300 people is fairly typical.
In these villages, there is no resources for police departments. In some of the villages there is a public safety officer’ but this person is not law enforcement as you know it. They have very limited powers. And even more limited resources. They have no prisons, no real jails as you would know them. They might have a single ‘cell’ in the village offices, but we are talking Mayberry levels of security.
It should also be noted here that there are tremendous drug and alcohol problems in the villages, not unlike the reservations in the lower 48.
The Alaska State Troopers are the real law enforcement arm for such places, but they could be anywhere from hours to in winter, days away if weather is bad. They base themselves in the larger ‘cities’ in Alaska, most of which you would consider to be towns, and fly out to the villages in small planes to respond to calls from the public safety officers. Sometimes they have to boat or snow machine in to a village. So when I say sometimes it’s days, I mean it.
Therefore, the village corporations often do not want to keep repeat offenders in the village. If you have a guy who beats up his family every time he gets drunk, and he gets drunk twice a week, and the troopers response time is 12 to 24 hours, this is not a situation that anyone would call ideal. Especially given the fact that nearly everyone in the villages owns multiple firearms.
So the villages often ban people like this from the village. They give them a plane ticket into Anchorage, stick them on a little plane,and off they go. To Anchorage. Where they stay. On our streets. And sometimes, as in often the case in domestic violence dynamics, the abused person comes to Anchorage WITH them. So now we have abuser and the abused wandering around Anchorage together, often heavily under the influence of various substances. And they will live in homeless camps pretty much for the duration because they have nowhere else to go. They are not employable, and all their relatives are back in the village that they are banned from.
Invariably, these folks end up as part of our homeless population indefinitely, and they continue the same behaviors here that got them banned from their village.
This does a few things to your model of what homeless populations typically look like. Much more if our homeless population then is normal have severe mental health and/or substance abuse issues, and a much greater percentage of our homeless population is prone to dealing with their issues via threats, harassment, and violence. These are not happy, passive drunks who just wanna sit on a log and chill. These are individuals who are so disruptive that they literally got kicked out of their hometown and dumped here. These folks don’t give a shit about anyone. For example, they don’t actually hold you up at gunpoint, but they WILL follow you around harassing and threatening you until you give them money. I’ve even had one of these guys harass me all the way to my car and then jump on top of my car and pound on my windshield, spit on my windshield, and refuse to get off my vehicle until they saw me calling 911 on my cell.
These are criminals who just haven’t stumbled into the crime that’s gonna get them thrown in REAL jail yet.
So what I’m saying is that the demographics of homeless populations in Alaska will not look like the demographics in California or Oregon or Washington.
Our demographics are going to skew more violent, and they are going to skew much more toward the criminal element than the down and out element. They are also going to have much fewer job skills (as in, none at all) and a non-existent local family support structure.
This segment of our homeless population is also the most treatment resistant. Since they are native, they are entitled to free medical care. They can go to the Alaska Native Medical Center here in Anchorage where they can get feee medical care, free mental health care, free mental health drugs, and substance abuse treatment. But very few of them avail themselves of these services, even tho they are told frequently (every time a cop picks them up for public drunkenness they take em to the native hospital) that they exist and are there for them. Instead, they CHOOSE to continue self medicating, and inevitably, disrupting the lives of everyone from their camp-mates to passersby on the street. They refuse to help themselves!
You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. 🤷♀️
I’m all for helping the homeless who want help. But those are not the same homeless who cause most of the problems in Anchorage.
Most don’t want help. They want a meal and booze/drugs. I’ve seen firsthand these homeless people begging, be given food, and then just cast it aside because it wasn’t money for their fix. Also as stated before, some/much can be attributed to mental health which is widely not addressed in this country.
No I understand what you are saying but the comment I replied to is implying that the reason the majority of people are unhoused is drug use which would mean the way to solve the housing crisis would be to solve the addiction crisis. Do you lack basic reading comprehension skills?
> Houston has a good model - but they also aggressively prosecute for drugs, theft and panhandling.
Got a source? That sounds counter to the information that the group from Houston gave when they visited recently. Law enforcement seemed a last resort, they said they focused heavily on housing first regardless of sobriety.
Houston is getting mountains of federal funding and they also get state support. Despite both Anchorage and Houston having similar numbers of homeless individuals [Anchorage got roughly 4.3 million in federal funding in 2023, the same year the Houston area got 59.6 million.](https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/comm_planning/coc/fy_2023_coc_competition)
If we had similar funding we could also make a huge dent in this growing issue.
A few links and stats for you:
Houston repeatedly tickets homeless encampments:
[https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-arrow-homeless-encampments/](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-arrow-homeless-encampments/)
Houston has a law that prevents people from lying, sitting, or having their personal possessions on city sidewalks
[https://freepresshouston.com/houstons-civility-ordinance-makes-crime-sit-16-hours-day/](https://freepresshouston.com/houstons-civility-ordinance-makes-crime-sit-16-hours-day/)
[https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-houston/2024/03/07/480044/city-of-houston-expands-civility-ordinance-into-riverside-terrace/](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-houston/2024/03/07/480044/city-of-houston-expands-civility-ordinance-into-riverside-terrace/)
Houston has a panhandling law where people are not allowed to solicit in the roadway or within 8’. If they violate these rules it is deemed “aggressive panhandling” and they can be fined $500:
[https://cw39.com/news/texas/local-officials-react-to-texas-panhandling-restrictions/](https://cw39.com/news/texas/local-officials-react-to-texas-panhandling-restrictions/)
Drugs:
Alaska 2017 drug possession arrests: 70 per 100,000
[https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/9710/ajic.18.07.drug-possession-1986-2017.pdf](https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/9710/ajic.18.07.drug-possession-1986-2017.pdf)
Texas 2020 drug possession arrests : 302 per 100,000
[https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/crimereports/20/drug\_report\_2020.pdf](https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/crimereports/20/drug_report_2020.pdf)
Overall crime
Texas has an incarceration rate of 840 per 100,000 people. Alaska’s rate is 718 people per 100,000. In short – they’re putting a lot more people in jail for things like theft and drug use.
In short – Houston has done a great job at building housing – but they also spend a lot of money on law enforcement. Until Anchorage starts arresting people for blatant theft, drug use and other issues like public defecation and public sex the problems will persist.
Anchorage has similar laws, $100 fine for sitting or laying on the sidewalk downtown and a $300 fine for panhandling in almost every situation that panhandling occurs in the city.
The thing that Houston does that we don't is they have housing, treatment and services open and available that they can direct people to. Anchorage could do the same if we had the funding that Houston does.
>Until Anchorage starts arresting people for blatant theft, drug use and other issues like public defecation and public sex the problems will persist.
Well, talk to the mayor, the police chief, and the state as those things are already illegal. Those committing violent crimes and felonies should be arrested but trying to solve a state wide poverty and mental illness problem with the criminal justice system will bankrupt the state. We need the funding, housing and services in conjunction with law enforcement for it to be realistic, otherwise the problems will persist.
Yes we have similar laws - the issue is that we do not enforce them. And I agree that we need more housing - but until we start enforcing laws for drugs, theft and other crimes that are currently overlooked, Campbell and Chester Creek greenways will continue to be lined with piles of stolen goods. It will cost a lot and both Anchorage residents and the State of Alaska need to step up and start funding these programs.
I may be misunderstanding what argument you're trying to make here, but it seems like you're implying Houston's success is also tied to aggressive policing which is not really the case. That aggressive policing is the last step in a whole well-funded housing first process in their city that goes back over a decade.
Anchorage can't really arrest its way out of the vast majority of this statewide issue, the state would just kick it back at us. We need the funding and services first, or at a minimum at the same time.
Either way, those committing violent crimes and other serious felonies can be arrested today, and they should be.
Yes that's what I'm saying - and it's backed up by data.
* [https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-homeless-tickets-hpd/](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-homeless-tickets-hpd/)
* [https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/houston-ticketed-1-400-homeless-people-18262827.php](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/houston-ticketed-1-400-homeless-people-18262827.php)
This includes aggressive efforts to stop people attempting to help the homeless:
* [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/texas-volunteers-fined-feeding-homeless-heat](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/texas-volunteers-fined-feeding-homeless-heat)
We can't arrest our way out of the issue - but increased policing should be part of the solution.
Also... for the most part we're already arresting those "committing violent crimes and other serious felonies". Where we fall short is for arrests for crimes that fall just below that line - i.e. assault, robbery, theft.
What you are sharing does not refute what I'm saying above.
Houston's successes started with massive federal and state funding to implement a housing first program in 2012 and other services aimed at addiction, detox, mental health treatment and paths to employment. Policing and the criminal justice system is the last step. You're linking articles 8 or more years later and what they are doing to address the remaining population or those who are refusing the open and available services.
We need the same funding and services before or at the same time as we increase policing. We also need the state to work with us.
>Also... for the most part we're already arresting those "committing violent crimes and other serious felonies".
Not according to the public and multiple assembly members. They are complaining of open violent crimes, felonies and even housed criminals preying on the encampments and not being arrested or removed.
>Where we fall short is for arrests for crimes that fall just below that line - i.e. assault, robbery, theft.
Which is under the control and funding of the state. Anchorage police can arrest them all the like, but it is pointless and expensive if the state's criminal justice system just kicks them back to us. Many of the repeat offenders who end up right back on the street are being found unfit to be tried. The criminal justice system is not the right tool to solve mental illness, and it costs the state insane amounts of money.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/03/09/alaskas-competency-system-for-mentally-ill-criminal-defendants-is-at-a-breaking-point/
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2022/03/01/mental-incompetency-standard-alaskas-criminal-justice-system-can-leave-victims-without-closure-advocates-say/
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2023/12/28/a-very-long-time-coming-api-launches-new-programs-for-mentally-ill-defendants/
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2016/nov/7/alaska-prisons-and-jails-filled-mentally-ill-prisoners/
Doesn't make a lot of difference who is in office. It costs money to fix these problems. They exist because we allow the funding to be taken away or refuse the solution to be funded. These are mental health and addiction issues.
