Things as they are in Tucson

April 2025

Apologies in advance that this rant set a new record for length.  Kudos to anyone that reads the entire thing!

Maybe your city is different, but in ours, there is an increasing number of homeless people. Many of them end up homeless because they lose their jobs or their rent goes up more than they can afford, they get hit with outrageous medical bills or a massive natural disaster, or they leave unsustainable family situations. For some, it's a temporary situation and they are able to find the resources to get them back on track and into long-term housing. We wish those people well and support the services that help people get back on their feet.  However, up to a third of the homeless population have serious mental or substance abuse issues, and those are people you see on the streets and sidewalks and alleys all around town. In the rant below, I may refer to these people as "addicts", "campers" and "squatters" interchangeably, while "homeless" is used to refer to the larger population.

Side note: "Things as they are in Panama" was an alternate title of a book "Zone Policeman 88", published by Harry A Franck, after he lived in the Canal Zone when the Panama canal was under construction.  I thought I would lean into that title, as he was my grandfather. The subtitle was "A CLOSE RANGE STUDY OF THE PANAMA CANAL AND ITS WORKERS."  You can download ZP88 on project Gutenberg.  Be warned, like Mark Twain, HAF used the N-word quite a bit.

Estevan Park

Estevan Park in Tucson used to be a nice park. It has a soccer field, a basketball court, a nice playground installation and washrooms. By the way, if you want to sound like a native, the correct pronunciation of Estevan is est-TEV-van. No one takes their kids to Estevan Park these days, as it is the site of many homeless encampments, open drug use, and periodic violence. With the rise of the ongoing opioid epidemic some of the campers set the playground equipment on fire, so that part of the park has been fenced off for years. 

It is rare to see anyone shooting hoops, as the court seems to attract addicts that like to lay on asphalt instead of dirt. Maybe there are fewer real or imaginary bugs crawling on them here?

The washrooms at Estevan - and many of Tucson's public parks - are often closed down and locked up, which means you have to watch where you step.  Sometimes the restrooms are locked due to desperate people trying to harvest some copper pipes to recycle, other times it is just plain vandalism like smashed porcelain or doors ripped off their hinges.

One highlight of Estevan Park is the soccer field. It actually gets used by local clubs, so homeless people never camp on it.

To the west of the soccer field is a wash, bordered by Union Pacific railroad tracks. Tucson has allowed an entire homeless village to take root here, but just to mix it up the cops kick everyone out a couple times a year.  It's a temporary eviction as the camps generally just move to neighboring properties and return when the heat is off.  One of the biggest encampments is a place called "100 Acre Woods" which is supposed to be developed into a bike trail.

Our property

Close to Estevan Park we own a "warehouse" that was originally a factory, built by Delores Gonzalez in the 1950s to manufacture her highly successful dress line. She was an amazing person.  We repainted her logo onto the building a few years ago, here is how it looked back in the day. What do we need a warehouse for?  Just about anything you can imagine, especially when he property is zoned for mixed commercial/residential use.

Let's admire Delores and one of her signature dresses for a second before we more on... Hola!

This property was the subject of a previous rant on Cat Wrangling.

Today the building is in a rough neighborhood, with or without Estevan Park.  The property was surrounded with chain-link fence topped with razor wire when we bought it.  Chain link is not going to stop thieves, a cheap pair of bolt-cutters will get you through it, and of course thieves can get a preview of the merchandise by peering through the fence. Razor wire is downright dangerous, especially when you need to dispose of it. I am glad I still have two working eyeballs...

After a few thefts we invested in corrugated steel fencing, that seemed harder to overcome and it blocks the view of the property.  After the install I still noticed things were still going missing, but since we have some other properties I thought to myself "I must have left that somewhere else".  I've probably lost a couple thousand dollars in power tools over the years doing property renovations, but if you want to play, sometimes you have to pay.  A missing air compressor and a hand truck to move it were what finally gave away the crime spree, I tracked the wheel ruts for a mile before they disappeared.

