Like many of you, I recently received an Anchorage End of Year Progress Report, “tracking the city’s performance across top issues including homelessness, public safety, housing, and good government,” paid for by the nondescript Commonsense Alaska Fund. It attempts to paint a rosy picture of life in Anchorage and the blessings of “good government” under our current mayor, Suzanne LaFrance.
This is a divorce from reality. Since my experience of life in Anchorage does not line up with the bar graphs comparing the LaFrance and “previous administration” found in the glowing report, I’m writing my own “Regress Report.” Neither government nor public safety exist as ends in themselves. So, I will focus on the two things that public safety exists to protect: freedom of worship and family homes and activities.
FREEDOM OF WORSHIP GRADE: F
I attend church at Holy Family in downtown Anchorage, a block from City Hall and the downtown bus stop. Two days after Christmas, I received the Mayor’s Progress Report, which gushes over the city’s increased public safety. The day before, our pastor greeted us with news that our church had, once again, been broken into on Christmas Day. A desperate man smashed through the window into the men’s bathroom and went into the church to sleep. He was still there when the police came to arrest him. This was the second time during Christmas week the police were called to respond to an incident at the Old Cathedral.
Since the Progress Report boasts that “Crime (is) Down in Town Square,” I am forced to conclude that it has only been pushed down the block. This comports with my experience. When I arrive to drop off or pick up my kids from altar servers’ practice, choir practice or youth nights, there are usually homeless people meandering in the private lot or the public alleyway, sometimes drinking, always loitering. A group of dedicated parishioners has been organized to keep the area safe during weekday and weekend Masses, and the parish is footing the bill – $2,250mo./$27,000 a year – to pay for night security. There have been over 50 incidents of break-ins, vandalism and harassment on Holy Family property during the last year, including urination and defecation, stealing, smashing the window of St. Paul’s Corner bookstore, lewd public behavior (fornication on the sidewalk in front of St. Paul’s Corner) and a rock thrown through one of our antique stained glass windows. This, apparently, is progress! Or at least the fruit of progressive policy.
A few months ago, it was difficult to find a safe park in Anchorage. Now, it’s difficult to attend activities at my church and to feel safe walking in my neighborhood.
The situation is reminiscent of the untenable Inlet Inn 10 years ago, which was so bad that Mayor Berkowitz pulled it down as a nuisance. How can Mayor LaFrance’s administration and our Assembly Members fail to see the parade of shiftless souls who congregate around City Hall and the downtown bus stop, drinking openly, staggering into the streets, and passing out on the sidewalks
Does the Mayor’s team go to work every day on Sixth Avenue and walk out at 5 p.m.? Do they see the evidence of their policies literally surrounding the building and honestly believe they have improved the city of Anchorage? Here I thought that “increased public safety” meant less criminal activity and more freedom of worship. So much for “Commonsense Alaska.”
FAMILY HOMES AND ACTIVITIES GRADE: F
Last June, I wrote about the state of our parks, often rendered unsuitable for use by our families due to vagrancy and unchecked, roaming drunkards. As the summer of 2025 progressed, I became more dismayed to see similar patterns of behavior and squalor pop up in my neighborhood – six miles southeast of downtown Anchorage, near Abbott Road.
The last few months have featured people passed out at the bus stop on Dowling and 68th, blanketed individuals pushing grocery carts two miles from the nearest grocery store, encampments on an abandoned property, and persons in distress or on drugs hurrying down residential sidewalks – one in a t-shirt, smoking a cigarette and swinging a large-handled ax on an early summer evening.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
My kids used to go for a run in our neighborhood. I won’t send them anymore, after watching a strung-out young man hold himself, rocking back and forth in a white blanket, for nearly three hours on the sidewalk kitty corner to our home this summer. I can’t trust the trails on the green belts either.
Moose run-ins were once the most worrisome aspects of taking a neighborhood walk; now I wonder if myself or my kids will run into another disheveled person on his hands and knees, pawing the grass for cigarette butts or some lost article alongside his grocery cart of belongings. Or worse.
Like moose who detest deep snow, vagrancy has revealed itself further during the past few winter months. Random discarded articles have been showing up along the sidewalks and driveways in our neighborhood: a red pillow stashed under a spruce tree, a cracked iPad at the base of a telephone pole, a pink blanket and outdoor mat lying in the snow one morning across the street from our house, abandoned grocery carts near a church and a municipal snow disposal site at the corner of Spruce and E 64th. This is Mayor LaFrance’s Anchorage.
