OPINION: How do we define success when dealing with homelessness — and how do we get there?

While Anchorage joins the growing list of beleaguered cities across the nation grappling with a burgeoning homelessness problem, it is easy to ask just how much progress has been made here over the years.

What defines success? Can gains and failures be quantified? What has the long battle done to the city, and what is it likely to do in the long term? Are there any gains in dealing with the problem’s root causes: drug addiction; alcoholism; and, mental health problems? Different matrixes yield different conclusions.

While accurate numbers are hard to pin down, the city likely had only a few hundred homeless residents in the late 1970s and early 1980s, hidden in the city’s nooks and crannies. They hung on in the woods, alleys, doorways or Dumpsters, where at least one was crushed. There were, mind you, few incidents of people gathering on street corners to openly beg, or copulate, or relieve themselves as they do today. The homeless nearly were invisible, except to those whose job was to ensure they did not freeze. Too often, the system supposed to help them failed miserably.

On Jan. 23, 1986, 40-year-old Francis Trader from Emmonak died after sprawling in a gritty downtown alley next to a state office building for hours as temperatures hovered in the mid-to-low 20s. His death touched off a political maelstrom and a relentless drumbeat of media coverage for more than a year.

The city’s response was surprising, and angry. Then-Mayor Tony Knowles, eight years from becoming governor, quickly attacked the news coverage as inaccurate and a discriminatory rush to judgment. The facts cast doubt on all that. There were at least five telephone calls to police about Trader in an eight-hour span early on Jan. 23, city public safety officials said at the time. Police responded once. They roused Trader and told him to go to a nearby shelter, which reportedly was closed at that time of day. Trader - placed in police protective custody 11 times the previous year for his own safety - eventually was picked up by a Community Services Patrol van and taken to the Alaska Native Medical Center. Doctors said his core temperature was 82 degrees. He died of cardiac arrest. His death and an Alaska Supreme Court ruling that police who find incapacitated people must take them into custody led to new rules and procedures for first-responders.

Trader’s death made Anchorage’s homelessness a bright blip on the city’s radar, but has the situation improved as dealing with it has evolved into what the California Policy Center calls the Homeless Industrial Complex?

Anchorage has spent scores of millions addressing the chronic problems. Despite the growing expenditures, the city’s latest single point-in-time count — in January, when many homeless find arrangements indoors and are difficult to count — puts that number at more than 1,760. But data show, and good sense would indicate, there may be 3,000 or more in these post-pandemic times.

They are scattered in parks, greenbelts, empty spaces, parking lots and anyplace they can pitch a tent or set up a camp. Winter will make that behavior dicey. The George M. Sullivan arena, used last winter as a homeless shelter, closed May 1. Mayor Dave Bronson says it will reopen this fall for entertainment and sporting events, but not as a shelter.

Meanwhile, the city - now between a rock and a hard place - is busy spending truckloads of money refurbishing motels to provide low-income apartments and even toyed with the notion of buying airline tickets for homeless people so they can be homeless someplace else. The American Civil Liberties Union was unamused. Then there is the Assembly’s notion of spreading sanctioned homeless camps all over Anchorage or its dalliance with cockamamie zoning schemes to reduce the cost of housing.

All this as summer slips away. What will happen when winter arrives in a few weeks?

Not much, if history is any guide. Bronson, his administration and the Assembly have been tangled in one, long knock-down, drag-out political fight over homelessness since he took office. There is unlikely to be a “kumbaya” moment between these guys in the coming days before temperatures plunge. Too bad.

There are more homeless today in the city than ever before. There is more money being spent on them. There are daily drug- and booze-induced drunken shows on our city’s street corners. Nothing seems to have gotten all that much better in the past 30 or 40 years. Have any of the core problems really been addressed?

Despite the expenditures, despite any changes, despite our best efforts, you have to know there are more Francis Traders out there. We should asking: How many will there be in another 30 years?

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.