How did that theft occur? The fence contractor had installed the steel panels with self-tapping sheet metal screws. Thieves were able to easily remove a few of them and enter the property, take what they wanted and leave, and the fence would snap back and look undisturbed. Once we caught on, we replaced most of the screws with stainless steel pop-rivets.  Removing 500 screws and replacing them with rivets with your wife in the desert heat could be a marriage stress test but we seem to have passed it. The fence has not been penetrated since. In the photo below, one of the rivets appears on the left and one of the screws appears on the right.

How do drug addicts afford drugs?

Recreational drugs are surprisingly inexpensive.  You can beg on a street median for five minutes and you will have all the money you need to get high. Or you can supplement your income through theft. Stolen goods can be pawned - in Tucson, you are never more than a short bus ride to a pawn shop.

There are also non-cash transactions taking place.  I recently caught a pair in flagrante delicto, the girl apparently did not have the required cash, and was quite high when she walked down the alley with her pants down. The drug dealer later rode by on his crime cycle, glaring at me. 

Who are the dealers?

There seems to be a certain well-dressed crowd that moves around Estevan Park on bicycles, with no evidence they are on drugs.  Hmmm, why would anyone want to hang around here?  In the alley behind our property on a set of traffic bollards that block through traffic, there was a three-word graffiti tag which I assume is gang-related. Below is a photo of one of the words, which will give you an idea about the dealers' background.  Our property has been tagged several times, the city is pretty good about painting over graffiti.  Thanks for small favors... but they never got around to painting over this tag.

Theft

With drug prices so low, gang members need to supplement their income by stealing, and we find evidence in the park all the time. Much of local stolen merchandise up until now was due to porch-pirating, where Amazon boxes are dropped at someone's front door and then disappear.  This is especially a problem in the gift-giving month of December, and is the reason we rent a box at the local UPS store.  A more recent career path is robbing trains.  (Actually, train robbery has quite a history in the Western US and the death penalty was a possibility for the perps). Today's Tucson train route is a national artery for moving shipping containers, chemicals, farm animals, etc. Union Pacific routes trains that are up to two miles long. They don't have a two-mile rail yard, so trains often pause while segments of cars are shunted. This procedure stops vehicular traffic on Main Avenue for up to twenty minutes (we have an old-school railroad crossing), which is plenty of time for thieves to explore the cargo. Unfortunately for anyone sending products through Tucson, Estevan Park is next to the tracks where the train stops.  Below is an image of a train that stopped next to the park.

How hard is it to gain access to a shipping container? You might not even need bolt cutters.  Look at how the container doors are secured below.  Union Pacific needs to take better care of their cargo, IMO.

In the image below, UPS ground package boxes that were heading to New England are now just so much trash that I cleaned up. 

Party supplies

Most drugs used in the park are smoked, but we find our share of needles.  Some of the needles appear to be re-purposed insulin shots.  Pipes can be made of almost any container, especially if you don't mind inhaling toxic fumes from burning plastic. Note the feather on the syringe, we have a real problem with pigeons here.  Not exactly a sterile environmnt!

 

There are multiple types of drugs going in the park, and we've seen enough of the effects to identify some of them.  Some drugs make people shake their limbs and talk (or yell) at themselves. These people are referred to as "tweakers" and the drug of choice is methamphetamine. They are a danger to themselves and anyone nearby.  Sometimes they get killed running across a street or highway. It's kind of like hitting a deer or a moose, in that the victim has no idea what is in store for them.

Another drug might cause a death-like high where the peak lasts for maybe fifteen minutes. This is fentanyl, the common form in Tucson is a pill referred to as "blues." There are millions of doses out here, in spite of some large drug busts, and they are often sold for less than a dollar a dose. I once walked by a woman as she was finishing toking up; she was sitting in the dirt and slowly tipping over. She started coming out of it just a few minutes later, so I bought her a sandwich, she ate it, and then wandered off.  People say you should not buy food for drug addicts, as it might enable their behavior and cause them to hang around, but like the signs say, humanitarian aid is never a crime. It won't kill you to show some humanity. Some days, that person "sleeping" in the park turns out to be dead.

Here is a typical camper. Sometimes it is hard to tell if someone is sleeping, high or dead.

