OPINION: Abating more encampments won’t solve our challenges

Hundreds of residents live without appropriate shelter in Anchorage, often sheltering themselves in tents or vehicles, often in groups forming “encampments” on public land. Conditions at such sites can become dire, as they had along Fairbanks Street in Midtown even before the shooting death there a week ago.

Fortunately, Anchorage has made strides in recent years to meet more of this population’s needs. Unfortunately, interventions to date have been incomplete, sporadic, and tentative. As a consequence, frustration remains widespread.

Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson — which appears to give cities like Anchorage more latitude to abate encampments — has not handed the Municipality the tool it needs to resolve this challenge. How could it? Abating one encampment so that others may grow fails to address root causes and overall effects. Meaningful responses to this challenge will not turn on whether a constitutional violation has occurred.

Anchorage can do better than that.

Part of the challenge is that Anchorage Municipal Code makes it impossible for someone to be unhoused and unsheltered without committing the crime of trespass and creating a public nuisance. That is, hundreds of residents violate the letter of the law every day simply by being alive in Anchorage. This offends basic dignity. And nothing in today’s decision relieves Anchorage of its obligation to remedy this offence, to answer the fundamental question that attends every abatement: “If not here, where I can I be without violating the law?”

In a hopeful sign, Mayor-elect Suzanne LaFrance appears to agree that this is untenable, that “at the end of the day, people have to have a place to go.” The incoming administration certainly has challenges before it, and encampments represent only one facet of the complex challenge of homelessness. And of course it’s up to the Assembly to fix the code to better reflect our community’s values. But the LaFrance administration has other options to help reduce uncertainty, relieve pressure, and improve conditions for Anchorage’s unsheltered residents — without being quick to pick up the cudgel of abatement, no matter how much lighter the Supreme Court may have made it.

Eric Glatt is an attorney representing people experiencing homelessness in Anchorage, including in ongoing litigation against the Municipality of Anchorage over prohibited campsite abatements.

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