Everett Johnson only gets three or four hours of sleep per night.
Johnson has been living on the street in Juneau since 2012, and he’s gotten used to sleeping on cold cement, particularly at Marine Park near the cruise ship dock. That’s where he stood Tuesday afternoon, clutching his cup of coffee and carrying his sleeping bag on his back.
Oftentimes it’s “ornery, rowdy people,” who wake him in the middle of the night, but recently, the Juneau Police Department has been waking him.
“First, they give us a little list saying where we can and cannot sleep, and Marine Park is one of them that we can sleep at,” Johnson said, “and what does JPD do? They come around and kick us out.”
JPD has recently been stricter about enforcing the hours at Marine Park, which the City and Borough of Juneau owns. The official hours say the park is closed from midnight to 7 a.m., but starting in mid-April, JPD wasn’t enforcing those hours. Starting May 18, JPD Public Information Officer Lt. David Campbell said, that policy changed. He said he wasn’t sure where that order came from, but the police have been enforcing both the hours and an ordinance that forbids “illegal occupancy or use,” which JPD interpreted as forbidding using tents to stay in the park.
Johnson is one of those, and said it’s been frustrating to see the police department and the city constantly changing their mind about how to respond to the rising number of homeless in town. His friend Chawn Summerall, who lives at the Gastineau Human Services Sober Living facility in Lemon Creek since getting out of prison in December, spends a good deal of time at Marine Park and is also losing patience with the city’s response.
“One week it’s fine,” Summerall said of sleeping in Marine Park, “and then the next week it’s, ‘No, you can’t. Here’s your ticket.’”
‘A coordinated approach’
Across the street from Marine Park at City Hall, the CBJ Committee of the Whole (comprised of the CBJ Assembly members) met Monday night, and one of the topics on the agenda was developing a clearer vision for addressing homelessness.
Earlier that day, the two co-chairs of the Juneau Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, Mandy Cole and Gus Marks, had submitted a letter to the Assembly asking for the city to develop “a coordinated approach to dealing with homelessness in Juneau.” One of the requests in the letter was for the CBJ to form some kind of committee to help with this coordination.
It didn’t take long for the committee to agree, voting unanimously to form a five-person task force.
This task force includes City Manager Rorie Watt, Chief Housing Officer Scott Ciambor and Assembly members Maria Gladziszewski, Norton Gregory and Debbie White (who will serve as the chair). The group will meet regularly with the JCHH — which is comprised of 29 local organizations — to discuss strategies for addressing the needs of the homeless.
Watt in particular has been vocal about the city needing to take action, and didn’t pull any punches as he criticized the city for being too reactionary on its policies toward homelessness.
That approach has not been garnering goodwill in the community, and Watt argued that the best way to tackle these problems is working in conjunction with community members instead of the CBJ rushing to decisions on its own.
“I think that the goal is that community support,” Watt said, “and to not get what we’re currently doing, which I think, quite frankly, is reacting and then getting criticized and reacting and getting criticized. I think we’re in the wrong decision-making arena.”
A complex issue
Now, the members of the task force are looking to develop a plan and start moving forward.
Prior to Monday’s meeting, Watt suggested in a memo to the Committee of the Whole that Ciambor be heavily involved in addressing the homeless issue due to his extensive experience in the field. Ciambor worked for the Alaska Mental Health Board and the Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, as well as United Way and the Juneau Economic Development Council.
Ciambor has also been involved with the Housing First initiative, which Watt pointed to as an example of how the process should work. Housing First, a 32-unit facility to care for chronic inebriates that opens in July, has received overwhelming support both from the community and the CBJ. The CBJ Assembly approved a $1.2 million grant for the project earlier this month to ensure that it had enough funding to open.
[Housing First facility nearly finished, set to open in July]
With the community and city working in conjunction on the Housing First project, Watt said, it became a reality and soon will play a role in helping those on the street who are suffering with addiction.
As pointed out in Cole and Marks’ letter, the city has talked quite a bit of having an open dialogue about homelessness and housing in Juneau. Now, the city has a group that can do that along with the various local organizations, and Ciambor is looking forward to getting it off the ground.
“Homelessness is pretty complex and involves a lot of the different organizations,” Ciambor said, “so I think adding some structure and coordination to the community dialogue is a role I can play and I’m excited about it.”
In Marine Park, Johnson wasn’t so hopeful. On the side of his faded cap, he had written “I (heart) pretty Lisa,” a reference to his daughter. She’s also “in the same boat,” out on the street, he said, and two years ago, Johnson’s wife Macaria Wallace died under a bridge downtown.
There still aren’t reliable places for those on the streets to go, as the Glory Hole fills up and the Thane Campground (which the city opens up each spring in part to give the homeless an option) is a walk south of downtown. For now, Johnson and those alongside him are finding places wherever they can, for as long as they can.
“Right now we’re all scattered,” Johnson said. “We’re all scattered around downtown Juneau.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com or 523-2271.
Juneau’s homeless population has moved from the doorways of South Franklin Street to Marine Park after the Assembly passed a no-camping ordinance earlier this year. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire)
