An Anchorage Parks and Recreation employee with Healthy Spaces picks up trash around a encampment in a vacant lot next to Cuddy Family Midtown Park on May 9, 2023. The crews were visiting known encampments twice a week. Drug paraphernalia is common.
Zaletel, who is also the vice chair of the Assembly, said being clearer about where camps will and won’t be tolerated will make outreach and education easier.“We’ll have a map handy that says, ‘Hey, this is where you will have the least amount of trouble if you set up camp here. These are no-go zones, please do not set up here,’” Johnson said. “And establishing that relationship prior to a majority of shelter letting out so that people know where they can go in town and not have issues.
“What we often see, and we’ve seen before particularly on Third Avenue, is that if you are able to go to shelter and you are in shelter and you want to leave shelter to attend to your appointments or anything else, if camping is right there, and large encampments in particular, you are inundated,” she said.
At its peak this winter, the city paid for more than 600 people a night to have a safe place to sleep. Johnson said some pieces of that system are already scaling down, with a complete closure scheduled for May 31. All together, she expects about 900 people to go unsheltered in Anchorage this summer.