Anchorage is at a crossroads. We’ve reached a degree of normalizing the sprawling, unauthorized encampments which have taken over lots of our public areas. They trigger severe hurt to each the neighborhoods they spring up in and to the campers themselves, who usually turn into trapped in cycles of dependancy and dysfunction. There isn’t a model of those camps that promotes well-being. They’re basically incompatible with wholesome lives and with a wholesome metropolis.
For too lengthy, neighborhoods and public areas have been taken over by encampments the place drug use is rampant, ladies are being trafficked in plain sight, persons are being murdered and harm, and our parks, meant for youngsters and households, are rendered unsafe. Anchorage’s timid, accommodating response to encampments isn’t mercy. It isn’t tolerance. It’s abandonment. And it has allowed this drawback to develop right into a disaster.
That’s why we launched AO 2025-74, an ordinance that clearly prohibits tenting on public property and makes such conduct a Class B misdemeanor. This ordinance empowers our metropolis to take swift, lawful motion to revive public order whereas upholding the due course of rights of people. This ordinance additionally provides the town the flexibility to divert individuals into obligatory rehab and therapy, a instrument desperately wanted to assist break the cycle of dependancy that has destroyed so many lives.
This isn’t about punishing individuals for being homeless. We would like companies and help to be accessible to those that will reap the benefits of them. That is about drawing a agency line towards the chaos unfolding in full view of all. That is about defending the susceptible — from residents afraid to let their kids stroll to high school, to the people being trafficked or slowly dying in tents, out of sight and out of hope. Failing to behave within the face of this rising disaster wouldn’t be compassionate; it could be merciless.
[News coverage: 3 Anchorage Assembly members propose criminal penalties for homeless camping]
We’ve crafted AO 2025-74 consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which confirmed that municipalities have the correct to control public areas. Our ordinance focuses on conduct, not standing. It isn’t unlawful to be homeless, however it’s now not acceptable to show our metropolis’s greenbelts, sidewalks and bus stops into websites of felony exercise and human distress.
Enforcement isn’t the enemy of compassion. In reality, it is step one in the direction of actual assist. No outreach crew can reach an setting the place lawlessness is tolerated. No detox mattress, housing program or shelter enlargement will make a dent if we proceed sending the message that something goes in Anchorage’s public areas.
We all know this ordinance gained’t remedy all the pieces in a single day. However we additionally know that the hands-off method adopted by the town up to now hasn’t labored. The outcome has been extra deaths, extra fires, extra violence, extra decay and a metropolis in decline. It’s time we acknowledge what everybody else sees plainly: this method has failed. We’d like a reset. AO 2025-74 is that reset.
Let’s cease pretending that tolerance of public tenting is kindness or appearing as if we will’t do something about it. We have to acknowledge the issue, take motion to repair it and begin constructing a greater, safer, and extra dignified Anchorage collectively.
The general public can have an opportunity to weigh in on this ordinance on the regular Assembly meeting at 6 pm on June 24 on the Loussac Library. We encourage everybody to point out up, converse out and assist us confront this problem with the seriousness it calls for.
Keith McCormick, Jared Goecker and Scott Myers are members of the Anchorage Meeting. McCormick represents South Anchorage, Girdwood and the Turnagain Arm space. Goecker and Myers characterize the Eagle River/Chugiak space.
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