Everett Johnson only gets three or four hours of sleep per night.<\/p>\n
Johnson has been living on the street in Juneau since 2012, and he\u2019s gotten used to sleeping on cold cement, particularly at Marine Park near the cruise ship dock. That\u2019s where he stood Tuesday afternoon, clutching his cup of coffee and carrying his sleeping bag on his back.<\/p>\n
Oftentimes it\u2019s \u201cornery, rowdy people,\u201d who wake him in the middle of the night, but recently, the Juneau Police Department has been waking him.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst, 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,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cand what does JPD do? They come around and kick us out.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t enforcing those hours. Starting May 18, JPD Public Information Officer Lt. David Campbell said, that policy changed. He said he wasn\u2019t sure where that order came from, but the police have been enforcing both the hours and an ordinance that forbids \u201cillegal occupancy or use,\u201d which JPD interpreted as forbidding using tents to stay in the park.<\/p>\n
Johnson is one of those, and said it\u2019s 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<\/a>. 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\u2019s response.<\/p>\n \u201cOne week it\u2019s fine,\u201d Summerall said of sleeping in Marine Park, \u201cand then the next week it\u2019s, \u2018No, you can\u2019t. Here\u2019s your ticket.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018A coordinated approach\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201ca coordinated approach to dealing with homelessness in Juneau.\u201d One of the requests in the letter was for the CBJ to form some kind of committee to help with this coordination.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for the committee to agree, voting unanimously to form a five-person task force.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 which is comprised of 29 local organizations \u2014 to discuss strategies for addressing the needs of the homeless.<\/p>\n Watt in particular has been vocal about the city needing to take action, and didn\u2019t pull any punches as he criticized the city for being too reactionary on its policies toward homelessness.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that the goal is that community support,\u201d Watt said, \u201cand to not get what we\u2019re currently doing, which I think, quite frankly, is reacting and then getting criticized and reacting and getting criticized. I think we\u2019re in the wrong decision-making arena.\u201d<\/p>\n A complex issue<\/span><\/p>\n Now, the members of the task force are looking to develop a plan and start moving forward.<\/p>\n Prior to Monday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n