The Anchorage Assembly voted 7-5 to criminalize homeless camping and building structures near schools, trails and busy roads on Tuesday, creating a patchwork that critics say will leave the city’s unhoused population with few acceptable places to sleep.
The ordinance makes it a Class A misdemeanor for anyone to camp or build a structure within 500 feet of schools, playgrounds and daycares, and within 200 feet of trails, busy streets and railroads. While backers said the measure was an important public safety measure to address entrenched camps, others warned that it would do little to address the city’s issues and, in many ways, would only worsen the city’s struggles.
According to maps created by the city, the prohibited zones for camping would encompass much of Anchorage, particularly around the Chester Creek and Campbell Creek trail systems. Supporters of the measure said that it was an important step in reclaiming the city’s outdoor recreation and restoring public safety.
“This ordinance does not set out to solve homelessness,” said Assembly member Yarrow Silvers, who co-sponsored the legislation backed by Mayor Suzanne LaFrance. “It’s not going to build a single shelter bed. It’s not going to increase treatment capacity or hand a single person a set of keys to housing; one should not pretend otherwise. What it does do is it addresses something that is just as real and just as urgent — public safety.”
Silvers stressed that while the city has tried to take a compassionate approach to homelessness, it ignores the “burden” felt by people whose neighborhoods and trail systems have been filled with encampments.
“This ordinance sets some basic standards: no camping near schools, no tents on playgrounds, and not along busy trails or waterways,” she said. “These are not radical positions. They are practical ones, rooted in the simple belief that public spaces should be safe for anyone who uses them.”
Silvers was joined by Assembly members Zac Johnson, Daniel Volland, Scott Myers, Keith McCormick, Kameron Perez-Verdia and Jared Goecker in passing the measure.
The five assembly members to vote against the measure — Christopher Constant, Anna Brawley, Erin Baldwin Day, George Martinez and Felix Rivera — argued that, given the lack of housing, shelters and substance abuse treatment, the measure would only serve to shuffle people out of wealthier areas of the city and concentrate them in poorer areas of the city that have traditionally been hotspots of homeless camping.
During the debate, several members asked the administration to identify where it would be acceptable for unhoused people to sleep under the new rules, but there was little clarity.
“What this ordinance does is it asks us to identify criminalized areas, special areas, but it turns a completely blind eye to the fact that there is no legal place for folks who are unsheltered,” said Assembly member Baldwin Day. “It doesn’t exist. So while we may say that we’re not criminalizing homelessness, neither are we saying here are the definitive spaces where if you do not own a home, you can legally go. I have a real issue with the suggestion that moving desperate people around our city makes us safer.”
And while the city officials said the expectation is to only use criminal charges sparingly, relying mostly on voluntary compliance with police orders to move along, several critics were skeptical. Baldwin Day said it seemed like they were criminalizing poverty.
“We still have not answered the question of where it is permissible for people who do not have a home to live,” she said. “And I, as a policymaker, am unwilling to criminalize poverty, addiction and mental health disorders from this dais. You can say that that’s not being attuned to public safety, but I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive.”
Anchorage Assembly Chair Constant, who attempted to add a provision that would automatically sunset the law after two years, said he feared the measure would ultimately reinforce the disparities between the rich and the poor by essentially catering to the comfort of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
“What will inevitably happen with a law like this is that there will be certain neighborhoods that get rapid abatement and quick removal,” said Assembly Chair Constant, “but they will have to go somewhere. And if you look at this map, there’s really nowhere. So they’re going to go somewhere illegal. And that place is going to be Mountain View. That place is going to be Fairview. That place is going to be the corners of Midtown. That place is going to be Russian Jack, and that place is going to be North Star. That’s just how this city works. That’s where poor people live, that’s where they belong, and that’s where we’re going to keep them. That’s what this law does.”
The law goes into effect next week.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