One winter we had a guy sleep in the alley for a week, he apparently had the flu.  Tucson Police decided to leave him there.  He emptied his bowels several times without moving more than a couple of feet, I had to clean that up. I don't know if he left on foot, or in a body bag. He just disappeared.

For sure there are other cheap drugs available in Estevan Park, such as heroin and PCP.  Nitrous oxide is outside of the tweaker/blues universe, so it must be a special treat.  Below is a full canister, probably stolen from a local coffee shop or restaurant offering foamy treats. That canister is heavy; 180 bar (2611 psi!) is high pressure indeed.

Weapons

In Estavan Park, here is a rule to live by: assume that anything that looks like it could be used as a weapon, is a weapon.  I constantly pick up pieces of rebar, railroad spikes, metal pipe etc. and dispose of them (actually, anything made of metal, I recycle). Murder in the park is a recurring Tucson theme.

Twice we have rescued women who have been beaten.  One time a woman had been smacked on her head with a wrench and was bleeding like crazy.  We gave her some towels and a ride to the ER, where she proceeded to look for her "Uncle Cary Grant, who works upstairs".  Another time a woman had been beaten and robbed and was screaming so loud I had to check out what was going on.  I interrupted her assault, and her assailant got really pissed when I took a photo of his out-of-state license plate. We gave her and other girl a ride across town to another camp. This was the only time in my life I had to tell someone NOT to smoke meth in my car.

Thanks to our infamous second amendment, gang members are often armed.  Something to think about in case you thought getting in an argument might provide you with satisfaction.

Camping against our property

If people are camping in a public area in Tucson you are supposed to call a special homeless protocol number and a few days later the city sends liaison people out to the site.  If the campers don't look dangerous, they might be allowed to remain, and the city might even provide them with a trash bin. This is not always a good idea, as the park caretakers never empty alien cans, and eventually some tweaker will tip it over for the fun of it.  I have cleaned up the mess more times than I care to remember.

But if they are camping on private property, you can call 911, and the police are supposed to sweep the campers away within a few days.  In practice, the police are usually too busy with felonies to bother with this detail.  But once in a while they help you out and the squatters are gone for a short period of time. 

Here some have campers have set up a campsite in the alley between the north side of our property and another commercial building.  I avoid walking through a set-up like this, you never know if some tweaker is going to surprise you. This is private property.

Here is the west side of our property, an alley that is owned by the city. Some time ago someone planted some nice shade trees (Palo Verde, our state tree, in this case), which are very valuable in urban environments.  But they are an attractive nuisance for people looking to camp out. That cage in the foreground started out as a dog cage. The dog seemed to have run off, so an individual was camping inside of it. In the background you can see some poles spanning between the trees and our fence.  I worry when someone camps out there might get the idea to tunnel under the wall.  I have seen people climb these trees to see what is on the other side of my wall.

I could create an entire photo album of people camped out adjacent to our property, but you get the picture...

You might not believe it but Tucson gets pretty cold during winter nights, down to 32F (0C). this can result in campers lighting trash fires. They tried to burn up a large stump but couldn't find enough kindling I guess. Outdoor fires are dangerous in an environment that often goes four months without precipitation.

When campers are finally encouraged to leave, they leave a lot of crap behind but it is amazing the amount of they bring with them.  Here is the "wagon train" for modern times. Westward, ho!  Get along doggies! I feel bad for all the stores that lose carts to this crowd.

It might be amusing to see what they leave behind, if I was not the guy cleaning it up. Here we have a Christmas decoration and an old-school CRT television that weighs 80 lbs.  Why did someone feel the need to trash pick these and bring them to the alley?

Homeless resources

Over the past few years, some of the parks in Tucson seem to have been abandoned to homeless people, as they have to live somewhere. But Tucson has plenty of resources for people living on the streets, and poor people in general.

Estevan Park is across from the Salvation Army Hospitality House, a dormitory that provides temporary shelter to sober people.  They have 104 beds separated for men and women.   A little south is the Caridad Community Kitchen, where people are served free lunch every day, you can arrive as wasted as you like. The Caridad Kitchen is a division of our Food Bank. Not only do they provide free food, they train disadvantaged people to prepare the meals and then help them find jobs in the food service industry.