OVERALL GRADE: REGRESS
A few months ago, it was difficult to find a safe park in Anchorage. Now, it’s difficult to attend activities at my church and to feel safe walking in my neighborhood. We moved into our home nine years ago, and our neighborhood wasn’t like this. Things are rapidly deteriorating in my zip code, and I often wonder how far up Hillside the vagrant creep must go before more people take notice and say, “Enough is enough.”
But what should be done? Find out in Part II.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
25 Comments
We subscribe to LexisNexis and the weekly reports over the last year and a half are increasingly disturbing – every manner of crime within a mile (usually 2 blocks), an increase in discarded personal items and stolen shopping carts. At -6° , 2 women wrapped in blankets (1 in a wheelchair) – these women were over 60. Old Seward & Dimond. This town, this Woke regressive Assembly (less 3 common sense Conservatives) are getting their orders from Portland. No doubt. Look at the muni seal selection, chosen 2 months before the “survey”.
It’s a systematic plan for ruination.
How sad to see the once safe city that allowed a 15 year old girl to walk downtown to the library or to the 4th Avenue Theater at night without being bothered or afraid to the outhouse (SH) it has become.
We also attended Holy Family when we lived in Anchorage. We have since moved out of the city. Between vagrants having sex at the public library to some unknown cretin puking in our mailbox, we have had enough. I was born and raised in Anchorage but that city is long gone, drowning under the weight of taxes and degenerates, some of whom “serve” on the Assembly. Congratulations, all of you Lower 48 Californicators, you win. Have fun in the hell you have created.
“……… “Crime (is) Down in Town Square,” I am forced to conclude that it has only been pushed down the block………..”
This is because Alaska’s jails and prisons are at capacity. So are homeless shelters, but many of these criminals refuse to stay in shelters, even in sub-zero cold, because they’re confronted if intoxicated. They need shelter, and we need them sheltered. Just one year’s PFD appropriation can build another Goose Creek Prison, or expand the existing prison by 100 beds. If they won’t go to shelters because they refuse to stop intoxicating themselves, put them in a shelter: jail.
super idea — maybe – just maybe so many of the bleeding hearts are starting to realize we have to do something like the camp idea. Civil liberties will be all over this so get ready for that fight.
Yeah it would be nice if something could be done at the State level.
I am downtown every day and have seen firsthand the effects of homelessness, as well as what I believe to be the misguided priorities of the current administration. This summer, during an international summit attended by members of the global press, no meaningful action was taken to address conditions downtown. In fact, during that period, a sexual assault occurred in broad daylight at approximately 11:30 a.m.
By contrast, just two months later during AFN, there was not a single unhoused individual visible downtown. When I asked a friend who is a police officer about the sudden change, he explained that directives had come from senior leadership instructing officers to aggressively discourage unhoused individuals from congregating or residing downtown during AFN. Once the event concluded, conditions returned to their previous state.
I think someone breaking into a church for basic sanitation and a warm place to sleep is a sign of absolute desperation among people in your community, Teresa, not a problem with freedom of worship. I’d to call attention first to the extraordinary lack of awareness and empathy in your writing, and then encourage you to get involved with solving the homelessness crisis in Anchorage so that your children enjoy a future where all are welcome into places of worship, if they choose, regardless of whether the community deprives of basic sanitation and access to healthcare. They’re people too, clearly searching for help, and if they only ever see police or liars when moving toward beacons of hope disguising morally depraved social policy, I guess you’ll always find some horror to measure yourself against.
And you have done what, exactly, yourself?
Mayor Bronson wanted to build a Homeless shelter and navigation center for the homeless that would house Hundreds of beds but instead we got 32 tiny homes for 32 people without facilities in them. All because the assembly didn’t like the plan or they received no kickbacks. We need an independent audit of Anchorage finances and spending and of all those in office bank accounts.
oh things are getting much quieter in the streets un the past six months, I don’t think you really are outside much if you hadn’t noticed. the abatement of canps have been quite effective. So your complaining for no reason just an taking a more authoritarian grip on those less fortunate than you.
Maybe in your area, but certainly not downtown. Abatement just pushes the degenerates into other neighborhoods.
Well said Theresa
All sad but true.
It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better unfortunately.