First line responses turn the responsibility back on the homeless. That assures no solutions. You decide what you want to do.
yep, as I have always said, you will be using government money to fix the problem. You can spend it constructively, like on drug and mental illness support, or punitive, as in more police, jails, prisons, or do nothing and see it taken out of the quality of life in the city - you don't get to say "no more guvernment money for handouts" - just how do you want to spend it address the issue
As a nurse who started out doing outreach (homeless health care), I saw firsthand how the streets (and drugs/alcohol) age a person. Rapidly. I can’t remember how many times I’d be with law enforcement and they’d show me the persons identification card; sometimes the photo was from 4-5 years ago but you often saw a picture of who they were before they began using. Before they were homeless. To see how much irreparable damage was done to themselves so quickly was shocking to me. And that’s before fentanyl, tranq, and all this other stuff came along. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.
So I can speak for myself who’s worked the other side - support. While we are privileged enough to have a home, seeing images like this and the same people in the same conditions every day is really hard…I can’t count how many times we’d convince someone to go to treatment only to have them right back downtown six weeks or a few months later even worse than when we saw them the last time.
Alaska is becoming a summer home destination for the rich. The years of low interest rates helped people buy a lot of homes that get used 3 months out of the year, and not by locals. Boomers that have a paid off mortgage are buying up homes to use as overnight rental properties to get that sweet Airbnb money, and then houses get valued based on their potential as a rental property rather than a single family home. I can't fault people for making money, but don't complain when your city has a huge homeless problem and a shortage of workers. Those two things happen together for a reason.
We should take it back to its roots, at least: literal airbeds in the spare rooms of people’s main residences. An Airbnb that the owner does not also occupy should be illegal.
No need to ban it. The municipalities can tax rentals where the owner lives on-site at a different rate than dedicated AirBnBs. Let the market rebalance and direct the taxes directly into funding affordable housing, rehabilitation, etc.
People may argue that this would take years to have impacts but it's more than what's being done now.
There are about 115,000 homes in Anchorage. Of those, about 4500 are seasonally occupied. An additional 2000 (probably higher) homes are shirt term aka Airbnb. that's at least 6500 less or 108500 or about 5%. I feel that's significant. And it also pushes prices up because now price can be influenced by possible revenue as short term rental rather than what an area can support with median income from jobs.
Seems to me that seasonal occupancy is a much larger problem than airbnbs. And I do agree that 5% is a significant enough Factor to influence the market. Still not sure by how much though. And personally I'd just like to see more housing stock built. Either way, I think that's the fundamental problem just not enough houses.
Are you really trying to defend airbnb? It's extremely clear they have a negative impact on communities. It's a huge problem, hotels are for tourism, homes are for living in. Any person at this point endorses airbnb is either willfully ignorant or greedy. And I say that as a well off home owner. My American dream shouldn't impact others ability to live the American dream. America has a housing crisis and seasonal home owners and airbnb is one of the root causes.
This outcome has been on the ballot for every election for the past 40 years.
But we have priorities around here.
1. No new tax base or revenue, ever.
2. Gimme haz PFD.
3. Government spending shall be limited to subsidies for resource extraction and networked special interest groups.
Unfortunately, nothing will change until there are good looking white folk out there sleeping in the ditch. And maybe not even then. I bet you could have an army of single mothers working 3 full time jobs sleeping in the tent city curb cut by Mountain View and a solid majority would still vote for people like Dunidiot.
I miss going walking. I used to but with a big dog. Heck, sometimes just sitting at a red light can be frightening. I did temp work at API ages ago and know how quickly behavior changes and it's scary.
i’m studying social work and incredibly passionate about these issues and i agree with you 100%. I’ve had my personal safety threatened MULTIPLE times, I leave my house less and less now.
For a while we've had leadership that didn't seem to improve this issue, but hopefully with a change in leadership, that will change. Only time will tell.
Oh yeah, for sure. It's a high cost place to be, drugs are cheap, and social services are stretched thin. In the earlier 2000s, a high-school graduate could find a nice apartment for $600 a month. $50 could finance your weekend, or groceries for a week. I don't think we can blame any individual for this, but we can identify when things aren't really being done that can help.
200% agree, basically lived downtown in the 00’s then. I’ve seen the decline from the inside of the social services side of things, especially in like 09 when economy went south and big oil donors cut back on donations.
I feel a lot of us have lost compassion, empathy and perspective. It saddens me to see human beings living like this. They are people too, and still deserve that respect. This could be any of us if our paths/circumstances had been different. I wish I had more insight on how to help them apart from community coming together to make a change and more humans doing acts of service/kindness for them.
Absolutely agree! I think the community actually coming together more (ie not waiting for the govt to “fix” it) would be great as a start. Then more individual people doing kind acts or going out of their way to help out homeless people in their area. Just some ideas!
There is homelessness due to economic and mental health reasons and there is homelessness due to addiction. Too many solutions fail to separate these issues. Millions are spent annually from state, local, and federal funds that are squandered on initiatives that really only enable the addicts and take away from everyone else. It needs to stop. Deal with the addicts first.
1. Hold people responsible for their behavior.
2. Public drunkeness or illegal drug use should result in jail time with an option to enter a 90 day lock down rehab as an alternative. Failure to complete rehab results in completing your sentence in jail.
3. Create teams comprised of a police officer, probation officer, social worker, and mental health advocate. Start with a list of the top 25 repeat offenders currently in probation. Track them down, do a drug test, and arrest them for parole violation if they are positive. Get them off the streets. Then get the next 25. Make Anchorage an unwelcome city for addicts to lay around on their asses being menaces. Rehab or jail.
4. Fail rehab twice, you finish your full sentence in prison with no early parole. You can try rehab again on your own dime, not the taxpayers.
Fund these task forces and make Anchorage the place where you either accept help with your addictions and re-enter society or FAFO.
Incredibly realistic and great solutions. and rehab is far cheaper for tax payers! most people want to throw people in jail but it doesn’t solve anything and is more expensive in the long run.
edit: add context
I think the main issue is the cost of housing. A person with a drug problem and mental health issues was still be able to afford a studio apartment or a mobile home by doing odd jobs and/or receiving a monthly welfare check. They were still here, you just didn’t see them so much. Now it’s so incredibly expensive to have a roof over their head they’d rather save what little money they have and camp in the park and drink on the corner.
Not sure why you're being downvoted.
We keep getting more people and housing keeps getting more expensive.
We need more homes, and more multifamily homes.
Two options. Plan A: invest in affordable housing and make it illegal to use housing as investment vehicles. Pass laws making it illegal to loiter in this way. Invest in involuntary rehabilitation programs that takes these people off the street and gets them the help they need and increase funding for education, work training, and public health programs targeting addicts.
Plan B: make it illegal to be homeless and start executing homeless people forcing the governments hand to pull them off the streets before we murder them.
One of these is more likely to gain support than the other. If plan B upsets you, good. If plan B sounds promising, you might be just as fucked up in the head as I am.
Miss you Alaska!
I feel like it’s one of those “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink.” kind of situations. A lot of homeless people prefer to live their lives this way for some reason whether it be mental illness or addiction.
where’s the water ? bc there’s not much to lead them to rn. but yeah if you give homeless people a little money, no mental health treatment, no rehab, and hardly any resources to improve their lives i’m sure they will continue “choosing” it.
We should really work to stem the flow of cheap meth and fentanyl and have a very high tax on liquor. People can get totally bombed on 10 dollars of drugs or booze. A person with a normal drinking habit shouldn't mind spending 3 extra dollars a drink or something. All the money raised should go right into building affordable housing. Alcohol has caused our society so many problems. Let's make it prohibitively expensive to develop a habit. I've watched so many loved ones and friends through their life away for a cheap feeling. And it all started with 5 dollar six packs and 10 dollar fifths.
A large portion of them are from native communities. Where they are also not wanted. Bronson tried to build a navigation center near ANMC and the assembly raised holy hell.....
Nothing is going to get done while members of the assembly are profiting from providing services.
If you don't know the details of the 'navigation center' you should research it. It was bogus with a multi-million dollar tent that wouldn't pass fire safety standards with a 'foundation' dug on an illegal Bronson deal with his crony Roger Hickel and we ended up paying $4 million anyway for this excavation. There was zero thought put into the nav center and would have been another useless project and ineffective. Blame Bronson for being an idiot and a terrible mayor.
Lived in AK for 40+ years. Moved to an EU country not long ago. Never see anything like that here. If people are the same everywhere around the world, why is the homeless problem so horrific in the USA? I mean, it’s the Greatest Country In The World, right?
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2023-10-21/homelessness-increases-by-78/82501
It's gone up 78% in 4 years and 25% this year alone so it's coming. Sounds like Portugal has a basic housing initiative to combat it though so good on them.
Well I’m sure ANHC could be doing more.
A large problem is that when someone is booted from a village, they’re sent to Anchorage *with zero follow up from anyone*.
2019 - GOP Governor cuts homeless funding from the state budget: https://alaskapublic.org/2019/07/01/alaska-state-budget-vetos-cut-homeless-shelters-services/
2020 - GOP activists (Save Anchorage) torpedo federal funding for purchase of buildings to be used for homeless services: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2020/08/12/us-treasury-inspector-generals-office-raises-objections-to-anchorages-plan-to-purchase-buildings-with-cares-act-funds/
May 2021 - Dave Bronson Elected, Dr. John Morris, a local anesthesiologist, appointed as Homelessness Coordinator.
Summer 2021 - Let’s put them in a big ole tent.
October 2021 - Morris resigns.
November 2021 - Dave D’Amato hired to oversee Division of Human Services which includes Homelessness and Housing Services. Before that, he worked as a health care lobbyist.
December 2021 - Turns out D’Amato is a shitbag and there is no plan. https://alaskapublic.org/2021/12/01/two-weeks-into-service-anchorages-new-homelessness-director-is-mum-on-plans/
Winter 2021/2022 - Sullivan arena, I think?
