It’s official: The Thane campground will open on Saturday — and the City and Borough of Juneau’s camping ordinance will go into effect at midnight that night.
In February, the Assembly voted to amend the city’s existing policy against camping in urban areas, allowing the Juneau Police Department to evict people sleeping on private property in a narrowly defined area of downtown. The ordinance, set to take effect April 15, is enforceable between midnight and 7 a.m. in a long, narrow stretch downtown below Fourth Street extending the entirety of South Franklin Street.
Thursday afternoon, Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove said she had received confirmation that the avalanche danger has passed and the campground will open on schedule.
The campground, located 1.5 miles from downtown on the east side of Thane Road, is a primitive style campground with trash service and restrooms; there is no electricity and campers must supply their own water. Campsites are available on a first-come, first-served basis and the campground allows tent camping only; RVs are not permitted.
Thane campground does charge a fee of $5 a night, $25 a week or $100 a month. It also charges a $50 deposit, which Cosgrove said would be waived.
“We are working on options for folks who truly can’t afford fees,” she said.
Cosgrove said that if campers have complied with the rules and cleaned up their campsites, they get a partial refund when they leave.
“If someone doesn’t have a way to pay, of course we want them to have some place to be,” she said. “We’re not trying to disadvantage anybody.”
Cosgrove stressed that the Thane campground is being considered as one option for homeless people being displaced by the camping ordinance, but that is not their only option.
“We do charge a fee, but we are looking at options to offset that fee,” she said. “The details have not been ironed out yet, but we will not turn people away for lack of funds.”
On Thursday, Cosgrove was unable to provide a timeline for when the city would have those options in place, saying only that it was being actively worked on.
Both Cosgrove and Juneau Police Department Lt. David Campbell stressed that the city has been actively working on outreach and trying to connect people with services, since the ordinance was passed in mid-February.
“We have been preparing for April 15, we have been contacting people and giving them warnings,” Campbell said. “We have had four separate outreach operations prior to the ordinance going into effect … with downtown officers and service providers, contacting people to try to get them into services.”
There is no specific plan to make any kind of sweep of downtown streets come Saturday, Campbell said, adding that officers assigned to the downtown core will conduct their regular patrols and if they discover a violation of the camping ordinance, they can issue a citation.
“We will treat this like any other violation — it’s an infraction,” he said. “If a person refuses to leave, they will be cited.”
Campbell acknowledged the possibility that homeless people camping in doorways will just choose to be scofflaws and rack up multiple citations, saying, “We’ll have to see how the rollout goes.”
March aims to bring awareness to sexual assault, vulnerability of homeless
In conjunction with the enforcement of the camping ordinance, AWARE and the Glory Hole have organized a “Take Back the Night” march Saturday night to bring awareness to sexual assault, particularly against those who are homeless.
The date was picked specifically to mark the start of the camping ordinance, said AWARE (Aiding Women in Abuse and Rape Emergencies) deputy director Mandy Cole.
“We were motivated by the homeless women who testified at the Assembly hearings on the camping ordinance,” Cole said. “The women were talking about their safety and their fears. … They are feeling like they are being pushed out from a place they felt was more safe than other places in the city. From our privileged, housed positions we don’t understand how it can be more safe to sleep in a doorway, but that is their reality.”
The march will start at 8:30 p.m. at the courthouse plaza and will end up at the Glory Hole (Juneau’s homeless shelter and soup kitchen downtown on South Franklin Street) with a candlelight vigil. Participants are also being asked to bring sleeping bags, tents, tarps, wool socks, camping pads, wool hats — anything you’d need to live outside.
“We just want to invite everyone to come,” Cole said. “It’s going to be an honest look at things that are hard to deal with, standing in solidarity and support with people who are on the street. It’s about shining a light on something that thrives on being secret or not talked about.”
Contact reporter Liz Kellar at 523-2246 or liz.kellar@juneauempire.com.
