The Midtown Anchorage camp where a man was killed is a place of despair and failure, neighbors say

The situation at a homeless encampment on a Midtown Anchorage street was already becoming dangerously desperate before a shooting broke out Saturday that left one man dead and another injured, neighbors say.

The encampment is hard to miss: A dense cluster of dozens of tents, RVs and other vehicles lines a block of Fairbanks Street between East 40th and 42nd Avenues, at the edge of the Home Depot on Tudor Road. The tents cover the sidewalk, and crowds of people mill up and down the block.

Local community leaders and business owners report overdoses, drugs, trash and a growing safety problem at the site. They say the area is a public health risk and want the city to dismantle the encampment and remove the vehicles and tents. They say they are frustrated and confused by the inaction.

“This is shocking,” said Kris Stoehner, chairman of the Midtown Community Council.

“I just don’t know why this was allowed,” she said. “But the other question is, where are people going? How do we treat people humanely?”

It’s not easy, says Alexis Johnson, the outgoing community homeless coordinator under Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration. The Fairbanks Street encampment exposes a poorly defined policy toward homeless encampments in vehicles, a problem widespread in West Coast cities like Portland and Seattle.

“This is one of the community’s blind spots,” she said.

A violent episode

Violence erupted at the Fairbanks Street warehouse early Saturday morning when two men showed up and robbed a man sitting in a car at gunpoint, according to an indictment filed in court. They came to buy fentanyl, the indictment says.

Keilen Reynolds and Dominick Santana are accused of firing 17 bullets into the densely populated camp, killing one man and wounding another. Farrel Suilua, 30, was killed. The other man, whose identity has not been released, was sitting in his tent when he was shot in the foot.

Reynolds and Santana are now charged with murder.

(Accusation: Gunmen fired into a crowded homeless camp in Anchorage, killing one person and injuring another)

On Tuesday morning, a white tent riddled with bullet holes could still be seen in the camp. The resident did not return after the shooting, a camp resident told a reporter and a photographer.

RVs, cars, trailers, tents and bicycles in various states of repair lined the block, encroaching on the street and covering the sidewalk. It was still possible to drive down Fairbanks Street, but only haltingly. A chained dog napped in the shade. “DO NOT KNOCK!” read a sign on the door of a large van.

One man said he knew Suilua, who was killed early Saturday morning. Did he still feel safe in the camp? He shrugged.

“It happens,” he said.

A recorded greeting to customers blared from a loudspeaker in the neighboring Home Depot. A security guard guarded the entrance to the hardware store just a few meters away, where the contractors could be picked up.

In the middle of Fairbanks Street, a man dressed in layers in the summer heat stood unsteadily on his feet, his eyes blank, and slowly leaned toward the ground.

“It’s very vague”

In the past, camping in Anchorage has been mostly in city parks and green spaces, said Johnson, the homeless coordinator. The city has used a legal process to clear tents under certain circumstances. When most people living in a tent are in vehicles – drivable or not – the rules are much more unclear, she said.

People living in vehicles on city streets enjoy different protections than people living in a tent in a park, Johnson said. Unoccupied and abandoned vehicles can be towed, but in most cases, vehicles in which someone lives cannot. That’s not the case under the current legal framework established by a 9th Circuit decision.

The city is “not protected by laws” to force people to move, Johnson said. And where should they move?

“It’s terribly defined in the code,” Johnson said. “It’s very vague.”

Anchorage police can prosecute right-of-way and Americans with Disabilities Act violations, including anything that impedes the use of a sidewalk or public right-of-way on the street, Johnson said.

So far, this does not appear to have happened at the Fairbanks Street warehouse.

An Anchorage Police Department public information officer did not respond to questions about why police did not enforce right-of-way or Americans with Disabilities Act laws on Fairbanks Street.

‘NOTHING HAS CHANGED’

Carol Fraser works for an ownership group that owns several Aspen hotels in Alaska and bought a vacant lot just east of Fairbanks Street two years ago for future development. After the Cuddy Park site was cleared of encampments in May, about 10 vehicles almost immediately drove the few blocks to Fairbanks Street, she said. Now that number has grown to about 75, she said.

“I want the city to enforce the law,” Fraser wrote. “There was a murder on the street a few days ago – and yet NOTHING HAS CHANGED.”

Fraser said she visited the location almost daily, was yelled at and threatened with a power drill, and witnessed drug deals and public defecation. There was theft at nearby stores, she said. The Home Depot store hired private security, an Atlanta-based company spokesman wrote in an email.

“The safety of our employees and customers is our top priority and we are investing additional resources to ensure they can work and shop safely in our stores,” the company said in a statement. “We also hope to work with the city and law enforcement to address these issues.”

What’s happening on Fairbanks Street is a growing public health problem, said Ana Fisk, president of Afognak Commercial Group, a subsidiary of Afognak Native Corp., which owns a nearby Brown Jug liquor store and an adjacent vacant lot. The site has accumulated trash and garbage, including used colostomy bags and hypodermic needles, she said. More people are moving in, exacerbating health and safety issues, she said.

“We have private security on site several times a day to ensure that the camps are located exclusively on public property,” Fisk wrote in an email. Recently, a private security guard working for Afognak saved a person’s life by performing CPR, she said.

“I was grateful for his quick action and presence,” she wrote.

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