The assembly of the Anchorage approves new criminal punishments for homeless camps

The assembly of the Anchorage on Tuesday evening approved 7: 5 for a new measure that adds criminal punishments for camping in public countries.

According to supporters, the move is one of many of the city to tackle homelessness.

However, critics in the meeting and members of the public contradict the indictment that it criminals the homelessness and is an inadequate solution to the problem.

The measure came from comprehensive revisions of the first proposal after hours of heated public testimonies in the past few weeks before giving the meeting at the regular meeting on Tuesday evening. Mayor Suzanne Lafrance proposed a modified version of the measure after a trio of meeting members initially introduced a broader camping ban in June.

“What we propose here is a balanced, targeted approach,” said Lafrance on Tuesday before the vote. “It is not sure that people camp in public locations. It is not healthy. It's not a solution.”

The version of the mayor of the measure is what ultimately passed.

It creates two sentences of new punishments in the city's penalty code.

The first determines a series of “protected premises”, including schools, day care, playgrounds, streams, streets, leisure routes and others. Camping within several hundred foot of these areas is prohibited, which means that a person is when they set up a tent or build a protection that risks the police who calls for an offense. According to the new regulation, punishments could be fine of up to 500 US dollars or time in prison.

“Our goal is intervention and conformity, no arrests,” said Lafrance.

The second piece of the measure makes it a crime if a person “knowingly uses the construction of a hard, hard, hard roof or hard structure of all kinds in public country. It also forbids that people bring a lot of building materials such as” SCHNCHOLZ, PALLES, PLEASTS, logs, bricks, bricks “, which could be used to build up improvised accommodations.

Proponents say that the new rules together are supposed to prevent the type of extensive, firmly anchored camps that have become common in recent years in recent years. Several members of the meeting mentioned the conviction of Camps in Davis Park in June, some of which have been there for years and hundreds of tons of ruins, materials and garbage that have been moved away from the public since then.

“There is an element of illegal camping in our community that has come out of control,” said Daniel Volland, who represents the district in the city center and voted for the measure. “Nobody has the right to occupy public land for an indefinite period. And there are places where camping is never acceptable.”

Volland said that a large part of the criticism of the regulation resulting in public statements framed them as an uncompassed and inappropriate instrument to combat the causes of homelessness. However, the new punishments are not the only tools that city leaders bring for the problem, he added and goes through a long list of expenditure and politics initiatives that have been carried out in recent years. It included the financing of the year -round animal shelter, more behavioral health programs, special police officers, residential programs and support for vehicle parking spaces overnight and tiny home pilot programs.

“Wherever I sit is every argument that we have not worked to fix the root, falls flat,” said Volland.

The resistance to the measure came from some of the most advanced members of the meeting and ranged from ideological arguments about concerns about implementation. Several members pointed out that the regulation portrays where people cannot camp or sleep, but not the people where they can go if they have no other options or whether all the protective beds of the city are full.

“We are considering an article here to offer compassion, even if resources are clearly not available in our community,” said Erin Baldwin Day, who represents the Midtown district. “We don't have the resources on the best days, we don't have the capacity.”

Even with more resources for people who want to get off the street, there are not always vacancies in accommodation or treatment programs that meet the needs of people, she said.

“We are faced with a understimating system,” said member Felix Rivera, also from Midtown.

Both together with the chairman Christopher Constant voted against the regulation, deputy chairman Anna Brawley from West Anchorage and member George Martinez from East Anchorage.

Within the debate, disagreement about what the city should do against people outdoors was often in camps that consistently reject the options for moving indoors. In the absence of a coherent guideline for the sanctioning of camping outdoors, the members said that the status quo had been lawless warehouse in the forest or in public packages for several years.

“The people who die in the forest is not a sympathy. It is neglected,” said Jared Goecker, who represents the district of Eagle River. “We can't do the same as if an open field is an apartment plan in July.”

The members added several minor changes to the mayor's version of the measure before they were approved.