The police and social service providers say Anchorage has as many as 400 people they call “chronic public inebriates,” with up to 25 percent of them regarded as the most difficult cases. This year, after the deaths of at least 13 homeless people since the spring, there has been a widespread sense that the city’s response has been inadequate and must change.
The new mayor, Dan Sullivan, a Republican, has created a staff position and a task force devoted to addressing homelessness. The police recently gained the authority to dismantle homeless encampments with just 12 hours’ notice. Citizen groups are patrolling parks where homeless camps have been the site of rapes and other violence. But in perhaps the biggest and most controversial break from how the city has handled the problem in the past, a Salvation Army detoxification and alcohol abuse treatment center has begun accepting chronic inebriates who have been taken there essentially by force.With $1.2 million in new state financing pushed through by one of Alaska’s more liberal Democrats, State Senator Johnny Ellis of Anchorage, the facility, the Clitheroe Center, is accepting people committed under a state law, Title 47. Under the law, a judge can order people into secure treatment for 30 days, and potentially for months, if the police, a doctor or family members convince the judge that the person’s abuse of alcohol has made them a threat to themselves and others. The person does not need to have committed a crime.“Ten years ago, there would have been a community outcry that Johnny Ellis is locking up people with the disease of addiction,” Mr. Ellis said. “ ‘How can he do that and say he’s still a progressive?’ ” (He can't.)
Now, Mr. Ellis said, the problem has increased so much “that for various motivations people are saying let’s try something new.” He added, “The people dropping dead during the summertime really got this community paying attention.”Before I even start shoveling through this pile of shit I have to admit that the problem of homeless people walking around drunk in public and dying around Anchorage is older than I am. I cannot remember a time when I did not see native Alaskans sprawled out in city parks passed out, or saw them asking bystanders for money. Sadly it is as Alaskan as seeing moose walking across our neighborhood streets.
And I am well aware that Anchorage Mayors in the past have made attempts to solve this problem. During his two terms from 1981 to 1987, Mayor Tony Knowles closed down a number of seedy bars along Fourth Avenue, where public intoxication was a daily occurrence. Sadly this essentially moved the problem from downtown to midtown.
Mayor Tom Fink fared no better.
A Blue Ribbon Panel in 1980, appointed by then Mayor Tom Fink, described the problem of public inebriates as “intolerable”. They went on to call for more aggressive law enforcement, and a process to help reduce the visibility of the problem in Anchorage. They also pointed out that the services provided should be “minimal and humanitarian”, and that treatment opportunities should be available to those who want them.And as we now know the problem did NOT get better, in fact it worsened.
From a 2007 "
Program Update for the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority":
Current estimates put the serious chronic public inebriate population at 200 – 250. An August 31, 2005 UAA/Behavioral Health Research Services (UAA/BHRS) report that considered data between 1997 and 2005 pointed out that “approximately 150 individuals account for nearly 60% of the total number of visits” to the (
Community Service Patrol)
Transfer Station. It is worth noting that, based on our current Top 10 & Top 50 listings, that the “serious” number is more like 75 - 100 individuals who account for that 60%. While this number remains somewhat of a moving target, it does make clear the fact that a very large part of our problem is brought on by a very small group of people. Until we find a way to keep this small group from “making their problem our problem” they will continue to chip away at our resources in an extremely disproportionate manor. It is also important to remember that this group, to a large degree, ignores, refuses, or in fact runs away from any treatment opportunities that we currently offer.
The UAA report went on to point out some of the demographics of our clients. Approximately 90% of the clients using the Transfer Station are Alaska Native, which is disproportionate relative to 7% of the city’s total population which is Alaska Native. When you consider only the top 10 or top 50 users, you find that nearly 100% are Alaska Native. Men also account for 70% of the clients, and 63% are between 35 and 54 years of age.Part of the problem is that more and more Alaska Natives are moving into Anchorage from rural areas with very few prospects and a lack of the kind of educational background or employment history that makes them competitive in the urban job market. Though there is an effort to
change that.
In the villages they have few job opportunities, live in
sub-standard housing, and due to the merciless restrictions placed on their ability to live their subsistence lifestyle (Though it looks like the
Obama administration might be working toward fixing that.), have nothing to take their minds off of their difficulties. Which leads to chronic alcoholism and substance abuse.
