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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Business owners are taking action to help control interactions between homeless Anchorage residents and downtown patrons.
Many business owners say the presence of homeless Anchorage residents is driving away tourists and simply bad for business, which is why they’re working with the Anchorage Downtown Partnership to help manage the situation as a balancing act to maintain safety while showing human compassion. .
ADP workers who have direct contact with the homeless are called Safety Ambassadors. Safety ambassadors’ duties include waking up homeless people sleeping on the streets of downtown, calling the police if they don’t comply, and finding help for the homeless. Their work is not for everyone because it can be heartbreaking and dangerous at times.
Safety Ambassadors Ray Gilkey and Vander Blue start the day before daylight, hours before businesses open their doors.
“We go up and down 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th,” Gilkey. “We go around and pick up the homeless and help them when they need help.”
Gilkey has been in business for two years and sees all kinds of people on their luck.
“Some of them were sleeping in doorways, some of them were sleeping on the sidewalks,” Gilkey said.
Gilkey and Blue head to the Alaska Performing Arts Center, a place where homeless campers often seek shelter at night.
“Man here,” Gilkey hollers.
Gilkey and Blue climb the stairs and find two homeless Anchorage residents huddled together on the landing.
“Hey, you guys, it’s time to wake up,” Gilkey said to the couple, who remained covered under winter jackets.
“Time to get up. They’re going to open a shop.” Blue said as the couple began to wake up.
As they continued walking through downtown Anchorage, the Safety Ambassadors noticed another couple lying on flat cardboard boxes in the doorway of a business.
“They’re closing that door but they’re not using that door, so we wait 30 minutes and come back and pick them up,” Gilkey said, trying to show some sympathy for those. This situation. “No one likes to wake up in the morning…they really have nowhere to go. For some reason they don’t like going down to Sullivan.”
Sullivan Arena currently houses some of Anchorage’s homeless residents, but not all choose to stay there. Social workers say the majority of the homeless population is dealing with substance abuse issues or mental health problems and doesn’t always know what to do or where to turn for help, while others don’t seek the help.
“A lot of times they don’t want to get up and we have to call the police when they don’t want to get up, sometimes they want to try to fight,” says Gilkey.
“A lot of times we see someone doing something like this, a tourist or something, we come over and try to calm them down, stop them and call the police,” Gilkey said.
Walking near the old courthouse, a homeless man approaches Gilkey and Blue for help. He introduced himself as Derek Angie. When asked what he was struggling with, Angie replied, “I don’t know, it’s just me, I think I have a mental illness, that’s what I think.”
“Somebody said they wanted to sit down here and talk to somebody,” Gilkey said, getting into the controller’s radio. He said he wanted, he wanted some kind of, he wanted to talk to someone about help, help in his life.
Soon after, a service worker contacted Angie to provide instructions and resources that might help with the situation.
ADP says its goal is to strike a balance between keeping Anchorage’s homeless off the streets while trying to protect their dignity and safety. ADP is hired and paid by local business owners.
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