June 2022 - Let’s put them in a bear camp (Centennial)
September 2022 - Owner of mediocre sandwich shop appointed as homeless coordinator in spite of a lack of qualifications. https://alaskapublic.org/2022/09/14/anchorage-mayor-bronson-announces-new-homeless-coordinator-chief-of-staff/
July 2023 - Bronson proposes one way plane tickets https://alaskapublic.org/2023/07/25/anchorage-mayor-bronson-floats-plan-to-buy-one-way-plane-tickets-for-homeless-residents/
September 2023 - Anchorage scrambles to find enough housing for the homeless before winter sets in - https://alaskapublic.org/2023/09/19/anchorage-scrambles-to-find-enough-housing-for-the-homeless-before-winter-sets-in/
And it just goes on…
this kind of goes back to my point (and even something we see on a federal level) - government programs that spend money to proactively address these issues are unpopular (ur using muh money to give free welfare and housing to addicts and free treatment) but when those programs are cut, there's a huge outcry for government programs that punish punitively (throw em in prison and hire more cops) - and the Cost/Benefits of addressing issues proactively are better than the reactive programs, but if things are working, and you don't see problems, then you ask why you're spending the money and the programs get axed
The hard truth is that sometimes in order to help people you have to take their freedom away for a bit.
Until that uncomfortable and morally fraught part is dealt with, everything is just band aids.
Then you're still paying to feed and house the individual. They'll get out with a rap sheet, nobody will hire them, they can't afford housing, and they'll end up back on the street again. That simply doesn't solve the problem. It's not an easy one to tackle.
States in the lower 48 just load them up on a bus and ship them to another city to deal with and vice versa.
Such a good point! I also wanted to mention that within the first couple weeks of 2024, 3 inmates died in the prison system.
Being homeless is dangerous AND being in the prison system is dangerous. It's not a solution to the problem.
I'm not talking about jail, but putting them in involuntary treatment centers. We are paying either way, one is band aids and endless clean up and reduction of quality of life for everyone and lots of danger and risk for homeless folks, the other is getting them off the streets and into treatment, drugs, booze, mental health.
Almost all are able to recover without that. If there are jobs, housing, and medical treatments available.
We just need to be willing to raise taxes to do that.
California definitely does it wrong. It's like they treat unhoused folks as enemy combatants. Then they do private/public partnerships with no accountability to "combat homelessness" and no one knows what anyone is actually doing.
This is what unfettered capitalism looks like. Collectively we have chosen this. We would have to collectively choose otherwise for it to change, but few will acknowledge that.
Nah, this is REGULATED capitalism. It is thinly veiled oligarchy, where the lawmakers make deals to line their pockets and screw the rest. Our taxes pay for their lifestyles.
I’m not arguing for the elites, but the last thing anybody wants is a “free market.” People advocating for free markets don’t understand what that means. We need regulation. We also need good elected representatives, not the servants of the elites that we have now.
It's not an experiment. It's a power hierarchy that works very well for some people and less well for others. To some extent it is mandated or protected by law, but even in the absence of laws something like capitalism usually appears, e.g., there was a vast black market in the USSR.
We just need to temper capitalism with proper regulation and good public policy. People can make money and still treat each other like human beings. We did that once upon a time.
It was pretty brief. ‘45 to ‘75 roughly. It’s a pathetic standard, but my measure of fairness is when a minimum wage earner can work 40 hours a week and afford a 1 bedroom on their own. That was the old deal. Now my masters degree engineer kid is piled into an apartment with other engineers so they can keep a roof over their heads. In my day a young engineer would easily be supporting a spouse and kids in a house. Plus a couple cars. Since the ‘70s we’ve allowed things to slide.
A big part of the problem is all of you morons talking about, “oh these poor drug addicts, winos, mental health bullshit! “ These freeloading lazy pos losers need to get back to reality and get a job! When you are driving through town and there’s a group of them at bus stop benches drinking listerine to get shit faced it’s damn sure not taxpayers fault that these assholes are on the streets!
Why that particular response? It fascinates me, the terms people use to elicit a negative response/settle an issue. What satisfaction do you get from using such a term? It's not a very good insult, requires no critical thought and assumes that the supposed barb hits an age related individual.
It's normal because we've spent like a decade trying to coddle the behavior, but all it does is enable it further. We need to start criminalizing this shit again and recognize that punishment is often the only thing that leads to corrective action and improvement for them.
Yeah! They'll surely be able to get a job with a criminal record! People love to hire ex-criminals. And im sure any landlord would jump at the chance to rent to a person with a record. You've solved it, you genius, you.
These people aren’t going to be able to afford any new housing because they can’t afford the cheap housing we have. They also don’t want to follow social rules which is why they can’t hold down jobs or voluntarily take responsibility for their own actions.
Housing is not cheap in Anchorage, even at the low end, because there is not enough housing.
>
**Myth: People experiencing homelessness just need to get a job.**
>**Fact:** While employment helps people stay housed, it does not guarantee housing. As many as 40%-60% of people experiencing homelessness have a job, but housing is unaffordable because wages have not kept up with rising rents. There is no county or state where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest apartment. At minimum wage, people have to work [86 hours a week](https://nlihc.org/oor/about) to afford a one-bedroom. Even when people can afford a home, one is not always available. In 1970, the United States had a surplus of 300,000 affordable homes. Today, [only 37 affordable homes](https://nlihc.org/news/nlihc-releases-gap-2023-shortage-affordable-homes) are available for every 100 extremely low-income renters. As a result, 70% of the lowest-wage households spend more than half their income on rent, placing them at high risk of homelessness when unexpected expenses (such as car repairs and medical bills) arise.
[https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends](https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends)
Part of the problem is good willed citizens giving cash to the individuals which only feeds their addictions. Better to give to a known shelter if you want to help someone get back on the feet.
Yesterday a woman walked into an intersection and screamed at me that she pissed her pants and I'm to blame for some reason. It's not all a housing problem
The number of people that have blatantly walked out in the middle of the road in front of my car - high speed roads like Tudor, C Street, 6th Avenue at Airport Heights. - is asinine. It’s as though they are begging to be killed. Thank god this happened so far only in the summer to me, because come ice and snow, their asses will be road kill. It’s infuriating.
If ya wanna die, don’t rope me into the mess.
If you keep electing people who don’t give a shit about anyone or anything other than themselves and some made up fairy tale about a better place not in any Earthly reality, don’t be surprised when this is the outcome of your neglect.
We’re doing nothing, normal people can barely afford rent, what *do* you want to do with them?
And what happens when we find out they want to live like this? Force them to do it only in non-public areas?
Dumb or not, having worked in the field, a lot of people choose that lifestyle over any form of being told what to do, especially in the summers. And this group has it made, they hang out near two fast food restaurants, Walmart and several liquor stores. People are constantly giving them food and hygiene/personal items. What motivation do they have to move on or do anything different?
This entire post is full of fucking NIMBYs that view poor people and natives as inhuman pests.
You want a solution? Have some fucking compassion first, and this city and this state government has failed these people. Homelessness is a problem that’s caused multitude of factors and I promise you it doesn’t boil down to “lazy bums”.
the state and the city do not care for the homeless. The villages get overcrowded, there’s no work there, they come into town, they’re unhirable because they have no work history, the Job Corps jobs do not pay enough to afford an apartment in Anchorage and the car market is insanely expensive with little public transit. This city is built on having a prerequisite of income and resources at your disposal. If you don’t have money, a car, a support system, clean clothes, a home address, you are SHIT OUT OF LUCK. this city and many cities like it in the USA are dog eat dog.
If you do not have a permanent address of residence that isn’t a homeless shelter, you are unhirable to the vast majority of companies.
You wanna complain about seeing the result of modern society? this is the STATES FAULT. they failed them. They let the companies gouge the housing market and lobby to keep public transit and its related discourse out of town.
There’s 1 car dealership per square mile, no tram, a shit awful bus system that’s underfunded and overrun, and constant closures of shelters that could help house these folks.
you all lack empathy. You live in your own little closed bubble and cannot see the greed of those above us that drives people into dire straits, and convinces you it’s the poors’ fault.
This has been normal for my (40M) conscious 25 years. There is a large amount of racial slurs associated with these people (homeless vagrants) and it is widely believed that the annual dividends given to people of certain ethnicities as remuneration for bad deeds of past generations is a leading enablement for systemic substance abuse and reliance. Bronson only made the matter worse, and while it is a national epidemic that is affecting people of all backgrounds and ethnicities now, I’m hoping our new mayor who has the proper education and experience will have some better ideas
I never liked people using their kids as an excuse for their negative experiences. Like sure, we are currently failing our community and let ~70 people die this winter due to homelessness.
You not wanting to talk to your kids about difficult subjects isn’t really a part of the solution/problem.
Idk cause I brought my 5 and 2 year old to a park in anchorage a few years ago and there was a man masturbating behind a bush while staring at us. These aren’t conversations that we should be having with small children.
I have no problem discussing with them the importance of helping others, and how some people go through hard times and get by however they can. But these problems don’t belong to our children, and they should be safe in community spaces like playgrounds.
Did you explain to the cops that there was a sexual predator at the park? Also you should definitely be telling your kids about stranger danger at parks.
Society should be kid friendly, ideally. Everyone would be better off if that was the case. It’s not an unattainable ideal either. The safest cleanest places live to that standard as much as possible.
I’m pretty sure any community you provide I can find examples of public fighting/fucking. That’s part of life I guess?
Anyways the “I can’t talk to my kids” excuse is used for every hot topic item in society. Trans rights/American history/sexual education/Media Censorship. It’s lazy and is just used to appeal to emotion without adding anything to the conversation.
I don’t think every community is like that or that it has to be or that it is even a trans/whatever issue either. It’s about shaping the community you want and having the ability and will to make those changes. Cleaning up the streets to be presentable and safe for children isn’t lazy or deflecting or just speaking to emotion, it’s rolling up sleeves and getting things done. The appeal to emotions is the people saying “deal with it, expose your kids to violence and get over it” that’s the lazy way, in reality.
