Homeless in Alaska

 

Another thing that surprised us about Alaska; there are homeless people there.  How can there be homeless people in Alaska?  Maybe in the summer, but in the winter?  Yet along the highways in towns, there they are, some with signs, just like anywhere else.  We park and venture off the road into pockets of forest in and around town, in search of a particular bird, and there are the camps; places where people spend the night.  There are many homeless people in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

 

I don’t think being homeless in Alaska is a summertime fling and then you go inside somewhere to wait out the winter.  I don’t think the homeless get to do what Judy and I have done and float north and south with the seasons.  From the comfort of South Texas all winter I tracked the temperature in Fairbanks and watched it to go to 40 below and stay there, never getting as warm as zero again for a week.  As a year-round endeavor, being homeless in Alaska is unfathomable.