In late June, city officials pointed to the camp at the Alamo Wash and East Speedway as a place where its homeless protocol was working.
Tiana Reks, who had lived in the camp for more than a year, told the Star at that time: “Cops will come by on their bikes and just kind of like ride through. But we don’t get told we have to leave anymore.”
It was considered a “Tier 2” camp, where the situation was under control without major trash, noise or public safety and health problems. It could stay.
A tent and encampment pitched along the Alamo Wash on Friday, south of where a previous series of camps was cleared out by the city.
But a month later, on Wednesday, city officials rousted the inhabitants and cleared the place out. Reks and her boyfriend had kept the camp orderly for more than a year before unwanted neighbors moved in during recent weeks. They were forced to decamp further up the wash.
“It was a constant battle of us telling them, ‘You guys can’t be there, you’re jeopardizing the camp,’ and them telling us ‘You don’t own the wash.’ “
The experience at the Alamo Wash highlights what are probably the biggest issues for Tucsonans as we move toward the November general election for mayor and three City Council seats.
While there is broad agreement that homelessness and addiction are likely the top short-term issues facing the city, there are vastly different levels of tolerance and compassion among residents. Even city employees may differ in how they view the same situation.
The big questions are when authorities should step in, what they can offer unhoused people and, when people should be arrested.
Neighbors don’t agree on when camps should be removed and whether they can ever be left alone and monitored. The residents near the Alamo Wash have been experiencing this for years.
The three mayoral candidates, all of whom I interviewed on the subject last week, also disagree by degrees. Surprisingly, though, all three seemed to acknowledge the complexity of the problem and the need for broad, community-based solutions.
‘You can’t just put up a tent’
Janet “JL” Wittenbraker, the Republican candidate for Tucson mayor, said she doesn’t support the tier system established last year in the city’s homeless protocol system. Under that system, Tier 1 camps are those that have been abandoned and can be cleaned out, Tier 3 camps threaten public health or safety and must be cleared out, but Tier 2 camps are allowed to remain in place under occasional monitoring.
“I believe the city’s responsibility is to protect our taxpayers and enforce our laws,” Wittenbraker said in an interview Thursday. “Enforcing our laws helps mitigate the issue.”
If she were to become mayor, she said, “We’re not going to let you build encampments, and we’re not going to let you sleep in our parks.”
It would be up to the unhoused individuals and local charities to ensure they get the services they need, she said, though the city could play a reduced role.
Ed Ackerley, the independent candidate for mayor, didn’t take a definitive stand for or against the tier system. He called for “active engagement” in camps as they get established.
“As people develop this footprint, and the place is theirs, it becomes a little more difficult to get them into treatment or housing,” he said. “They’ve landed in a place where they’re comfortable and want to stay.”
“You can’t just put a tent up in a park and be there for 6 to 8 weeks,” he added.
Arguably, this sort of “engagement” is what the city has been doing increasingly the last couple of years through the homeless protocol system — registering camps, visiting them, evaluating them and responding as necessary.
In an interview Friday, Mayor Regina Romero, a Democrat, said it was a panel of experts that came up with the homeless protocol. Any system of response requires prioritization, she noted.
“Because of the level of services all of this requires, we have to be able to say these are our priorities,” she said. “If there is any danger, it’s a Tier 3. They’re going to go in, offer assistance and resources, they’re going to offer solutions, and they’re going to remove the camp, making sure the individuals can take their belongings. It’s always with trying to offer housing first as a possibility or any other shelter or bed as a possibility.”
“If it doesn’t pose danger, we’re going to deal with it, we’re going to continue offering services,” she said. “It is working.”
‘Whack-a-mole’ persists
Charles Allen isn’t so sure. He’s been a leading member of the bleeding heart brigade in the neighborhoods around the Alamo Wash. Since 2019, Allen and a group of other neighborhood residents have visited the 29 camp sites that they counted along the wash between East Broadway and East Pima, registering 157 people living there over the years.
They tried to help the homeless people there keep out of trouble by focusing on the “big five” issues: clutter, trash generation, sanitary waste disposal, noise and open burning. They built relationships with homeowners along the wash who could alert them to trouble or offer a hose to those needing water.
“When the new protocol came out last year we were so pleased. Every single one of our camps were given Tier 2 status,” Allen said.
But it turned out to be more complicated than that. Different agencies of the city government viewed the camps differently, he said, and so did different officers within the Tucson Police Department.
In an email, Allen recounted, “I accompanied the TPD officers on separate occasions over six days as they systematically went about destroying the camps our volunteers had worked in for over two years. I inquired why this was being done, since we were given assurance of their Tier 2 status. Some officers feigned ignorance about the revised camp protocol.”
The apparently systematic protocol still sometimes devolves into “whack-a-mole” responses to the loudest complaints, he alleged.
A few piles of boards, buckets and rope are all that’s left of tents and encampments pitched along the Alamo Wash just south of Speedway on Friday. The city cleared out the camp earlier this week.
‘It just got chaotic’
Among the people Allen has been working with were the residents of the camp at East Speedway and the Alamo Wash. It was operating satisfactorily enough June 28 that city officials showed it to my colleague Nicole Ludden as an example of a functioning Tier 2 camp.
“I worked pretty damn hard to keep it clean and make sure nobody had anything to complain about,” Tiana Reks said.
But things deteriorated in July as people began showing up to camp near them and would not leave or keep up standards. Reks believes some of them came from other camps that were cleaned out by city officials.
Some of the new residents hung out below view in the nearby culvert until the rains came in mid-July, Reks said. Then they moved above ground and became more visible, while refusing to behave well.
“Slowly but surely it just got chaotic,” she said.
That’s when neighbor Samantha de la Fuente, the secretary of the local neighborhood association, stopped walking to the nearby Trader Joe’s store out of concern about the camp, she told me. Neighbors also started a letter-writing campaign to the the mayor and other city officials.
On July 28, city officials reviewed the site and judged it to be an unsustainable Tier 3. A 72-hour notice to move out was posted, and on Wednesday, the whole camp was cleaned out.
Reks said she and her boyfriend would be happy to go into low-barrier housing that allowed them and their dog to enter together. But right now, as monsoon rains make some traditional camping sites dangerous, nothing of that sort is available.
So while the new systems are addressing some people’s problems, many others are still being moved around from wash to wash as complaints roll in, officials react, and the November election appears on the horizon.
Watch now: Tucson is responding to homeless encampments the community reports based on the level of danger they pose to the community. Video by Nicole Ludden/Arizona Daily Star.