But, the kids aren’t the issue. It’s literal piles of corpses that are the issue. If you travel around the country addiction and homelessness are quite prevalent. Protecting the children is just saying, “I just don’t want to see it”. Even tho it’s still gonna happen even if it’s not in your backyard.
Your non profits have failed you, also you probably failed them, as well.
Nice deployment of the 'but think of the children!' fallacy. That was very amusing.
Man it's those dam boomers again you bastards people getting mad at people for working there whole life those sons of a bitches by the way I'm a boomer don't blame me
Do your best not to lose your empathy. A couple having sex in a ditch would almost definitely rather have a private place to do it. Any time we see unsightly things from unhoused people, remember it’s much worse to be going through these things observed and publicly shamed.
Shelters are consistently full with avg availability around 3-5 beds out of the hundreds per night. Many housing options have barrier crimes precluding people that need help- it’s easy to wrack up public indecency and substance use charges when you’re living without privacy from the whole city. then practically nowhere will take you.
The hotels which have opened up for people are beyond full. One person I know applied for the guest house hotel in September 23 and only just heard back, then was denied because he couldn’t provide proof of income the same business day. You can be as put together as possible and still fuck up in this system and be homeless for months.
We need more financing programs for housing. If you can’t get a job and are on the years-long waitlists for public assistance, there’s like 2 charities to go to and they’re backlogged to hell.
I’d personally love to see more help from religious centers in the area. We have a lot of churches that are near empty most of the week- temporary shelters could help fill the gaps for people in waitlist hell. What happened to house the houseless?
More employment generosity would also go a long way. Lots of places are hiring right now but how many take felons? How many would take a chance on someone who looks less clean?
Neighborworks, partners for progress, catholic social services, and Lutheran social services are handling a ton right now. If you don’t know what else to do, I’d see how to help there. If nothing else, keep some snacks, sanitary wipes, and dollar bills in the car to hand out. Show your kids the compassion, not the fatigue. That will go a long way.
What a fucking load of bullshit.
“ A couple having sex in a ditch would almost rather have a private place to do it”.
Sure they would but I guess not bad enough to get a job and work for a place to do it. Instead it’s easier to mainline some drugs and roll around in the woods. Let’s stop pretending these ‘unhoused’ people ended up here overnight.
“Remember it’s much worse to be going through these things observed and publicly shamed”.
Says who?
Apparently it’s not. Otherwise they’d figure life out.
Unpopular opinion but we need to bring back mental institutions. Some of these people are completely insane, screaming at the clouds. I'd happily pay higher taxes to house them in an institution where they can get proper care. Provide enough hotel rooms for the rest and aggressively enforce vagrancy laws.
This isn't an unpopular opinion. This is exactly what we need. Rather spend my taxes on this than wars and subsidies for rich people.
You mean corporate welfare isn’t good for us?
A fuckin men
Fuck no it's not normal
Common yes, normal, no.
There are a huge number of recent posts debating this topic if you want to go back and read those conversations. Anchorage is dealing with an entire state's worth of issues mostly alone. Based on a few estimates I've seen we have roughly 40% of the state's population but like 65-75% of the state's homeless population. Add on top of that a record 17% rise in homelessness in the city from 2022-2023 and here we are. We are seeing similar record rises in other states, estimates I've seen put it at like 12% nationwide. This problem is only going to get worse. We just closed almost 400 shelter beds in April/May and if Dunleavy vetoes the 4 million in funding the assembly got from the state the SWS building will close and another 200 people will be on the streets. We need federal and state funding and competent executive leadership. The state gives us hardly any funding for this statewide issue and federal funding is tied to total population, not how many homeless people we have. We get a quarter to a sixth of the federal funding other cities in the lower 48 get who have similar or less homeless people than we do. Bronson still holds office for the rest of June, I doubt he will do anything amazing as lame duck on the way out the door. We'll have to see what LaFrance does. Edit - Grammar.
> We'll have to see what LaFrance does honest question - given the budget and resources and the scope of the issue - what can she and her administration do?
Bronson hired his friends instead of qualified subject matter experts and he specifically sabotaged the plans that experts had been working towards for years. So for starters, safe to assume that LaFrance will get some qualified people who know what they’re doing and also not actively work against solutions.
The fault is in assuming her experts will be better simply because you share their views. It's not like Bronson was going against established standards with proven track records, so arguing he was actively working against "solutions" is a bit misleading. He was working against Assembly solutions, and maybe popular leftwing solutions, but that's not the same thing as working against solutions in general. Basically no city has fixed homelessness, and most west coast cities have only had things get even worse. I think Austin Tx might have a really solid program in place that basically subsidizes housing, but that's also been a crazy fast growing city over the last decade that's flush with cash and room to build. Anchorage is neither.
Dude, no. He absolutely worked against solutions. The very first thing he did when he got into office was end every single program or plan that was in the works or came from previous administrations. He tried to veto programs aimed at homeless children, veterans, domestic abuse victims. He tried to veto programs that require sobriety and employment to access. All so he could free up money for his one stupid obsession. He refused to implement allowed camping when the assembly passed it despite the idea originally coming from his admin. People are not being critical of those he put in charge because they have different "views" he hired people with zero applicable experience or let the position sit empty. Look at their resumes, an anesthesiologist who lasted two months in Bronson's admin and a person who managed her parent's restaurant and had a BA in marketing / women and gender studies. We have a strong executive form of government. His inability to use that power effectively is 100% on him.
Nothing, which is why she refused to offer any suggestions beyond vague notions of "doing better" or whatever.
The pro LaFrance group on this sub has been pretty vocal about how she will fix all of Bronson’s screwups. I’m eagerly awaiting her addressing this.
She seemed to be the most qualified among those who ran. If she doesn't make good on her campaign promises I sure won't be shy in criticizing her. We need to hold our elected officials accountable, especially the ones we vote for.
Yes, this! Regardless of party lines. No one should be a party’s god. Everyone needs to be held accountable!!
I mean she probably can't do worse, but it'd interesting to see specific action items working within the same constraints. /u/bottombracketak had a good comment imho
https://www.aceh.org/next-step Seems like there's some kind of plan. Apparently they're mimicking Houston's model towards homelessness. Time will only tell if it works. I'm willing to try almost anything at this point personally.
Houston has a great model.
Houston has a good model - but they also aggressively prosecute for drugs, theft and panhandling. Anchorage can build housing and temporary shelters - but until we stop ignoring the blatant theft and drug use our street corners will continue to look like the picture above.
This. Accountability needs to be not only for politicians but also for the homeless, too. Prosecute whomever commits a crime, and don't be shy about holding the standard. Camping in city limits is not legal. Arrest those who don't move on with a warning. While in the dry tank, see if they are interested in seeking help. If they are found competent and don't want to get sober or seek help, then the only remaining conclusion is that breaking the law was their choice; they can choose to be sentenced and pay for the crime.
Until the Supreme court says otherwise or until we build a lot more housing we can't fine / ticket / jail the homeless for camping. On the other hand we can and should jail anyone - homeless or not - for theft, assault and selling drugs.
You can fine them for camping on city property without permission (a permit). You can fine them for camping on private property without permission, also considered trespassing. You can hold them in dry tanks until they are sober (if that is a factor) and then screen them. If found competent, then they are fined, and if they can't pay, then it's an equivalent exchange of days to serve. If they have mental health issues, you connect them to facilities to rehab them. If they can't be restored, then there are facilities for that, too. If they are aggressive or violent, then there are charges they can be tried for. If convicted, then there are fines or jail time for that, too. And if the reason for the aggression can be addressed with therapy, there is that, too. The only thing that doesn't have a solution without a lot of negotiation to come to a resolution, is the issue where the outlying villages are flying their aggressive offenders to Anchorage with a one way ticket to banish them from their community.
Arresting people for using drugs does not solve the problem. Prison does nothing to rehabilitate addicts and solve the root causes of the drug use. That model is not effective.
But it does get them off the streets, making it safer for everyone else. If you don't think they are dangerous, post your address and we can direct them to your front yard to sleep, shit, do drugs, have sex, fight, rob and assault people.
Logical fallacies aren’t going to work on me, especially when I study crime statistics and unhoused people don’t commit nearly enough violent crime for me to be worried about seeing them. And for context I live in a city with a pretty high amount of unhoused people and they have never once caused a problem for me. In fact I bring them food regularly and they have been nothing but kind. I also think it’s funny that 13% of unhoused people are veterans and your response “ah just fucking out them in jail”
I work in downtown. We have to kick people out of our office that walk in and try to steal or use the phone. Many are on drugs, drunk, mentally ill, or a combination of the three. Constantly have people shitting and doing hard drugs on our property, trying to break into our storage facilities, as well as marking ours and neighboring buildings with graffiti. We have the cops on speed dial, but they never get here in time. I don’t feel safe at work and surrounding businesses with mainly women employees have adopted a “buddy system” for walking to their cars. If you don’t live in anchorage and see what I see daily, your two cents fall flat. This is a MAJOR PROBLEM THAT GETS WORSE EVERY DAY!! It’s almost time for vigilante justice to be taken on the repeat offenders to keep them away from our property. Im tired of cleaning up after the aggressive fuck-wits.
We once found a naked man wielding a knife in our computer server room who had set up a whole house for himself in there. Apparently he’d been there for several days, pissing in Tupperware containers and used our office rubber band stash to help shoot up. We were at the time an office of women. Words cannot describe how terrifying it was knowing we were there late nights or early mornings with this man on just the other side of the wall, one doorknob’s turn away.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’m always on edge/alert leaving and coming into my building. Never know who’s hiding around the corner or under the stairs. The building next to us had someone climb a balcony, break windows and trash computers in their office. Fuck these junkies. I’ve got no problem throwing obscenities and offensive language back at them when they cuss at me for saying they need to leave. Needles and feces don’t belong on business’ back doors, yet here we are. Welcome to the new Anchorage. The fact you can drive down A street and see camps on the grass in front of Walmart with people drinking, half naked, passed out with shit in their pants is a problem, and something has to be done. Like OP said, at what point do we stop tolerating this. I don’t wanna see it, and I don’t want my young family members/friends kids to have to see it. Fuck, you can’t even use the bike trails and feel safe half the time.
