The homeless here are almost exclusively native alaskans, kids, or both.
This gets written off as alcohol abuse, which certainly is a large part of it. Much of the homeless in Anchorage are not from here, they're often cast out of their communities and Anchorage is the least shitty place in Alaska to get drunk out in the cold.
People, generally, look at these people as something near subhuman, for sure. The bus I take in and out of my neighborhood has a reputation for being filled with scary people, but they're mostly too stunned by the brutality of their own lives in a wholly unforgiving environment.
Many freeze to death, many more than anyone reports.
There are now a few places, built out of shut down hotels, that provide space, even if you're drunk. This being preferrable to the whole frozen humans problem. And yet, these places are met with such hosility, this one business owner, a bondsman, put up who knows hoe many R&R and Monarch bottles along his fence (near the jail and the only male shelter) saying STOP ENABLING.
As though the moral and physical prowess required to withstand the savage power of alcohol, with practically zero genetic experience doing so takes preferrence to saving lives.