So, how do these destructive dipsticks keep getting selected for office? Maybe eliminating this Ranked Choice BS might be a good start. We are watching the planned destruction of these United States aided by the people we supposedly elect to office. It’s a serious situation and we are bitching around the edges. These traitors don’t care about our bitching. They’re on board with us being taken down. Incompetence and ignorance just doesn’t cover this degree of betrayal.
Fortunately Anchorage does not currently use Rank Choice Voting but they do use mail in ballots which is by far worse than RCV. The old saying goes its not who votes but who controls the vote counting. I do not live in Anchorage proper but do live in the mostly conservative district outside of Anchorage proper but we only have two of the nine on the Assembly and routinely get overridden by the degenerates on the Assembly. I would challenge any of these seven to a debate about the true state of Anchorage because most of them on the Assembly couldn’t run a lemonade stand without bankrupting or demolishing it in the name progressivism.
Exactly, people need to be talking about the elections because there being manipulated. The voting machines can be hacked. Douglas Frank proved that in a court of law but the judge turned a blind eye to it so then he decided to travel and go straight to the people. We just had a zoom meeting here in FBKS talking about the evidence of elections being tainted just like our last Borough election. If you’d like to hear the recording ask former assemblyman Barbara Haney.
Extreme gaslighting funded by public dollars. Pretty dispicable. In the 80’s I used to be able to run, at night after work all along the Chester creek bike trail without incident. I would not do that now in broad daylight.
Anchorage is a bit of a train wreck. If it gets to the point that Portland reached years ago, where Republicans cannot get elected, it will reach new lows. Unfortunately, I think Anchorage is close to that tipping point.
Anchorage has surpassed that point.
Did Anchorage citizens not give up all claims to freedom of worship when they allowed Covid code enforcers to close their churches because worshippers were more afraid of losing their stuff than they were of losing their churches?
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For $27K, Church leaders can’t hire a public-relations firm and embarrass the regime into cleaning up the neighborhood?
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The Catholic Social Services non-profit worth nearly $40 million can’t or won’t help?
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People take notice and say, “Enough is enough.” and City officials, already well protected from angry voters by FUBAR’d grand jury and election systems, will quake in fear and do what, exactly?
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Wouldn’t be surprised, or dismayed, to find out how far up Hillside, or anywhere else, the vagrant creep(s) –will be allowed– to go before angry, resourceful residents team up and run them off or relocate them just like they do with other dangerous, unwelcome fauna.
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Hillside, you say? Want to bet how many vagrant creep(s) set up camp on Afghan Hill, the high-rent district just east of South Goldenview, where they fly the Afghan flag but not America’s flag? Don’t you think the answer to that question provides a strong, stark clue about “what should be done”?
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Here’s hoping Part II cuts to the chase: talk about what -can- be done in light of Eaglexit, the corrupted grand-jury system, and the easily corruptible election system.
The state employs and discards people like trash. Imports people then treats them like garbage. What you see on the street is not a people problem. It is a state problem.
Why import people from other countries (like philipinos) and states when there are so many looking for work already? Why not provide a bridge from villages to the roads system? Duh The state creates 100 percent of its own problems then blames innocent people. The person who wrote the article probably never tried to look for a job or survive raising her 8 kids on her own. She might have a different view being a part of the “work force” and DHHS system had she not a cushy husband to support her.
How would the author’s work history or her family’s finances change her view on individuals who are not looking for work and chose not to follow societal norms? I believe the homeless individuals which have her concerned are not the ones honestly searching for work to to support their families, but rather the individuals who’d rather consume alcohol or drugs instead of seeking shelter (a common requirement for admittance to shelters is being sober); or the individuals who fornicate on public streets, or masturbate in the pews next to children, or relieve themselves on the floor of public restrooms instead of the toilets. According to APD’s own webpage, violent crime and robbery (taking property violence, intimidation, or threats) has been steadily increasing year over year since 2021. Assault in downtown alone is up 31% from 2021 and up 10% from last year. To be fair, sexual assault downtown is down 2% from last year and 3% from 2021.
I don’t believe a bridge from most villages to the roads system is even feasible. There have been studies on buidling a bridge across the knik arm into Anchorage for as long as I can remember and they are still are not able to fund or build it.
I would bet that a very large percentage of the homeless population would be gone if Anchorage would give one way tickets home and force the villages to be responsible for the problem people they have decided to dump on the city!
The proper term is freedom of religion not freedom of worship. They both mean something very different. Freedom of worship means I can practice my religion where the state says I can. Freedom of religion means I can practice my religion out in the public square as well as inside a building.