Brennan: Homeless taking over parks

Homeless campers are taking over Anchorage city parks, most notably the Cuddy Family Park in Midtown.

We have a squirrel problem in our neighborhood — the little critters like to get into our house walls and drive my wife bonkers — so I have been live-trapping them and relocating them to Cuddy Park.

This summer, the squirrels are being greeted by many of their own kind, the folks who are pitching tents and makeshift shelters in one of this city’s most central and vital parks. The 15-acre park features a small lake and playground amenities attractive for children. It was built in 2000 from a small midtown park and dedicated to the Cuddy family with donation of 9.5 acres by descendants of banking pioneer Dan Cuddy. The family also put up funding for the park’s first round of improvements.

Because of its central location, Cuddy Family Park is one of Anchorage’s most important green spaces in a highly developed area. The homeless folk are drawn to it for the same reason. They like to stay near busy areas where they can beg for cash from drivers and other passersby. And the heavily overgrown park provides them nearby shelter for the long hours they are not working the crowds.

I’m not too worried about my relocated squirrels. I suspect they are right at home with the wretches who make their homes in the tents and hard-scrabble shelters. But I think we are making a big mistake by allowing the homeless to take over an important public asset like the park.

The portion the homeless occupy is a relatively small part of the 15-acre park, though I haven’t toured enough of it to be sure they haven’t homesteaded other parts. The campers don’t seem to be affecting Cuddy Pond, which was in the news this summer for another invader problem. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game removed 30,000 large goldfish which were released to the wild by people who no longer wanted them as pets. The goldfish thrived there and grew to be 8 to 10-inches long, much larger than in home aquariums.

I’m an English major, a species not known for practical solutions, but it seems to me the Cuddy Park homeless camper problem could be resolved fairly easily. The portion of the park where the homeless are focused, is the sizable patch west of the pond and just south of the Midtown Post Office.

The Cuddy Family Park homeless ranch is heavily overgrown and that, I think it is safe to say, is why the street folk pitch their rude shelters there. People can’t easily see into its depths and only the foolish would walk through there.

Camping in public parks and greenbelt areas is, of course, illegal. But right now officials must give the campers a 10-day notice before their camps can be cleared out. Since the homeless are fairly mobile, they can easily wait out the notice period, leave for a few weeks, then move back in. Those who are trying to deal with the program get mightily frustrated.

But the Cuddy Park problem could be greatly eased, if not completely resolved, by sending crews into the park to clear out the undergrowth and trim the overhanging branches and brush. That would all but eliminate the campers’ privacy and be a strong deterrent to their settling in the park. Such pruning has been used in other parts of the city and worked quite well there.

The Anchorage Assembly is considering a change in the ordinance to reduce the notice period to 24 hours. The change is being pushed because illegal campers often cook over fires and those have resulted in dangerous wildfires.

The fire problem is reason enough for me. Druggies and alcoholics are a sad public problem and I don’t know the solution, but I am sure that we absolutely should not surrender our parks to them.

We owe it to the squirrels if not to each other.