The Zone is the name given to a homeless camp in Phoenix which holds somewhere between 900 and 1,100 people. It had completely taken over the area near Joe Faillace’s sandwich shop, Old Station Sub Shop. The place has been in the same location for 37 years but the growing homeless camp has created endless daily problems.

…there were hundreds of people sleeping within a few blocks of Old Station, most of them suffering from mental illness or substance abuse as they lived out their private lives within public view of the restaurant. They slept on Joe and Debbie’s outdoor tables, defecated behind their back porch, smoked methamphetamine in their parking lot, washed clothes in their bathroom sink, pilfered bread and gallon jars of pickles from their delivery trucks, had sex on their patio, masturbated within view of their employees and lit fires for warmth that burned down palm trees and scared away customers. Finally, Joe and Debbie could think of nothing else to do but to start calling their city councilman, the city manager, the mayor, the governor and the police.

“We’ve got a guy outside who’s naked, trespassing and needs some serious help,” Joe reported in a call to the police in the fall of 2021.

“They’re throwing rocks from across the street at our windows,” he said in another call a few months later…

Within a half-mile of their restaurant, the police had been called to an average of eight incidents a day in 2022. There were at least 1,097 calls for emergency medical help, 573 fights or assaults, 236 incidents of trespassing, 185 fires, 140 thefts, 125 armed robberies, 13 sexual assaults and four homicides. The remains of a 20-to-24-week-old fetus were burned and left next to a dumpster in November. Two people were stabbed to death in their tents. Sixteen others were found dead from overdoses, suicides, hypothermia or excessive heat. The city had tried to begin more extensive cleaning of the encampment, but advocates for the homeless protested that it was inhumane to move people with nowhere else to go, and in December the American Civil Liberties Union successfully filed a federal lawsuit to keep people on the street from being “terrorized” and “displaced.”

And now Joe and Debbie arrived for work on another morning and noticed a woman sprawled on the sidewalk with her face against the pavement. Debbie watched for a moment until she saw the woman roll onto her side. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she was just asleep. “Let’s give her a bit to get sorted,” Debbie said. But at lunchtime, the woman had barely moved, and two hours later she was still lying there, as the temperature climbed and Debbie began to imagine the worst possibilities. More than 1,250 homeless people had died in Maricopa County in the last two years, including hundreds from drug overdoses or heat exposure. Other nearby property owners had started calling the neighborhood Death Row.

Last August Joe and Debbie signed on to a lawsuit brought by other businesses in the area. In March a judge sided with them and ruled the city had a matter of weeks to clean up the Zone.

The Faillaces and others already had sued last year in state court over the Zone, an unofficial nickname that isn’t universally embraced. They claimed the city had allowed its public spaces to violate its own public nuisance laws, with unsanitary conditions, drug use, violence and property crimes, fire hazards and blocked rights of way, court documents show.

A judge in March ruled in their favor, giving the city a few months to eliminate the nuisance conditions, records show.

The cleanup is set to begin Wednesday and continue through the summer. Where all these people will go isn’t clear. There aren’t enough homeless shelter beds for all of them but the reality is that many of them don’t want the help being offered. What they want is to keep doing drugs, something they can’t do in a shelter.

Standing beside her tent, Rayann Denny sized up the sprawling camp of 900 or so people improvised along sidewalks in downtown Phoenix:

“It’s a whole nother world.”

The soft-spoken 37-year-old ended up homeless last year after her husband died and she couldn’t pay the bills alone. This camp, she said, can be “a lot of drama,” with flares of violence. But Denny won’t stay in a shelter, with its rules and a curfew, as she relies on drugs to get through her days.

“I just try to keep myself high,” she said, “so I don’t have to deal with the pain.”

This local news report points out that as of last week the number of people living in the Zone already seems to have dropped. Some number of these folks may get help but it’s likely hundreds more will just move on to parks or streets nearby. As authorities clear each block it’s not clear what’s going to keep people from moving in to the newly cleared area and pitching a new tent.

Finally, a recent interview with Joe Faillace about what it has been like working near the Zone. He notes that the situation really took a turn with the Boise decision.