As Juneau’s winter warming shelter closes, some patrons don’t know where they’ll spend the night

The steel door slammed behind Benjamin Stepetin as he stepped outside Juneau’s city-run emergency warming center early Wednesday morning. He slung a garbage bag with an extra pair of jeans and a few blankets over his shoulder. 

The warming center, meant to be a last resort for unhoused people to survive the cold winter nights when temperatures drop below freezing, closed for the season Wednesday morning.

For the next five months, Stepetin doesn’t know where he will sleep every night. 

“I have nowhere to go, and so I’ll be camping out somewhere tonight,” he said. “Because I can’t come back here, so I’m gonna have to sleep outside somewhere.”

Stepetin is one of 36 people who stayed at the shelter on Tuesday night. It’s the second year it’s been located in an industrial warehouse in Thane, about a mile from downtown. Staff from St. Vincent de Paul, a local nonprofit that works to help people affected by homelessness, operate it.

Like many of their clients, Stepetin stayed at the shelter almost every night since it opened in October. While some patrons secured temporary housing at Juneauʼs year-round shelters ahead of the closure, staff say most patrons did not. 

The shelter saw an average of 45 people a night throughout the season. 

Though spring has technically come, it’s still cold out. The shelter only had some blankets and a bit of extra clothing to give to patrons before they headed out. Last year, some patrons were given camping gear. But this time, staff didn’t have tents to offer. 

“The best I can do right now is get some cardboard and I can put that down and lay on that,” Stepetin said. “That just helps a little bit.”

Another patron, Marvin Holmes, sipped coffee this morning, worrying about his next move. He’s new to Juneau and it’s his first time experiencing homelessness without access to a shelter. 

“This place is not going to be here, at which point I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “All these guys were built for this. They know how to get a tent to go somewhere, get out of the elements. I’m going to be finished tonight — and I’m really scared.”

Whitney Gannon knows what that’s like. She said she became homeless in Juneau after she escaped a domestic violence situation two years ago. Now, she’s the shelter’s manager and it’s her mission to help people like herself get into housing and feel safe. 

“There are so many different reasons why these people come here, but this is literally their last stop before it’s actually the street,” she said. 

When she lost access to housing, she was able to stay at the nearby Mill Campground, a city-run campground that used to be available for people experiencing homelessness. However, the Juneau Assembly decided to close it down last summer after an increase in illegal activity. 

Instead, Juneau Assembly members opted for what’s called dispersed camping, essentially allowing people to sleep on public land that isn’t technically a campground. 

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places. Deputy City Manager Robert Bar said that has affected Juneau’s enforcement of homeless encampments. 

“If a group of folks are camping … on public land, we are unlikely to take much enforcement action if we’re not seeing uncontrolled garbage, the presence of drugs, illegal drugs, if we’re not getting a lot of public complaints,”  he said. “We’re probably not going to do much right?”

But it’s up to the discretion of the city and police to decide when a campground crosses the threshold to require enforcement or dismantling. Barr said that’s the hard part. 

“I think it’s something that we’re going to have … to continue to struggle through as a community for years,” he said. 

Back at the shelter Wednesday morning, patrons funneled into a city bus to be dropped off downtown or in the Mendenhall Valley. 

Where they end up tonight is up to them.