By SUZANNE DOWNING
May 31, 2026 – While the Trump Administration is restoring the nation’s capital and showcasing American pride ahead of the country’s 250th birthday, Anchorage continues to struggle with a very different reality: visible disorder, homelessness, public intoxication, vandalism, and a downtown business district that many residents say is still in decline.
Last week, the historic Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station in Washington, DC, sprang back to life after nearly two decades of neglect. The fountain, a prominent landmark near the US Capitol, had been dry since 2007 due to plumbing failures and years of neglect.
The restoration, completed by the National Park Service under the Trump Administration’s “Making DC Safe and Beautiful” initiative, included new plumbing, restored stonework, landscaping improvements, safer walkways, and revitalization of the surrounding plaza. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joined Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the reopening.
The project is one of several beautification efforts underway in Washington as the nation prepares to celebrate its semiquincentennial in 2026. The message from the White House is clear: public spaces matter, national landmarks should inspire pride, and decline is not inevitable.
Thousands of miles away, Alaska’s largest city offers a striking contrast.
Anchorage municipal officials point to some encouraging statistics. The city’s homeless population is estimated at roughly 1,645 people, down modestly from the previous year. The number of “unsheltered” individuals living outdoors reportedly fell by about 28% to roughly 291 people, aided by camp clearances and stricter enforcement measures.
Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has promoted those numbers as evidence that city policies are working.
Yet many residents say that is not what they are seeing.
Visitors and business owners continue to report open drinking, public intoxication, vandalism, human waste in public spaces, aggressive behavior, tent encampments, and litter throughout portions of downtown, city parks, and neighborhoods. Property crime remains a persistent concern. Anchorage recently received poor marks in a widely discussed “Regress Report” that evaluated quality-of-life indicators, public safety, and homelessness.
The closure of downtown entertainment venue Williwaw last week added to concerns about the health of the city’s urban core. For many residents, the loss of another downtown business in the entertainment district reinforced a growing perception that Anchorage remains a difficult place to operate a business despite years of promises about revitalization.
To be sure, Anchorage’s challenges are more complicated than restoring a fountain.
Washington’s Columbus Circle sits on federally controlled property where executive action can rapidly direct funding and improvements. Anchorage faces entrenched problems involving addiction, mental illness, crime, and a harsh northern climate.
Even so, the comparison raises a question increasingly heard from frustrated residents: Why does the nation’s capital appear to be embracing beautification and public order while Alaska’s largest city continues to normalize visible disorder?
The issue is not whether homelessness exists. Every major American city struggles with it. The issue is what citizens are willing to accept in the public square.
In Washington, federal leaders looked at a broken fountain that had sat dry for nearly 20 years and decided it was unacceptable.
In Anchorage, many residents say they have been told for years that squalor, public intoxication, encampments, vandalism, and deteriorating public spaces are simply the new normal ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.
8 thoughts on “Trump restores national beauty and pride in DC, while Anchorage settles for squalor”
“……… The city’s homeless population is estimated at roughly 1,645 people, down modestly from the previous year. The number of “unsheltered” individuals living outdoors reportedly fell by about 28% to roughly 291 people……….Yet many residents say that is not what they are seeing……….”
Our very late summer is just starting, so some of those “homeless” are choosing to become “unsheltered” for the warmer months of unfettered drinking and doping beside the campfire until the snow begins to pile up. This is nothing new, and it isn’t well known by all of us who have watching it over the past half century or so.
But, wait! The downtown “town square”, or whatever it’s called, is getting rebuilt at great taxpayer expense. Isn’t that going to go a long way toward the beautification of Anchorage?
What are they going to do with the bricks that memorialize donors to the previous rebuild? Cheers –
The same,reason the DC open spaces required repair. The money for upkeep has been ” reprioritized” into graft and corruption. Yes!, I mean YOU! megZalatel! And YOU!, LaFailure.
I am Anchorage born and raised, but a year and half ago we moved out. Anchorage is no longer the coolest city on the planet–in fact, it now sucks. Those bike trails that were such a wonderful way to see the town are now littered with drug addicts and their detritus. The nifty little shops are all gone, there is nowhere to park downtown, gang activity has rendered many neighborhoods unlivable, nobody can figure out how to plow streets in the winter, the library is great if you want your kids to watch drunks have sex in public, and on and on. Anchorage is the villages’ dumping ground for the dregs of humanity, and everyone else pays the price. No thanks. That dream is dead.
Anchorage is filthy. I was there last Wednesday running errands from one end to the other and it is definitely not the city it once was. I have no idea where they get their ‘numbers’ but the debris, grafetti, dinginess, deferred maintenance, loitering, sleeping on the sidewalks, makeshift shelters, etc, are everywhere. What a shame. I would not venture on the bike trails anymore either, where years ago I used to run, daily, by myself. Illusory truth effect is alive and well as a tool used by the mayor and her ‘team’ – if you repeat a lie over and over and over, eventually people will accept it as truth.
You people keep voting for democrats and wonder why everything gets worse. How about voting differently for a different outcome… that’s how you get real changes. Otherwise keep living in a shit hole
Yep. You guys are All Right about Anchorage today.
It’s a depressed place like Juneau AK and there is nothing more to do here BUT work! Working longer hours and saving your money instead of shopping and eating out keeps the depression from settling in.
The bright spot of living in a Depressed place and a place of moral decline is you have more time to Work (even working two full time jobs or working overtime) and develop your interests and talents and pick up a hobby like art, dance, learn a language and musical instrument, fix old cars needing fixing and selling it on Anchorage Craigslist, repairing your house.