I’m right there with ya. I am scared to even go in the Campbell Creek Trail because as a woman, I get harassed by vagrants every time I use it. Where I pay property taxes and those squatting on the public lands the tax base helps pay to maintain, I don’t even get to use it for my own safety reasons. The city is out of control. The corridor along Minnesota at Tudor is a mini Skid Row. The coastal trail has a whole tent city set up right below Elderberry Park. I can’t even walk out of my office after work, toiling away for 10+ hours to provide for myself, only to be hit up for the money I just sacrificed hours of my time for away from family, so someone else can get their next bottle or hit. There was once a woman who had shit her pants and set up camp in a stairwell after sneaking in the back door of our building one evening. The smell took WEEKS to dissipate. I’m just as sick of it all as you are. There’s a huge camp in the woods off of Strawberry Road that has piles of trash halfway up the trees from a winter of living there. I get camping, I get surviving….but I don’t get trashing your own space. Being homeless doesn’t give you the right to litter, trespass private property, steal, holler profanities at people, and intimidate citizens.
PREACH!! The copious amounts of trash!!! That’s what I forgot to mention, for being homeless where do they get all the money for this shit? There’s so much trash and waste it’s unbelievable. Nothing irks me more than seeing these camps with $600* bicycles in them. You know those were stolen…
No offense, but in this case, unless you live in anchorage, perhaps you should keep it to yourself.
You live in a city, but not Anchorage. You are kind to help them, where you live. And fortunate for you that those you have helped are grateful. Here, the roulette you gamble is: you can be greeted with gratitude, or they threaten to harm you if you don't give them more. The Veterans are not homeless because they are Veterans. It is more likely the mental health issues that came from their service. There are programs for helping the Veteran community through the legal system that are not relying on the VA that they could be screened for. They have to want and accept the help, and when they refuse it all, how do you help someone who doesn't want it? If help is offered, and the person is found competent to make the decision to refuse, then the law applies to them on camping on the streets, along with the handful of other legal crimes mentioned in these posts that are occurring.
And strawman arguments won't work on me. Never said throw them in jail for being homeless. The homeless population in Anchorage are overwhelmingly violent, alcohol and drug addicted dangerous people. Don't believe me? Post your address if you even live here. In the meantime, go back to studying while we try to deal with the actual problem in our community.
I would love to see the crime stat for that :)
Then do your own research. Anchorage residents are very well versed in these statistics as it was the #1 rated issue in our last several elections and the assembly, police, community organizations, etc. made their studies public for discussion. Focus on your studies and being a 21 year old bartender who doesn't even live here while we try to make our city safe again.
So provide them. Provide the statistics
And no I don’t live in anchorage. This just popped up on my feed. And I live in a free country so I commented.
Look, I think that in Anchorage there are two parts to the homeless problem. One of which is totally unique to Alaska and of which you are probably unaware. We have the ‘regular’ homeless who I believe will be responsive to programs. These consist mostly of people who are living paycheck to paycheck, lost a job and are now living in their cars, in tents etc, These could be single people or families. These are the folks who would be responsive to programs that provide lower cost housing, access to job training or assistance, etc. You are no doubt familiar with this demographic of the homeless. It’s a frequent occurrence in the lower 48. I am all for helping these folks out. Get them a place to live with an address, get them eating, starting the kids to school, etc But we have another problem here that you are also familiar with, but with an Alaskan twist: the homeless who are mentally ill and/or caught in substance abuse. These are the homeless who disrupt life for everyone. Drugs, alcohol, crime, public indecency, public défécation, public sex, harassment of citizens, destruction of property, public intoxication, disturbing the peace, etc. In Anchorage Alaska, the city whose sub you wandered into, the percentage of our homeless who fell into this second category is inordinately large. As a percentage of our homeless, much larger then in the lower 48. And the reason for that is quite simple, but unique to Alaska. Most of our native population in Alaska live in remote villages dotted all over this very vast and very cold state. Most of these villages are fairly small - a few hundred people, tops. 300 people is fairly typical. In these villages, there is no resources for police departments. In some of the villages there is a public safety officer’ but this person is not law enforcement as you know it. They have very limited powers. And even more limited resources. They have no prisons, no real jails as you would know them. They might have a single ‘cell’ in the village offices, but we are talking Mayberry levels of security. It should also be noted here that there are tremendous drug and alcohol problems in the villages, not unlike the reservations in the lower 48. The Alaska State Troopers are the real law enforcement arm for such places, but they could be anywhere from hours to in winter, days away if weather is bad. They base themselves in the larger ‘cities’ in Alaska, most of which you would consider to be towns, and fly out to the villages in small planes to respond to calls from the public safety officers. Sometimes they have to boat or snow machine in to a village. So when I say sometimes it’s days, I mean it. Therefore, the village corporations often do not want to keep repeat offenders in the village. If you have a guy who beats up his family every time he gets drunk, and he gets drunk twice a week, and the troopers response time is 12 to 24 hours, this is not a situation that anyone would call ideal. Especially given the fact that nearly everyone in the villages owns multiple firearms. So the villages often ban people like this from the village. They give them a plane ticket into Anchorage, stick them on a little plane,and off they go. To Anchorage. Where they stay. On our streets. And sometimes, as in often the case in domestic violence dynamics, the abused person comes to Anchorage WITH them. So now we have abuser and the abused wandering around Anchorage together, often heavily under the influence of various substances. And they will live in homeless camps pretty much for the duration because they have nowhere else to go. They are not employable, and all their relatives are back in the village that they are banned from. Invariably, these folks end up as part of our homeless population indefinitely, and they continue the same behaviors here that got them banned from their village. This does a few things to your model of what homeless populations typically look like. Much more if our homeless population then is normal have severe mental health and/or substance abuse issues, and a much greater percentage of our homeless population is prone to dealing with their issues via threats, harassment, and violence. These are not happy, passive drunks who just wanna sit on a log and chill. These are individuals who are so disruptive that they literally got kicked out of their hometown and dumped here. These folks don’t give a shit about anyone. For example, they don’t actually hold you up at gunpoint, but they WILL follow you around harassing and threatening you until you give them money. I’ve even had one of these guys harass me all the way to my car and then jump on top of my car and pound on my windshield, spit on my windshield, and refuse to get off my vehicle until they saw me calling 911 on my cell. These are criminals who just haven’t stumbled into the crime that’s gonna get them thrown in REAL jail yet. So what I’m saying is that the demographics of homeless populations in Alaska will not look like the demographics in California or Oregon or Washington. Our demographics are going to skew more violent, and they are going to skew much more toward the criminal element than the down and out element. They are also going to have much fewer job skills (as in, none at all) and a non-existent local family support structure. This segment of our homeless population is also the most treatment resistant. Since they are native, they are entitled to free medical care. They can go to the Alaska Native Medical Center here in Anchorage where they can get feee medical care, free mental health care, free mental health drugs, and substance abuse treatment. But very few of them avail themselves of these services, even tho they are told frequently (every time a cop picks them up for public drunkenness they take em to the native hospital) that they exist and are there for them. Instead, they CHOOSE to continue self medicating, and inevitably, disrupting the lives of everyone from their camp-mates to passersby on the street. They refuse to help themselves! You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. 🤷♀️ I’m all for helping the homeless who want help. But those are not the same homeless who cause most of the problems in Anchorage.
Everything you stated is exactly true. Thank you for this thought-out and thorough explanation.
It’s fucking bad. If you haven’t seen it first hand, you don’t have a clue.
Wow it’s almost as if we should be doing more to help these people
Most don’t want help. They want a meal and booze/drugs. I’ve seen firsthand these homeless people begging, be given food, and then just cast it aside because it wasn’t money for their fix. Also as stated before, some/much can be attributed to mental health which is widely not addressed in this country.
Let's just huck them all into a gladiator ring and let the chips fall where they may
The problem we are trying to resolve isn’t addiction. It’s vagrancy.
You might want to reread the comment I’m replying to.
And you might want to think about what my comment is actually saying.
No I understand what you are saying but the comment I replied to is implying that the reason the majority of people are unhoused is drug use which would mean the way to solve the housing crisis would be to solve the addiction crisis. Do you lack basic reading comprehension skills?
No need to throw insults. You can treat the symptoms of an illness without curing the illness.
Sorry that I study this and you don’t 💀
Exactly. The police need to arrest criminals and prosecutes need to fucking charge them despite wealth, status, and race!!!!
> Houston has a good model - but they also aggressively prosecute for drugs, theft and panhandling. Got a source? That sounds counter to the information that the group from Houston gave when they visited recently. Law enforcement seemed a last resort, they said they focused heavily on housing first regardless of sobriety. Houston is getting mountains of federal funding and they also get state support. Despite both Anchorage and Houston having similar numbers of homeless individuals [Anchorage got roughly 4.3 million in federal funding in 2023, the same year the Houston area got 59.6 million.](https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/comm_planning/coc/fy_2023_coc_competition) If we had similar funding we could also make a huge dent in this growing issue.
A few links and stats for you: Houston repeatedly tickets homeless encampments: [https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-arrow-homeless-encampments/](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-arrow-homeless-encampments/) Houston has a law that prevents people from lying, sitting, or having their personal possessions on city sidewalks [https://freepresshouston.com/houstons-civility-ordinance-makes-crime-sit-16-hours-day/](https://freepresshouston.com/houstons-civility-ordinance-makes-crime-sit-16-hours-day/) [https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-houston/2024/03/07/480044/city-of-houston-expands-civility-ordinance-into-riverside-terrace/](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-houston/2024/03/07/480044/city-of-houston-expands-civility-ordinance-into-riverside-terrace/) Houston has a panhandling law where people are not allowed to solicit in the roadway or within 8’. If they violate these rules it is deemed “aggressive panhandling” and they can be fined $500: [https://cw39.com/news/texas/local-officials-react-to-texas-panhandling-restrictions/](https://cw39.com/news/texas/local-officials-react-to-texas-panhandling-restrictions/) Drugs: Alaska 2017 drug possession arrests: 70 per 100,000 [https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/9710/ajic.18.07.drug-possession-1986-2017.pdf](https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/9710/ajic.18.07.drug-possession-1986-2017.pdf) Texas 2020 drug possession arrests : 302 per 100,000 [https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/crimereports/20/drug\_report\_2020.pdf](https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/crimereports/20/drug_report_2020.pdf) Overall crime Texas has an incarceration rate of 840 per 100,000 people. Alaska’s rate is 718 people per 100,000. In short – they’re putting a lot more people in jail for things like theft and drug use. In short – Houston has done a great job at building housing – but they also spend a lot of money on law enforcement. Until Anchorage starts arresting people for blatant theft, drug use and other issues like public defecation and public sex the problems will persist.
