It’s been about three years since the Phoenix was ordered by a judge to clear "The Zone” in downtown Phoenix. The 1,000-person-plus homeless encampment was at the center of a lawsuit from nearby business owners and media attention as the problem of homelessness grew across the Valley.
But now, concerns are rising that The Zone is back — or that it never really went anywhere. So, The Show went down there on a recent Friday morning to find out.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: I’m walking around down here about 7:30 a.m. and people are getting cleared out. Police officers asking folks to leave.
DEVONTEA CHANDLER: Some people prepare early in the morning, so some people get up 3, 4 in the morning just to get their stuff together and then start moving about 5 in the morning, 6 in the morning.
GILGER: That’s Devontea Chandler. I met him sitting with his girlfriend and a few other folks along a red, white and blue painted building on West Madison Street that morning.
People move out at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. because they’re going to have to?
CHANDLER: Yeah. And if, if you don’t, then, I mean, you get arrested, ticket, cited, arrested.
GILGER: Do you know a lot of people down here who have those tickets piling up?
CHANDLER: No, they all in jail.
GILGER: Chandler and the people with him were certainly not the only people on the streets surrounding the Human Services Campus in downtown Phoenix that morning. Though, as he said, they were mostly packing up and moving out. Police cars were driving slowly up and down the streets telling people to move on over their loudspeakers. Cleanup crews were picking up trash and power washing the sidewalks.
So where do you guys go when they clear you out?
CHANDLER: I mean, parks, like anywhere. Right when they get done, like people will walk to the front, and by that time, they’ll get done, and people will go back over there slowly.
GILGER: Are there encampments set up here most of the time now, tents and stuff?
CHANDLER: No, you don’t see a lot of tents. Can’t have tents up. Can’t have tarps.
GILGER: Chandler told me he’s been homeless for four years, but lately he’s been living in the city’s new Safe Outdoor Space, where you can set up a tent in the shade and keep your things safely.
You like it in there?
CHANDLER: I mean, it’s better than having to wake up every time to stuff getting stolen, to on the streets. It’s it’s better than nothing.
GILGER: The city just announced it wants to continue operating the so-called SOS for another four years, but Chandler told me he can’t be with his significant other there, so he spends his days elsewhere.
So, would you say The Zone is back?
CHANDLER: No, I, I the Zone’s, The Zone’s getting smaller and smaller. Yeah, I would say that. The Zone’s getting smaller and smaller, clearer and clearer. I mean, the policy of Phoenix is just going to have homeless people everywhere. Once they clear this out, everyone’s just stretching back out to farther and farther. They clear out the parks, people are going to go farther and farther. There’s there’s only there’s only so much that that they can do and so much we can do, you know what I mean?
Because there’s lists. You have to call 211, get on a list. You go here, get on a list. You go to the heat relief, you get on a list. No matter what, people are going to wait. And the people who are waiting who don’t have housing, where are they going to go to wait? What are they going to do waiting? What what help are they getting waiting? Right.
No one’s getting any help waiting.
GILGER: So there’s one view from someone on the street in the so-called Zone. It’s getting smaller, but it’s just spreading around the homeless population.
So I also took the question to Scott Hall, deputy director of Phoenix’s Office of Homeless Solutions: Is The Zone back?
SCOTT HALL: Yeah, well, first I’d say, you know, do people understand what that area is?
GILGER: The Zone surrounds the Key Campus, the city’s sprawling, centralized homeless services campus where folks can get three meals a day, shelter beds, medical and dental care, case management and more.
HALL: So, you’re always going to have walk-up traffic or people coming up to receive those services.
GILGER: According to a June 3 count from the Keys to Change outreach team, there were 283 people unsheltered on the street outside of the campus that morning. And in the shelter inside, 900 people slept each night. So, while Scott Hall doesn’t like calling it The Zone, he says no, it’s not back.
HALL: By no means are big encampments back or the 1,000-person encampment back that was there three years ago. We’re out there seven days a week doing outreach. My team’s out there five days a week with them engaging with people, trying to get people into services, into heat relief, and to accept those services, and PD’s out there on a daily basis enforcing any kind of criminal activity.
GILGER: Hall said they’ve actually upped the number of days their cleanup crews are out there in the mornings, and they’re steadily seeing a decrease in the number of people staying around the campus. But as long as all of the services are right there, they’re still coming.
Is this something that, you know, is, has ever stopped in that area since, you know, the lawsuit happened and The Zone was quote-unquote cleared out?
HALL: Yeah, it has not stopped.
GILGER: Hi, excuse me, do you live here? Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger and with KJZZ News. What’s your name?
JOEL COPLIN: Joel Coplin.
GILGER: Joel Coplin owns an art gallery right in the middle of The Zone. He and his wife live above it. I ran into him as he was going to roll his trash can inside the fence that surrounds his property that morning.
So, about 7:30 a.m. or so, everyone’s about cleared out right now?
COPLIN: Yeah, it was kind of late. I thought that there were but I think they’re just taking it a little — it’s Friday. Yeah, yeah.
GILGER: Copeland was one of the business owners who filed the lawsuit against the city of Phoenix that forced the cleanup of The Zone. But he’s also driven folks who live there to doctor’s appointments and packed up their belongings in the back of his pickup truck to help them move in when they finally get housing.
COPLIN: We become friends. I, I know their families, I know their children. I know, you know, we’re part of — they’re our neighbors.
