Recently, five carloads of individuals stopped at East Third Avenue and Gambell Street at 11:30 a.m. on April 29 and distributed food and camping supplies to the squatter camps nearby. Please stop enabling! Instead, please follow the recommendations of the social services experts and give your supplies and money directly to organizations like the United Way, the Food Bank of Alaska, Bean’s Café, Brother Francis Shelter and others — organizations that are actually making a difference.
We understand that you think you are helping. But you’re not. We want to see these folks out of the camps, where they are being preyed upon by drug dealers and into safe shelter. There is shelter space and food for those that are willing to follow the rules. For those of us who live and work in East Downtown, the squatters are terrorizing us with increased crime, open drug deals, used needles, tossed-away clothes, broken liquor bottles, discarded food and public defecation. Empowering this behavior with your well-intentioned but terribly, terribly misguided handouts does more harm than good. Your gifts end up as our neighborhood trash.
— Jim Renkert
and 12 East Downtown business owners
Anchorage
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