On the heels of a summer when 12 homeless people have died on Anchorage streets, one group says the solution to the problem is a tent city.

More than 300 people in Anchorage call a tent home and with their campsites spread all over town. One organization is now encouraging the city to move all of them into one designated spot where it can be legal.

Close to 40 people call a section of woods near Merrill Field home but the city says every one of them is breaking the law.

Ed O'Neil's organization, called the Anchorage Responsible Beverage Retailer's Association tries to help out the homeless population in Anchorage. "This is street people, some of them are inebriants and some people are just looking for a leg up and a lot of them have work during the day," said O'Neil.

Out of the 47 years living in Alaska, Deborah Lan Chaffin spent half of that time on the streets and now she is in a tent city, "I just moved here, but I used to be up ridge."

Dianne Ingle, the director of the MUNI's Department and Health and Human Services said today's tour through a tent city near Merrill Field, was not an easy one. "I do think it's hard from a humanitarian stand point. It's a hard thing for me to see, you put yourself in that situation and it's a hard sobering thing."

But it is also not an easy problem to fix. "Concerns about liability, the city has some concerns on the impacts on neighborhood," said Ingle.

A new law sprang

Advertisement
up a couple months ago that allows police to remove a homeless person in a tent and they have to be gone within 20 minutes. If they are not, there is a 12 hour warning.

According to O'Neil, the preliminary plan to create a legalized "tent city" would include, "the ones that we feel that will behave themselves could come here. You know, and then it would be permitted and would pay whatever they can afford to stay as well."

But according to the city, it is still far away from reaching a solution like that. "At this point, I am not prepared to say there is anything we would consider but I think we definitely have concerns about camps and how they are to be operated with safety and liability, but certainly we want to hear from a wide variety of community partners," said Ingle.

The city says it will have a workforce meeting on Anchorage's homeless situation in early October with shelters, groups like ARBRA and policy makers. The city says a plan like this is not expected by this winter.

To contact the Newsroom, call 907-274-1111.