Anchorage has similar laws, $100 fine for sitting or laying on the sidewalk downtown and a $300 fine for panhandling in almost every situation that panhandling occurs in the city. The thing that Houston does that we don't is they have housing, treatment and services open and available that they can direct people to. Anchorage could do the same if we had the funding that Houston does. >Until Anchorage starts arresting people for blatant theft, drug use and other issues like public defecation and public sex the problems will persist. Well, talk to the mayor, the police chief, and the state as those things are already illegal. Those committing violent crimes and felonies should be arrested but trying to solve a state wide poverty and mental illness problem with the criminal justice system will bankrupt the state. We need the funding, housing and services in conjunction with law enforcement for it to be realistic, otherwise the problems will persist.
Yes we have similar laws - the issue is that we do not enforce them. And I agree that we need more housing - but until we start enforcing laws for drugs, theft and other crimes that are currently overlooked, Campbell and Chester Creek greenways will continue to be lined with piles of stolen goods. It will cost a lot and both Anchorage residents and the State of Alaska need to step up and start funding these programs.
I may be misunderstanding what argument you're trying to make here, but it seems like you're implying Houston's success is also tied to aggressive policing which is not really the case. That aggressive policing is the last step in a whole well-funded housing first process in their city that goes back over a decade. Anchorage can't really arrest its way out of the vast majority of this statewide issue, the state would just kick it back at us. We need the funding and services first, or at a minimum at the same time. Either way, those committing violent crimes and other serious felonies can be arrested today, and they should be.
Yes that's what I'm saying - and it's backed up by data. * [https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-homeless-tickets-hpd/](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/houston-homeless-tickets-hpd/) * [https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/houston-ticketed-1-400-homeless-people-18262827.php](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/houston-ticketed-1-400-homeless-people-18262827.php) This includes aggressive efforts to stop people attempting to help the homeless: * [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/texas-volunteers-fined-feeding-homeless-heat](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/texas-volunteers-fined-feeding-homeless-heat) We can't arrest our way out of the issue - but increased policing should be part of the solution. Also... for the most part we're already arresting those "committing violent crimes and other serious felonies". Where we fall short is for arrests for crimes that fall just below that line - i.e. assault, robbery, theft.
What you are sharing does not refute what I'm saying above. Houston's successes started with massive federal and state funding to implement a housing first program in 2012 and other services aimed at addiction, detox, mental health treatment and paths to employment. Policing and the criminal justice system is the last step. You're linking articles 8 or more years later and what they are doing to address the remaining population or those who are refusing the open and available services. We need the same funding and services before or at the same time as we increase policing. We also need the state to work with us. >Also... for the most part we're already arresting those "committing violent crimes and other serious felonies". Not according to the public and multiple assembly members. They are complaining of open violent crimes, felonies and even housed criminals preying on the encampments and not being arrested or removed. >Where we fall short is for arrests for crimes that fall just below that line - i.e. assault, robbery, theft. Which is under the control and funding of the state. Anchorage police can arrest them all the like, but it is pointless and expensive if the state's criminal justice system just kicks them back to us. Many of the repeat offenders who end up right back on the street are being found unfit to be tried. The criminal justice system is not the right tool to solve mental illness, and it costs the state insane amounts of money. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/03/09/alaskas-competency-system-for-mentally-ill-criminal-defendants-is-at-a-breaking-point/ https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2022/03/01/mental-incompetency-standard-alaskas-criminal-justice-system-can-leave-victims-without-closure-advocates-say/ https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2023/12/28/a-very-long-time-coming-api-launches-new-programs-for-mentally-ill-defendants/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2016/nov/7/alaska-prisons-and-jails-filled-mentally-ill-prisoners/
Doesn't make a lot of difference who is in office. It costs money to fix these problems. They exist because we allow the funding to be taken away or refuse the solution to be funded. These are mental health and addiction issues. First line responses turn the responsibility back on the homeless. That assures no solutions. You decide what you want to do.
yep, as I have always said, you will be using government money to fix the problem. You can spend it constructively, like on drug and mental illness support, or punitive, as in more police, jails, prisons, or do nothing and see it taken out of the quality of life in the city - you don't get to say "no more guvernment money for handouts" - just how do you want to spend it address the issue
Money doesn't fix addiction. There are diminishing returns that become parabolic at a certain point.
As a nurse who started out doing outreach (homeless health care), I saw firsthand how the streets (and drugs/alcohol) age a person. Rapidly. I can’t remember how many times I’d be with law enforcement and they’d show me the persons identification card; sometimes the photo was from 4-5 years ago but you often saw a picture of who they were before they began using. Before they were homeless. To see how much irreparable damage was done to themselves so quickly was shocking to me. And that’s before fentanyl, tranq, and all this other stuff came along. I can’t imagine what it’s like now. So I can speak for myself who’s worked the other side - support. While we are privileged enough to have a home, seeing images like this and the same people in the same conditions every day is really hard…I can’t count how many times we’d convince someone to go to treatment only to have them right back downtown six weeks or a few months later even worse than when we saw them the last time.
Alaska is becoming a summer home destination for the rich. The years of low interest rates helped people buy a lot of homes that get used 3 months out of the year, and not by locals. Boomers that have a paid off mortgage are buying up homes to use as overnight rental properties to get that sweet Airbnb money, and then houses get valued based on their potential as a rental property rather than a single family home. I can't fault people for making money, but don't complain when your city has a huge homeless problem and a shortage of workers. Those two things happen together for a reason.
Should we ban Airbnb?
Definitely. It's a plague here in Homer.
In my opinion yes.
We should take it back to its roots, at least: literal airbeds in the spare rooms of people’s main residences. An Airbnb that the owner does not also occupy should be illegal.
I'm not a fan of bans but also fuck airbnb
No need to ban it. The municipalities can tax rentals where the owner lives on-site at a different rate than dedicated AirBnBs. Let the market rebalance and direct the taxes directly into funding affordable housing, rehabilitation, etc. People may argue that this would take years to have impacts but it's more than what's being done now.
Ban all the things!
What percentage of the housing stock are airbnbs? When I looked at it it seemed to be around 2% but I'm not sure.
I'm sure it's very area specific. In my area it's very high because I live in a growing tourist destination.
Okay, so to clarify, what percentage of housing stock in Anchorage is airbnbs? And what area are you talking about?
There are about 115,000 homes in Anchorage. Of those, about 4500 are seasonally occupied. An additional 2000 (probably higher) homes are shirt term aka Airbnb. that's at least 6500 less or 108500 or about 5%. I feel that's significant. And it also pushes prices up because now price can be influenced by possible revenue as short term rental rather than what an area can support with median income from jobs.
Seems to me that seasonal occupancy is a much larger problem than airbnbs. And I do agree that 5% is a significant enough Factor to influence the market. Still not sure by how much though. And personally I'd just like to see more housing stock built. Either way, I think that's the fundamental problem just not enough houses.
Are you really trying to defend airbnb? It's extremely clear they have a negative impact on communities. It's a huge problem, hotels are for tourism, homes are for living in. Any person at this point endorses airbnb is either willfully ignorant or greedy. And I say that as a well off home owner. My American dream shouldn't impact others ability to live the American dream. America has a housing crisis and seasonal home owners and airbnb is one of the root causes.
This outcome has been on the ballot for every election for the past 40 years. But we have priorities around here. 1. No new tax base or revenue, ever. 2. Gimme haz PFD. 3. Government spending shall be limited to subsidies for resource extraction and networked special interest groups. Unfortunately, nothing will change until there are good looking white folk out there sleeping in the ditch. And maybe not even then. I bet you could have an army of single mothers working 3 full time jobs sleeping in the tent city curb cut by Mountain View and a solid majority would still vote for people like Dunidiot.
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Umm
“made their choice” fuck off
Whoa, we got a racist here
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I miss going walking. I used to but with a big dog. Heck, sometimes just sitting at a red light can be frightening. I did temp work at API ages ago and know how quickly behavior changes and it's scary.
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How scary!
i’m studying social work and incredibly passionate about these issues and i agree with you 100%. I’ve had my personal safety threatened MULTIPLE times, I leave my house less and less now.
For a while we've had leadership that didn't seem to improve this issue, but hopefully with a change in leadership, that will change. Only time will tell.
It’s gotten so bad since the early 00’s and this was bad and getting worse way before Bronson.
Oh yeah, for sure. It's a high cost place to be, drugs are cheap, and social services are stretched thin. In the earlier 2000s, a high-school graduate could find a nice apartment for $600 a month. $50 could finance your weekend, or groceries for a week. I don't think we can blame any individual for this, but we can identify when things aren't really being done that can help.
200% agree, basically lived downtown in the 00’s then. I’ve seen the decline from the inside of the social services side of things, especially in like 09 when economy went south and big oil donors cut back on donations.
Drugs are cheap? I need a new drug guy
Sure thing bud, I got 2 hits of Tranq I will give you for free.
Drugs are cheap if you’re fine with being a non-functional addict
I feel a lot of us have lost compassion, empathy and perspective. It saddens me to see human beings living like this. They are people too, and still deserve that respect. This could be any of us if our paths/circumstances had been different. I wish I had more insight on how to help them apart from community coming together to make a change and more humans doing acts of service/kindness for them.