GILGER: He’s seen it all outside his window here, from deadly fights to deadly overdoses to incredible acts of compassion. And he doesn’t really blame the city for the people who are still here since the cleanup.
COPLIN: They’re trying as hard as they can. It’s just that the situation’s so desperate.
GILGER: But, he told me, he still thinks more needs to be done.
COPLIN: They shouldn’t be sitting here on the street. There should be adequate shelter for them. There needs to be supervised shelter for them. There needs to be mental health care. There needs to be all kinds of things that they’re doing, just not enough.
GILGER: Just not enough.
COPLIN: The flood is too big. Yeah. And and it needs to be spread out because every, everybody can’t come down here to one big dinosaur of a of shelter and help. I mean, there should be several shelters all throughout the metropolitan area that that should be triaged and have specific things for people to go to. And nobody should be pooping in a bucket and, and pouring it down the storm drains.
GILGER: I’m sure you know that is a long and ongoing battle in the in the city and in the Valley to get, you know, to spread the wealth a little bit when it comes to homeless services, right?
COPLIN: Absolutely. And, you know, I mean here we sit six blocks from the state capitol and six blocks from City Hall. And why this happened here, I just can’t believe that it was even allowed to to become right here in the in the heart of downtown.
GILGER: Coplin is a painter, classically trained, and sometimes he asks the folks outside his gallery to sit for him. He listens to their stories, he tells them his.
COPLIN: I try to paint them beautifully. You know, so it’s a gritty subject, but it’s painted beautifully. So it’s kind of, you know, pretty gritty.
GILGER: Could you show me one? Would that be OK? Thank you.
Wow, yeah, this is quite a studio space. There are paintings on the wall in gold frames everywhere, piles of canvases up. This is huge. They look like scenes out of like a like an old kind of Renaissance painting or something, but they’re of these folks right outside here in The Zone.
COPLIN: I have studied the the methods and materials of the old masters, and I try to put it to a contemporary use.
GILGER: What’s this one? She’s got a puppy here, and there are some empty bottles lying on the ground under a palm tree.
COPLIN: It’s the shade of one palm. You know, it’s, it can be hilarious when there’s a palm tree and it gives about 16 inches of shade and everybody’s standing in the shade. You know? Or sitting underneath one palm tree. Yeah.
And here’s Sterling. He’s from San Carlos. I’ve taken him up to the reservation several times, met his family. And to me, it’s just, you know, it’s interesting as a white guy to be up there and be accepted by everybody. Yeah. And to, you know, go to the the center of town and buy stuff and it’s just it’s it’s remarkable for me to, to have the opportunity to have met Sterling, to be able to go up to San Carlos and become involved with, with their community.
GILGER: The San Carlos Apache Reservation’s what, like three and a half hours from here?
COPLIN: Oh, not that far. You know, maybe two.
GILGER: So that’s — it’s a long drive.
COPLIN: Yeah, that’s all right.
GILGER: So you’re willing to — it sounds like really go out of your way to get to know these people, to help them, to bring them home.
COPLIN: You should just talk to my wife. Yeah, I’m the guy that helps, and people come all the time, and it’s — it can be exhausting because there’s only so much of you. And you give a piece away, and then you got to try and rebalance.
GILGER: Do you ever feel like you rebalance?
COPLIN: You just keep going. Whatever presents itself to you, you have to deal with in whatever way you can. Yeah. You know, and sometimes you have to say no. Sometimes you just say, "I can’t, I can’t deal with that."
GILGER: Are there moments when people have really broken your heart?
COPLIN: Oh, all the time. All the time, it keeps keeps slipping back. You know, they’d come forward, forward, forward, and then, oh, all of a sudden, there’s a big slip. Yeah. And it’s just human nature, you know, it’s just it’s, it’s hard. It’s difficult to be us.
GILGER: You mean people?
COPLIN: Yes. Human beings.
GILGER: But it sounds like you are kind of positive about it. Like, it sounds like you have not stopped, you haven’t quit, you haven’t left, you still know all those folks.
COPLIN: I mean, how do you stop? I don’t know how you, you can’t, I mean, I just feel for it.
GILGER: I mean, I wonder, like if you could talk to, you know, the people who drive past people who are experiencing homelessness on the street and, you know, are holding up a sign and they drive by, or people who are outraged by what’s happening at The Zone, or the lawmakers and policymakers down the streets both ways, right, at City Hall and the state capitol right here, like what do you want them to know about this place?
COPLIN: Well, that these people need help, and not just, you know, housing. You know, they need to have specialty care for individuals that need it so bad, and are receiving it, but it’s, everything takes so long and there’s so many the long lines.
You know, even just to to do your laundry, you stand in line forever, you know, to to see the doctor, to see the dentist, to see anybody. You know, just and it needs to be more efficient, and it needs to be more triaged.
GILGER: Do you ever think that’ll happen?
COPLIN: I’m hoping. There’s always hope. As long as there’s hope, it can happen.
GILGER: Thank you so much for talking to me. I appreciate it.
COPLIN: Well, thank you for all you do.
GILGER: The city of Phoenix says it is home to about 35% of the region’s homeless population and 82% of the region’s shelter beds. Since 2022, they’ve added more than 1,200 shelter beds and 300 spaces at their SOS, the city’s outdoor campground. Because of that, the latest point-in-time homeless count showed while homelessness overall barely changed from last year, unsheltered homelessness dropped 12% Valley-wide.
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