PHOENIX — Chloe Carroll and members from the Phoenix Dream Center's crisis response team were back in the Zone Monday.
"I'm going to do a little bit of research. See if we can get you in some place, okay?" Carroll said to one of the people she encounters along Madison Street just outside of the Central Arizona Shelter Services campus.
Dream Center volunteers are hoping to convince people experiencing homelessness to leave it behind for a bed in a shelter.
"I've always felt drawn to the people who have been written off or the people who have been given up on," Carroll said.
The Dream Center's crisis team visits the zone often. It can take weeks of outreach before someone is willing to take a chance and go with them.
On Monday, State Senator Catherine Miranda joined the Dream Center's volunteers. Senator Miranda's district includes the Zone, a seven-block long, five-block-wide homeless encampment that stretches from just west of downtown Phoenix to practically the doorsteps of the state capitol.
"Not only is this my district, but I'm also a human being and I cannot keep passing this street going to the capitol and do nothing," Senator Miranda said.
Miranda thought she had a plan with a bill appropriating nearly $150 million from the state's general fund to pay for additional beds, shelter, and treatment for Arizona's homeless. It passed the Senate by an 18-11 vote on March 21. But it is not going anywhere in the House, failing to even get a hearing in the House Appropriations Committee.
Miranda now wants Governor Katie Hobbs to get involved.
"I am asking the governor to write an executive order to declare a state of emergency because this is a crisis right now, happening in front of us," Miranda said.
As many as 1,000 people have lived inside the Zone at any one time. Many often line the iron fencing around CASS, the city's largest homeless shelter with 600 beds.
Phoenix has until July 10 to clean up the Zone. That includes removing the people who live here.
"How long have you lived out here Tyler?" "Almost 4 years," he said. Tyler left home when he was 16. But on Monday he had enough and agreed to be taken to the Phoenix Dream Center's shelter. As for Senator Miranda's bill, its only hope may be for it to be included in the final budget package currently being negotiated.