Dig Deep Gym provides affordable athletic training, and is just north of our property.  From their website, 

Dig Deep provides training to youth athletes who may not have the opportunity otherwise. Help give back by donating and making a difference in the life of a student athlete today.

I kind of wish they would participate more in cleaning up that alley, but it is what it is... there are two types of people that respond to a mess.  Some only complain, and some may or may not complain, but clean it up.

A block east there is an African American church that provides free meals twice a week and hands out clothing and essentials to homeless people.  When homeless people leave behind their clothing near us, if it is wearable we often wash it and donate it here.

Tucson's Primavera Foundation works toward finding affordable housing for homeless people.

A few miles north there are several new housing projects that provide affordable rents.  Most of Tucson's original low income housing was kind of slummy, it is gradually being torn down and replaced with modern buildings such as Miagro on Oracle. 

With all of the resources available, is the US  making progress in ending homelessness?  Even if you house all of the homeless, a good percentage of them will remain drug addicts, which tend to destroy their surroundings. Once you are a user, there is very low probability that you will get off fentanyl or meth, and homeless drug addicts have overdose six times as often as those who live in homes. It kind of sucks living with addicts roaming the streets, but it could be worse, we could live in Kiev or Gaza.

Our campground is now closed...

Instead of trying to get the city to permanently remove people camped adjacent to your property, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. First you have to wait for the rare day that the campers have been encouraged to move along...

Then, the shade trees have to be removed.  Spend a day with a cordless chainsaw, then move debris inside the wall for later disposal.  Only a bad neighbor would leave a mess like that laying around. This is something you can do yourself, and you should do it  immediately.  If you put off this task for long they will move back.  While you are at it you will have to remove all of the crap left behind. "Crap" might include actual human waste. Be a man , use a shovel but don't wear gloves...

Here is the property after a long day of tree surgery.  Not as inviting, you must agree.

If you are going to do any work in a Tucson alley you might want to use a magnetic sweep to pick up all of the objects that can pop a tire. Here is the result of a few minutes of sweepage.

Next the stumps are pulled, you don't want those trees growing back.  No one does manual labor anymore, these were pulled out by a machine.  While you are at it, paint out the gang symbols on the traffic bollards. You can see more faded graffiti on the wall, it was power-washed by the city.

I don't know why I didn't do this before, but it was time to post some "no trespassing" signs. There are now eight of them spaced across 200 feet, so they will be hard to miss.  Maybe the campers will ignore them, but the police should take notice.  Although this is often overlooked, one path toward retiring with no worries is not wasting money on stuff you can get for free.  Those sheet-metal screws are used and work just fine; these were the screws we took out of the fence and replaced with rivets.  Who are you calling a hoarder?

Material comes in a dual truck/trailer.  Here is 10 tons of riprap dumping into the park parking lot.  The two SUVs in the background are "home" to some out-of-state campers, neither car runs as far as I can tell. The ABC (aggregate base course) material was used to build up low spots from erosion, and also to give a substrate to embed the stones. It is a nice re-use for concrete demolition. 

Here the material is spread into the north alley.  It was a challenge for the operator to turn around his skid-steer loader as there is only nine feet between the walls, but he managed.  This surface is not going to be comfortable sleeping here anymore. Never say never, one time some campers dragged an old mattress into the park!

Will the campers stay away from Delores's factory?  We shall see, but so far so good. It is possible to move the rocks, but when you are on drugs, you are not likely going to perform such a task. I just hope no one throws any rocks over the wall.

Lately the neighborhood is up in arms about a gas station that is under construction 100 yards north of Estevan Park, because they applied for a license to sell alcohol.  Trust me, none of the addicts living in the park use booze, I would have been picking up their cans and bottles. Why would they, when drugs are so cheap? I can't wait to walk over to the new gas station and buy a cold six-pack on a hot day.

Tax deduction?

Here in Arizona we recently passed Proposition 312 that allows owners to deduct the cost of mitigating property damage from homeless people, when  municipalities don't enforce appropriate laws "against public camping, loitering, intoxication, and other nuisances". So there is a good chance that the cost of stump pulling, material and spreading can be recouped.  We will find out in 2026!

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