ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

Homeless in Haines

Leigh Horner came bouncing into the newsroom on a Saturday afternoon.

She’s a bright, funny, well-travelled woman who writes the paper’s “Duly Noted” column where regulars tell personal tales of their lives inside and out of Haines.

This week’s column featured the Pope.

A Haines resident apparently went to the Vatican and scored a selfie with the pontiff.

Bingo — Duly Noted fodder.

On this afternoon, Leigh told a story about the people who live in ragged old tents and under tarps in the woods behind her home not far away from downtown.

They’re roustabouts, vagabonds who come to Haines, Alaska looking to realize a dream based on a faulty premise: that Alaska is paved with gold.

That the government is so rich from its oil profits that it writes checks to everyone in the state, whether they’re a resident for not. The Big Lie is that jobs are easy to find here, the salaries are magnanimous and that the winters are short and that the summers never end.

Then they get here.

The winters are so long and dark and dreary that even 18 hours of sunlight on summers days can barely make up for them.

People arrive in Haines on the public ferry, which is part of the Alaska Marine Highway System, and don’t realize that to get to mainland Alaska by road they have to drive through Canada.

If you don’t’ have a passport, they Canadians send you back.
So for this and other reasons, people end up in Haines — penniless, down and out — homeless.

Trust me; this is no place to spend the winter even if you have heating.

Without that, making do in a tent pitched in some public park is like committing Alaska harakiri.

And the word that you plunge into your innards is ice cold.

San Diego would be a much better choice.

But still, people find themselves marooned here — maybe two dozen or so each year.

Tom Morphet, the owner-editor of the Chilkat Valley News where I work, asked me to look into the sad tale of Ken McDowell, to discover whatever happened to Haines’ last resident homeless person.

Tom was out looking for photos the day after the season’s first snowfall in October (Oct-freaking-tober!) and spotted Ken’s tent at a local state park.

He went over and found a man inside. Tom bought him a cup of coffee and got his story.

Ken didn’t talk so well. He’d had a stroke and had to write most things down.

I made some calls and played detective for a few hours. I filed the story in little over two hours.

But what a sad tale it is.

By John M. Glionna
Nobody really knows how Ken McDowell ended up in Haines, or precisely when he got here.

His shabby tent was spotted following the mid-October snowfall, pitched at Portage Cove State Park. A longtime resident checked on him, bought him a cup of hot chocolate and listened to his story.

McDowell was lean, about fifty-years-old, with a scruffy beard. A decade after reportedly suffering a stroke, he had difficulty speaking and communicated with pen and paper.

Like a lot of human tumbleweeds who roll through Haines, this one didn’t mean to stop here.

McDowell was a former mechanic in a nuclear power plant somewhere down in the Lower 48, he said. He’d left Tampa, Fla. three months earlier on his bike and with an attached trailer and set off to visit the nuclear facilities in Chernobyl, Ukraine and Fukushima, Japan, where meltdowns had taken place.

His bike broke down in Haines, he explained. He was stuck.

Every year, a handful of homeless people wash up on the shores of this summer-tourist town. And no matter how hard it tries, with little funding for such brotherly gestures, Haines struggles to help provide a roof over their heads and help them set a new course in life.

Several agencies, including the Ministerial Assn., Salvation Army and Southeast Alaska Independent Living, have set up an outreach protocol. Haines Borough police dispatchers have been directed to call the Salvation Army or a church group if a person is picked up by officers or walks into the station.

About a dozen people each year take advantage of the services, which involve a free night in a local motel and ferry passage to Juneau, which has homeless shelters to accommodate them.

Some walk off the ferry with no money to get back on. They apparently move between backcountry camps, sleep beneath the cruise ship dock or pitch a tent in the woods behind the Chilkat Center, residents say.

Ron Horn, minister at the Haines Presbyterian Church and a former head of the town’s Ministerial Assn., said the group has less than $1,000 a year to help needy visitors.

Lt. Kevin Woods of the local Salvation Army Post said the federal funding he received last year amounted to about $200. “That’s just about enough to put someone up in a hotel for two nights around here,” he said. “It’s not enough.”

But still the down-and-out come here; mostly in the summer, but in the winter as well. Horn received calls about three homeless visitors last week alone.

“It goes in waves,” he said. “Sometimes, we’ll see two or three in a month. And then we won’t see another one for a month or two.”

Many, he said, are chasing dreams based on bad information about the magic of Alaska.