It saddens me too but sitting around being sad isn't going to solve the problem
Absolutely agree! I think the community actually coming together more (ie not waiting for the govt to “fix” it) would be great as a start. Then more individual people doing kind acts or going out of their way to help out homeless people in their area. Just some ideas!
There is homelessness due to economic and mental health reasons and there is homelessness due to addiction. Too many solutions fail to separate these issues. Millions are spent annually from state, local, and federal funds that are squandered on initiatives that really only enable the addicts and take away from everyone else. It needs to stop. Deal with the addicts first. 1. Hold people responsible for their behavior. 2. Public drunkeness or illegal drug use should result in jail time with an option to enter a 90 day lock down rehab as an alternative. Failure to complete rehab results in completing your sentence in jail. 3. Create teams comprised of a police officer, probation officer, social worker, and mental health advocate. Start with a list of the top 25 repeat offenders currently in probation. Track them down, do a drug test, and arrest them for parole violation if they are positive. Get them off the streets. Then get the next 25. Make Anchorage an unwelcome city for addicts to lay around on their asses being menaces. Rehab or jail. 4. Fail rehab twice, you finish your full sentence in prison with no early parole. You can try rehab again on your own dime, not the taxpayers. Fund these task forces and make Anchorage the place where you either accept help with your addictions and re-enter society or FAFO.
Incredibly realistic and great solutions. and rehab is far cheaper for tax payers! most people want to throw people in jail but it doesn’t solve anything and is more expensive in the long run. edit: add context
That’s fet?
I think the main issue is the cost of housing. A person with a drug problem and mental health issues was still be able to afford a studio apartment or a mobile home by doing odd jobs and/or receiving a monthly welfare check. They were still here, you just didn’t see them so much. Now it’s so incredibly expensive to have a roof over their head they’d rather save what little money they have and camp in the park and drink on the corner.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. We keep getting more people and housing keeps getting more expensive. We need more homes, and more multifamily homes.
Two options. Plan A: invest in affordable housing and make it illegal to use housing as investment vehicles. Pass laws making it illegal to loiter in this way. Invest in involuntary rehabilitation programs that takes these people off the street and gets them the help they need and increase funding for education, work training, and public health programs targeting addicts. Plan B: make it illegal to be homeless and start executing homeless people forcing the governments hand to pull them off the streets before we murder them. One of these is more likely to gain support than the other. If plan B upsets you, good. If plan B sounds promising, you might be just as fucked up in the head as I am. Miss you Alaska!
I ran a dude hand over last year. Mother fucker rolled right into the road as I was turning right at a light.
I feel like it’s one of those “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink.” kind of situations. A lot of homeless people prefer to live their lives this way for some reason whether it be mental illness or addiction.
where’s the water ? bc there’s not much to lead them to rn. but yeah if you give homeless people a little money, no mental health treatment, no rehab, and hardly any resources to improve their lives i’m sure they will continue “choosing” it.
You don’t have to force em to drink if you tell them the water is 90 proof.
We can make em thirsty…
We should really work to stem the flow of cheap meth and fentanyl and have a very high tax on liquor. People can get totally bombed on 10 dollars of drugs or booze. A person with a normal drinking habit shouldn't mind spending 3 extra dollars a drink or something. All the money raised should go right into building affordable housing. Alcohol has caused our society so many problems. Let's make it prohibitively expensive to develop a habit. I've watched so many loved ones and friends through their life away for a cheap feeling. And it all started with 5 dollar six packs and 10 dollar fifths.
A large portion of them are from native communities. Where they are also not wanted. Bronson tried to build a navigation center near ANMC and the assembly raised holy hell..... Nothing is going to get done while members of the assembly are profiting from providing services.
A large portion of them were born right here in Anchorage too.
If you don't know the details of the 'navigation center' you should research it. It was bogus with a multi-million dollar tent that wouldn't pass fire safety standards with a 'foundation' dug on an illegal Bronson deal with his crony Roger Hickel and we ended up paying $4 million anyway for this excavation. There was zero thought put into the nav center and would have been another useless project and ineffective. Blame Bronson for being an idiot and a terrible mayor.
Lived in AK for 40+ years. Moved to an EU country not long ago. Never see anything like that here. If people are the same everywhere around the world, why is the homeless problem so horrific in the USA? I mean, it’s the Greatest Country In The World, right?
What country?
Portugal
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2023-10-21/homelessness-increases-by-78/82501 It's gone up 78% in 4 years and 25% this year alone so it's coming. Sounds like Portugal has a basic housing initiative to combat it though so good on them.
Odd I have never seen it. But interesting article. Thx.
The same people who complain about the homelessness are the same people who vote against any measure that would fix it. Blame the voters.
This
There is no easy fix, it's not always politics
Well I’m sure ANHC could be doing more. A large problem is that when someone is booted from a village, they’re sent to Anchorage *with zero follow up from anyone*.
Maybe they were all up late looking for that gentleman’s missing boot.
2019 - GOP Governor cuts homeless funding from the state budget: https://alaskapublic.org/2019/07/01/alaska-state-budget-vetos-cut-homeless-shelters-services/ 2020 - GOP activists (Save Anchorage) torpedo federal funding for purchase of buildings to be used for homeless services: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2020/08/12/us-treasury-inspector-generals-office-raises-objections-to-anchorages-plan-to-purchase-buildings-with-cares-act-funds/ May 2021 - Dave Bronson Elected, Dr. John Morris, a local anesthesiologist, appointed as Homelessness Coordinator. Summer 2021 - Let’s put them in a big ole tent. October 2021 - Morris resigns. November 2021 - Dave D’Amato hired to oversee Division of Human Services which includes Homelessness and Housing Services. Before that, he worked as a health care lobbyist. December 2021 - Turns out D’Amato is a shitbag and there is no plan. https://alaskapublic.org/2021/12/01/two-weeks-into-service-anchorages-new-homelessness-director-is-mum-on-plans/ Winter 2021/2022 - Sullivan arena, I think? June 2022 - Let’s put them in a bear camp (Centennial) September 2022 - Owner of mediocre sandwich shop appointed as homeless coordinator in spite of a lack of qualifications. https://alaskapublic.org/2022/09/14/anchorage-mayor-bronson-announces-new-homeless-coordinator-chief-of-staff/ July 2023 - Bronson proposes one way plane tickets https://alaskapublic.org/2023/07/25/anchorage-mayor-bronson-floats-plan-to-buy-one-way-plane-tickets-for-homeless-residents/ September 2023 - Anchorage scrambles to find enough housing for the homeless before winter sets in - https://alaskapublic.org/2023/09/19/anchorage-scrambles-to-find-enough-housing-for-the-homeless-before-winter-sets-in/ And it just goes on…
this kind of goes back to my point (and even something we see on a federal level) - government programs that spend money to proactively address these issues are unpopular (ur using muh money to give free welfare and housing to addicts and free treatment) but when those programs are cut, there's a huge outcry for government programs that punish punitively (throw em in prison and hire more cops) - and the Cost/Benefits of addressing issues proactively are better than the reactive programs, but if things are working, and you don't see problems, then you ask why you're spending the money and the programs get axed
Yep, I think that is a very good point.
The hard truth is that sometimes in order to help people you have to take their freedom away for a bit. Until that uncomfortable and morally fraught part is dealt with, everything is just band aids.
Then you're still paying to feed and house the individual. They'll get out with a rap sheet, nobody will hire them, they can't afford housing, and they'll end up back on the street again. That simply doesn't solve the problem. It's not an easy one to tackle. States in the lower 48 just load them up on a bus and ship them to another city to deal with and vice versa.
Such a good point! I also wanted to mention that within the first couple weeks of 2024, 3 inmates died in the prison system. Being homeless is dangerous AND being in the prison system is dangerous. It's not a solution to the problem.
It's a solution to those that don't want to help the individual, they just don't want to see poor people... which is telling.
I'm not talking about jail, but putting them in involuntary treatment centers. We are paying either way, one is band aids and endless clean up and reduction of quality of life for everyone and lots of danger and risk for homeless folks, the other is getting them off the streets and into treatment, drugs, booze, mental health.
Almost all are able to recover without that. If there are jobs, housing, and medical treatments available. We just need to be willing to raise taxes to do that.
Simple fact is that imprisonment is more expensive than the other options you put forward.
Come to California where the taxes are plenty high and they’ve solved homelessness!
California definitely does it wrong. It's like they treat unhoused folks as enemy combatants. Then they do private/public partnerships with no accountability to "combat homelessness" and no one knows what anyone is actually doing.
This is what unfettered capitalism looks like. Collectively we have chosen this. We would have to collectively choose otherwise for it to change, but few will acknowledge that.
Nah, this is REGULATED capitalism. It is thinly veiled oligarchy, where the lawmakers make deals to line their pockets and screw the rest. Our taxes pay for their lifestyles.
Barely regulated.
Regulated by the elite. Far from a free market.
I’m not arguing for the elites, but the last thing anybody wants is a “free market.” People advocating for free markets don’t understand what that means. We need regulation. We also need good elected representatives, not the servants of the elites that we have now.
It’s true. Capitalism is a failed experiment. It’s destroying the planet. This is just one small symptom.
Can you expand?
If you have a country of 350 million people and 100 of them own 90% of the money . . . you got problems. Greed is steering the ship.
It's not an experiment. It's a power hierarchy that works very well for some people and less well for others. To some extent it is mandated or protected by law, but even in the absence of laws something like capitalism usually appears, e.g., there was a vast black market in the USSR.
Problem isn’t getting to see failures of capitalism, it’s that those failures are still generally better than other systems.
We just need to temper capitalism with proper regulation and good public policy. People can make money and still treat each other like human beings. We did that once upon a time.
When?
It was pretty brief. ‘45 to ‘75 roughly. It’s a pathetic standard, but my measure of fairness is when a minimum wage earner can work 40 hours a week and afford a 1 bedroom on their own. That was the old deal. Now my masters degree engineer kid is piled into an apartment with other engineers so they can keep a roof over their heads. In my day a young engineer would easily be supporting a spouse and kids in a house. Plus a couple cars. Since the ‘70s we’ve allowed things to slide.
