by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Aug 29/97) - It's known by residents as Squatters Row.

In the brush next to Duck Lake Road, a group of men have been camping in tents for more than 20 years now.

Squatters Row is a community within a community. It's a place where homeless men, many evicted from public housing and all suffering from alcohol abuse, live quiet, if uncomfortable lives.

Not many people thought to question their residency here until earlier this month, when a developer's plans to put a walking trail through the camp forced local officials to consider the issue.

Don Patterson is a founding member of the Jimmy Adams Peace Park trail. He wants to expand the popular walking trail around Boot Lake to link up with the first phase of the trail, which opened two years ago.

The original trail already cuts close to the squatters, and "people have told me they don't feel safe having their kids walk on the trail," Patterson told town council. "There's so much garbage there, people don't want to walk through there anyway."

"There's no reason that people should have to live like that," Patterson told council. "It's time to take our heads out of the sand and do something there ... now is as good a time as any."

"It's a way of life none of us can even imagine," replied councillor Dan Davis. "But if we clear them out down there, where are they going to go? I don't know what we can do to stop it."

Councillor Eddie Kolausok agreed in the meantime to help the squatters clean up the area, and a meeting was called with council and members of the Gwich'in Tribal Council, Social Services and Income Support workers two weeks ago.

About 40 garbage bags worth of refuse were pulled out of the site, which is now clean. But the squatters are still there, and members at the meeting only agreed that something should be done, and that a September meeting should be held to discuss the issue further, according to Kolausok.

Michael Coyen was chief of Tsiigehtchic for one year during the 1980s, and has been a resident of Squatters Row on and off for the last 25 years. He told the xxxDrum this week that he and other squatters would like help to find housing in town.

"It's hard to get a house," said Coyen, who has been evicted from public housing in the past. "I don't mind living out there in the summer, but it's too cold to live in a tent in winter."

Coyen said he hopes officials can find him and residents permanent housing in town, so they can move away the row. "If they're building a trail through there, we don't want to stay," he said.

Coyen said most of the residents there have drinking problems, but he doesn't think alcohol and drug counselling can help them now. "I've seen people stay (at Delta House) two or three times, but they always come out and end up on the same street," he said.