“People hear that jobs are plentiful in Alaska. They’ve heard that the Permanent Fund Dividend is a free hand out for everyone,” Horn said. “They come expecting something that doesn’t happen. They spend all their money getting to Haines and then it runs out.”

Others don’t realize that the road from Haines to Anchorage runs through the Canadian Yukon. Without passports, they get stuck in Haines.

Sierra Jimenez, assistant director of the nonprofit Southeast Alaska Independent Living, said her group helps a handful of travelers marooned in Haines. “Everybody’s an individual and their stories are different,” she said. “We meet them where they’re at.”

She said the group connects people with services with a fund to help them with temporary living expenses. “The maximum anyone can get is $500,” Jimenez said. “The average is about $100.”

Jackie Mazeikas, who runs Becky’s Place — Haven of Hope, a Haines shelter for domestic abuse victims, tries to do her part. “Some have mental issues,” she said.

“I find them a place if I can,” Mazeikas said. “Usually I bring them a warm blanket or some food. If I take them to the shelter, I could have a situation arise where I have no room for an abused woman and her children.”

Leigh Horner has lived near the Chilkat Center for more than 15 years and has spotted tents pitched in the woods behind her home.

She says the numbers have increased in recent years.

“There’s a convenient path back there along which the homeless can camp out,” she said.

Many leave behind garbage for residents to clean up. At night, when her lights are on, she knows they’re out there.

When she sees a trespasser, she calls the police. “It’s scary,” she said. “They can see me but I can’t see them. Where do they go to the bathroom? They’re living for extended periods on private property.”

Horner called police not long ago about someone squatting behind her house. “When they got here they didn’t find the squatter I called about,” she said. “They found a different squatter.”

One night, when she was outside setting aside some recyclables, Horner heard some crunching of some tree limbs behind her house. Finally, she’d caught a trespasser red-handed.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Are you living back there.?”

What emerged was another kind of interloper: a large moose that paid her no attention.

“Well,” she said. “Carry on then.”

Haines police officer Chris Brown said he thought McDowell had a drinking problem the first time he encountered him at Portage Cove campground. He quickly realized the visitor had suffered a stroke and complained of other health issues.

As the weather worsened, Brown dropped off extra blankets for McDowell. When he saw him on the street, he’d give him a ride back to Portage Cove. Eventually, he said, he moved out of the park. “We didn’t kick him out,” Brown said. “There’s another guy who’s been there awhile. We don’t know what his plans are.”

Local bartenders said McDowell became a regular as the weather turned — not necessarily to drink but to get warm. “He’d come in nightly when we were open,” said Kevin Thompson, who works at the Pioneer Bar. “He’d have a beer and a mixed drink and then go on his way.”

Carole Ridge, the morning bartender at the Fogcutter, said McDowell came in as soon as she opened at 9 a.m. and drank a few cups of coffee. “He had a hard time talking; he’d spit the words out,” she said. “When he got excited, he’d have to point at things.”

“And then one day he was gone.”

Several weeks ago, Woods said, his wife Serina spotted someone sleeping under a tarp behind the Salvation Army building on Union Street.

He found McDowell there with his bike and trailer parked nearby. “He’d been around town awhile — I’m surprised I hadn’t seen home before,” he said.

Woods went out and talked with the newcomer. He bought him a cup of coffee. Struggling to speak, McDowell wrote notes.

“He told me he was trying to get to Russia,” Woods said. “I told him he’d picked a bad time of the year to be going north in Alaska.”

Woods said he could offer passage to Juneau, where there were shelters. “I said ‘I could help you go south; that’s all I can offer you.’ There was no way I was helping him go the other way.”

McDowell stayed that night at the Captain’s Choice motel, where Woods places many down-and-out visitors.

“His hands were cracked and probably frostbitten,” Woods said. “I hate to see people like that; because I’ve been there. When the Army picked me up off the street decades ago, I was living under a bridge in Lodi, California.”

The next morning, Woods escorted McDowell to the ferry terminal. He watched him roll his bike onboard with all his earthy possessions.

He wished him luck.

He said a Salvation Army colleague was due to meet McDowell in Juneau and take him to the Glory Hole homeless shelter.

Woods said a Salvation Army worker in Juneau dropped McDowell off in front of the Glory Hole. “He even helped him unload his bike,” he said.

But Glory Hole facility coordinator Michael Orr said he had no record of McDowell.

He doubts he ever checked in.