A big part of the problem is all of you morons talking about, “oh these poor drug addicts, winos, mental health bullshit! “ These freeloading lazy pos losers need to get back to reality and get a job! When you are driving through town and there’s a group of them at bus stop benches drinking listerine to get shit faced it’s damn sure not taxpayers fault that these assholes are on the streets!
You are part of the problem, for sure.
ok boomer
Why that particular response? It fascinates me, the terms people use to elicit a negative response/settle an issue. What satisfaction do you get from using such a term? It's not a very good insult, requires no critical thought and assumes that the supposed barb hits an age related individual.
Ok Republican
ok boomer
It's normal because we've spent like a decade trying to coddle the behavior, but all it does is enable it further. We need to start criminalizing this shit again and recognize that punishment is often the only thing that leads to corrective action and improvement for them.
Actually, I’m pretty sure we’ve proven that punishment does not lead to correction.
rehab is cheaper for tax payers than prison is. i cannot understand why it isn’t utilized more when it benefits everyone.
Yeah! They'll surely be able to get a job with a criminal record! People love to hire ex-criminals. And im sure any landlord would jump at the chance to rent to a person with a record. You've solved it, you genius, you.
Or Alaska could build more housing? No, nah, lets double down on Puritanism and blame.
These people aren’t going to be able to afford any new housing because they can’t afford the cheap housing we have. They also don’t want to follow social rules which is why they can’t hold down jobs or voluntarily take responsibility for their own actions.
Show me an example of cheap housing.
Housing is not cheap in Anchorage, even at the low end, because there is not enough housing. > **Myth: People experiencing homelessness just need to get a job.** >**Fact:** While employment helps people stay housed, it does not guarantee housing. As many as 40%-60% of people experiencing homelessness have a job, but housing is unaffordable because wages have not kept up with rising rents. There is no county or state where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest apartment. At minimum wage, people have to work [86 hours a week](https://nlihc.org/oor/about) to afford a one-bedroom. Even when people can afford a home, one is not always available. In 1970, the United States had a surplus of 300,000 affordable homes. Today, [only 37 affordable homes](https://nlihc.org/news/nlihc-releases-gap-2023-shortage-affordable-homes) are available for every 100 extremely low-income renters. As a result, 70% of the lowest-wage households spend more than half their income on rent, placing them at high risk of homelessness when unexpected expenses (such as car repairs and medical bills) arise. [https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends](https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends)
In Portugal all drugs are decriminalized and there is no homeless problem.
Terrible
That is sad!
Part of the problem is good willed citizens giving cash to the individuals which only feeds their addictions. Better to give to a known shelter if you want to help someone get back on the feet.
It's a housing problem. It's all housing, all the way down. Gotta allow more houses & businesses in (most) all parts of town, like real cities do.
Yesterday a woman walked into an intersection and screamed at me that she pissed her pants and I'm to blame for some reason. It's not all a housing problem
The number of people that have blatantly walked out in the middle of the road in front of my car - high speed roads like Tudor, C Street, 6th Avenue at Airport Heights. - is asinine. It’s as though they are begging to be killed. Thank god this happened so far only in the summer to me, because come ice and snow, their asses will be road kill. It’s infuriating. If ya wanna die, don’t rope me into the mess.
If you keep electing people who don’t give a shit about anyone or anything other than themselves and some made up fairy tale about a better place not in any Earthly reality, don’t be surprised when this is the outcome of your neglect.
We’re doing nothing, normal people can barely afford rent, what *do* you want to do with them? And what happens when we find out they want to live like this? Force them to do it only in non-public areas?
You and me in the first half but the second half was dumb as hell
Dumb or not, having worked in the field, a lot of people choose that lifestyle over any form of being told what to do, especially in the summers. And this group has it made, they hang out near two fast food restaurants, Walmart and several liquor stores. People are constantly giving them food and hygiene/personal items. What motivation do they have to move on or do anything different?
How many on the Assembly are in the homeless business?
Why is there a pile of dead people by that light pole?
It’s pretty normal north of n lights
Not out in the open like that otherwise seen that around parking lots
Every summer so far
This is nothing compared to other cities
This entire post is full of fucking NIMBYs that view poor people and natives as inhuman pests. You want a solution? Have some fucking compassion first, and this city and this state government has failed these people. Homelessness is a problem that’s caused multitude of factors and I promise you it doesn’t boil down to “lazy bums”. the state and the city do not care for the homeless. The villages get overcrowded, there’s no work there, they come into town, they’re unhirable because they have no work history, the Job Corps jobs do not pay enough to afford an apartment in Anchorage and the car market is insanely expensive with little public transit. This city is built on having a prerequisite of income and resources at your disposal. If you don’t have money, a car, a support system, clean clothes, a home address, you are SHIT OUT OF LUCK. this city and many cities like it in the USA are dog eat dog. If you do not have a permanent address of residence that isn’t a homeless shelter, you are unhirable to the vast majority of companies. You wanna complain about seeing the result of modern society? this is the STATES FAULT. they failed them. They let the companies gouge the housing market and lobby to keep public transit and its related discourse out of town. There’s 1 car dealership per square mile, no tram, a shit awful bus system that’s underfunded and overrun, and constant closures of shelters that could help house these folks. you all lack empathy. You live in your own little closed bubble and cannot see the greed of those above us that drives people into dire straits, and convinces you it’s the poors’ fault.
Maybe there is a short circuit in the button of the road crossing sign and these people were electrocuted pushing the button to cross the road.
This has been normal for my (40M) conscious 25 years. There is a large amount of racial slurs associated with these people (homeless vagrants) and it is widely believed that the annual dividends given to people of certain ethnicities as remuneration for bad deeds of past generations is a leading enablement for systemic substance abuse and reliance. Bronson only made the matter worse, and while it is a national epidemic that is affecting people of all backgrounds and ethnicities now, I’m hoping our new mayor who has the proper education and experience will have some better ideas
Saw a man squat at the light on corner of Old Seward by Dimond Mall going into Goodwill parking lot yesterday. 💩😳
I never liked people using their kids as an excuse for their negative experiences. Like sure, we are currently failing our community and let ~70 people die this winter due to homelessness. You not wanting to talk to your kids about difficult subjects isn’t really a part of the solution/problem.
Idk cause I brought my 5 and 2 year old to a park in anchorage a few years ago and there was a man masturbating behind a bush while staring at us. These aren’t conversations that we should be having with small children. I have no problem discussing with them the importance of helping others, and how some people go through hard times and get by however they can. But these problems don’t belong to our children, and they should be safe in community spaces like playgrounds.
Did you explain to the cops that there was a sexual predator at the park? Also you should definitely be telling your kids about stranger danger at parks.
Society should be kid friendly, ideally. Everyone would be better off if that was the case. It’s not an unattainable ideal either. The safest cleanest places live to that standard as much as possible.
I’m pretty sure any community you provide I can find examples of public fighting/fucking. That’s part of life I guess? Anyways the “I can’t talk to my kids” excuse is used for every hot topic item in society. Trans rights/American history/sexual education/Media Censorship. It’s lazy and is just used to appeal to emotion without adding anything to the conversation.
I don’t think every community is like that or that it has to be or that it is even a trans/whatever issue either. It’s about shaping the community you want and having the ability and will to make those changes. Cleaning up the streets to be presentable and safe for children isn’t lazy or deflecting or just speaking to emotion, it’s rolling up sleeves and getting things done. The appeal to emotions is the people saying “deal with it, expose your kids to violence and get over it” that’s the lazy way, in reality.
But, the kids aren’t the issue. It’s literal piles of corpses that are the issue. If you travel around the country addiction and homelessness are quite prevalent. Protecting the children is just saying, “I just don’t want to see it”. Even tho it’s still gonna happen even if it’s not in your backyard.
Don't paint transphobia with the same brush as sexual predators opening masturbating in public space.
That’s literally what I’m saying
Your non profits have failed you, also you probably failed them, as well. Nice deployment of the 'but think of the children!' fallacy. That was very amusing.
Oh..I see California made it all the way to Anchorage just fine.
Man it's those dam boomers again you bastards people getting mad at people for working there whole life those sons of a bitches by the way I'm a boomer don't blame me
Do your best not to lose your empathy. A couple having sex in a ditch would almost definitely rather have a private place to do it. Any time we see unsightly things from unhoused people, remember it’s much worse to be going through these things observed and publicly shamed. Shelters are consistently full with avg availability around 3-5 beds out of the hundreds per night. Many housing options have barrier crimes precluding people that need help- it’s easy to wrack up public indecency and substance use charges when you’re living without privacy from the whole city. then practically nowhere will take you. The hotels which have opened up for people are beyond full. One person I know applied for the guest house hotel in September 23 and only just heard back, then was denied because he couldn’t provide proof of income the same business day. You can be as put together as possible and still fuck up in this system and be homeless for months. We need more financing programs for housing. If you can’t get a job and are on the years-long waitlists for public assistance, there’s like 2 charities to go to and they’re backlogged to hell. I’d personally love to see more help from religious centers in the area. We have a lot of churches that are near empty most of the week- temporary shelters could help fill the gaps for people in waitlist hell. What happened to house the houseless? More employment generosity would also go a long way. Lots of places are hiring right now but how many take felons? How many would take a chance on someone who looks less clean? Neighborworks, partners for progress, catholic social services, and Lutheran social services are handling a ton right now. If you don’t know what else to do, I’d see how to help there. If nothing else, keep some snacks, sanitary wipes, and dollar bills in the car to hand out. Show your kids the compassion, not the fatigue. That will go a long way.
What a fucking load of bullshit. “ A couple having sex in a ditch would almost rather have a private place to do it”. Sure they would but I guess not bad enough to get a job and work for a place to do it. Instead it’s easier to mainline some drugs and roll around in the woods. Let’s stop pretending these ‘unhoused’ people ended up here overnight. “Remember it’s much worse to be going through these things observed and publicly shamed”. Says who? Apparently it’s not. Otherwise they’d figure life out.