A tent village has sprang up near the abandoned subport in recent weeks. Juneau continues to struggle with a housing and homelessness crisis that’s culminated in a new community on the edge of downtown.
In the encampment, there’s steak grilling on a propane stove. Tents began appearing in this wooded area about three weeks ago.
“I set up mine and then I woke up and there were three or four next to me. They followed, it just kind of came in waves,” said Kevin Howard, 44.
He looks around and sees community among the cluster of tents.
“Everybody here looks after each other and nobody does nothing to nobody. … (We) make sure everybody’s OK in the morning. Need something to eat? Need some water? We look after each other here.”
Juneau has been wrestling with a rising homeless population. Responding to complaints from downtown merchants, the Juneau Assembly passed an ordinance this winter banning camping on private property in the downtown core.
After it took effect in April, many homeless moved onto public property namely, Marine Park where cruise ships dock. Then in May, the city directed police to ticket anyone in the park after hours.
Kevin Howard and his friend David Waits recall officers telling homeless people in the park, “You guys get your s— out of here or otherwise it’s going in the trash,” Howard recalled.
“Somebody got a ticket, too,” Waits said. “We were like, ‘Aw, dude you can come down here and hang with us. We got our, you know, set up.’”
Howard added: “They threw everybody out of the doorways and threw everybody out of the park and now we’re all down here.”
Critics of the anti-camping ordinance had warned that a crackdown would just move the problem around.
“What happened is what we’ve seen happen in other communities that have similar ordinances is they’re displacing homeless individuals,” said Brian Wilson, executive director of the Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness. “If we displace these individuals again, I’m not really sure where they’re going to go.”
The city of Juneau is coming around to this reality. City Manager Rorie Watt said a new Assembly-appointed task force is looking for a new strategy.
“People genuinely don’t have somewhere to go,” Watt said. “So if people got trespassed repeatedly they would be moving around. And if a situation is quiet and not causing issues that likely could be better than a lot of alternatives if those people got moved along.”
Juneau police won’t move on the camp without a trespassing complaint from the landowner. In this case that’s the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.
Wyn Menefee, deputy director of the trust’s land office, said the waterfront acreage is in the process of being sold to private developers. But for now there’s no plan to try and move the camp.
“If it were to get into a situation where it started in hindering the ability to make revenue off of the trust, we may have to do something further about it,” Menefee said. “But right now it hasn’t stopped us from doing what we intend to do with the parcel.”
About half of Juneau’s homeless population report suffering from mental illness. That’s according to a spring survey conducted by social workers who canvassed the community.
Brian Wilson said of the 96 unsheltered people that social workers interviewed, 45 people self-reported mental health issues or concerns.
“That’s typically an under-reported number as well,” Wilson said.
The irony of the mentally ill trespassing on Mental Health Trust Authority land is not lost on the organization.
“We’re actively engaged in the community on a number of different levels and probably target this population in one way or the other,” said Steve Williams, the authority’s chief of operations.
One of the projects the trust is helping fund is the 32-unit Juneau Housing First slated to open this summer.
“The folks that we’re seeing down at the camp are candidates for Housing First interventions,” Brian Wilson said, “but at the current state of our capacity, we don’t have that here locally. We need a lot more units.”
The city and the trust authority have received at least one complaint from the public concerned about health and sanitation. That will inevitably be an issue if the camp remains here long term.
David Waits said there’s a sense of pride about making the best out of what little you have.
“It doesn’t matter how much money you make or how much you have or anything else,” Waits said. “We’re all common people. I’m a Lakota Sioux Indian and we believe everybody’s related. Nobody’s higher or lower than the next person.”
So with few options available for Juneau’s homeless population, it appears a cluster of tents on the edge of town has become the status quo.
Editor’s note: KTOO’s building sits on land leased from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. KTOO has also applied for and received occasional grants for special reporting projects from the authority.