Multiply that with the fact that many villagers damn near
died last winter, and it is not hard to understand why they are ending up on our street corners and in homeless camps throughout our city.
But
razing the homeless camps that spring up, right before winter hits, is certainly not going to save lives or
solve this problem.
"If our goal really is to stop people from camping out, is taking their sleeping bag going to do that or is it simply going to mean we're going to have an extra five or six that die of exposure this year?" said the Rev. Michael Burke, rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church on Tudor Road.And neither is
forcing them into overcrowded treatment facilities and
taking their stuff. (I cannot help but think that if these were camps filled with homeless white people that the approach to the problem would be significantly different.)
Believe it or not, and you will rarely hear me say this, I have sympathy for Mayor Dan Sullivan (and to a lesser degree State Senator Johnny Ellis). This is a REAL problem that affects, not just the homeless, but the business leaders and residents of this city. I get it, it sucks! But what the mayor is doing will not solve anything!
Oh it may make some of his business buddies happy, and it will get people off of his back for not addressing the problem at all, but it will not make one bit of difference in the long run. It just won't.
You see forcing a person into a treatment facility only works if they can continue to receive treatment on an out-patient basis afterward. In other words if they go right back to being homeless, jobless, and living on the streets, they will have NO reason to live a life of sobriety. Without a soft place to land after going through the pain of detoxification and the humiliation of being locked up, how do you help a person make a healthy choice for their future?
This is just a big show with very little value except the headlines it garners and the business leaders it mollifies. But the homeless camps that are being destroyed will simply crop up someplace else, and the inebriates in treatment right now will be out stumbling along our city streets in no time at all.
The problem is too big for this mayor, or to be fair, ANY mayor. It is statewide issue, not a city issue. It is in fact Governor Parnell's problem. Which actually IS a problem because, much like Dan Sullivan, he also seems to see it as a
law enforcement issue.
This is not an issue of more enforcement. It is an issue of respect.
The natives of Alaska are among the most resilient,
self reliant people on the planet. They have not only survived, but prospered, in a climate so profoundly dangerous that in the dead of winter it can kill a man in a matter of minutes. And they did that without benefit of electricity, indoor plumbing, gas stoves, firearms, or even a neighborhood McDonalds. They did it when there were no roads or airplanes to bring them supplies, without doctors and medicine close by, and without telephones or radios to maintain communication.
They did it by understanding and respecting their environment in ways that Caucasians never will. You see the Alaskan natives did not change Alaska to fit their idea of what it should be. They learned to adapt to their environment until they became part of it.
They did not "own" property. They did not pave over the tundra, or raze whole forests to build a subdivision. They honored the animals they hunted, and which sacrificed their lives to feed their families back in the village, and danced to honor their spirit. They never sought to dominate the world around them, only to exist among the other creatures that called this land their home.
The Europeans who came here called that "savage", and labeled them "primitive". And that is still the way that many whites see them today.
The majority of Alaskan natives have assimilated well to a culture that is not of their own making and that they did not ask to join. They had it thrust upon them and were punished by the government for speaking their own language and attempting to preserve their way of life. (You can learn much more about this travesty by watching the film "
For the Rights of All" when it is shown on PBS in November. I saw it at the
AFN convention and was moved to tears.)
The problem of public inebriates and homelessness in Anchorage will not be solved until either the people in the villages have REAL job opportunities, or their right to live their subsistence lifestyle is fully restored to them, which means that
by-catch does not steal the fish from their freezers and their ability to hunt is not limited to government regulated hunting seasons.
It is too late to undo the damage that the Europeans have done to the native culture in the last 200+ years, but we can start to make amends by respecting them enough to treat the reason (no jobs, lack of direction) behind their incredibly high rate of alcoholism rather than the symptom (homelessness, public drunkenness).
And while they are in our fair city perhaps we could help finance some additional short term shelters for these desperate people rather than to destroy the only homes they have and throw away everything they have in the world. These are human beings in pain, not sheep to be rounded up and herded out of the public line of sight.
Winter will soon be here, and if nobody does anything substantial about this problem there will be more deaths from exposure than in any other year in the past. Count on it.
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