Joe Faillace opened Old Station Sub Shop in Phoenix back in 1986. But earlier this year he was worried the end of his decade long run was near thanks to a massive homeless camp which had grown up all around him.

It was called The Zone and at one time as many as 1,100 people were living there in tents, many of them drug addicts. Joe went from making subs to becoming an unpaid social worker. The NY Times wrote about The Zone back in March.

…there were hundreds of people sleeping within a few blocks of Old Station, most of them suffering from mental illness or substance abuse as they lived out their private lives within public view of the restaurant. They slept on Joe and Debbie’s outdoor tables, defecated behind their back porch, smoked methamphetamine in their parking lot, washed clothes in their bathroom sink, pilfered bread and gallon jars of pickles from their delivery trucks, had sex on their patio, masturbated within view of their employees and lit fires for warmth that burned down palm trees and scared away customers. Finally, Joe and Debbie could think of nothing else to do but to start calling their city councilman, the city manager, the mayor, the governor and the police.

“We’ve got a guy outside who’s naked, trespassing and needs some serious help,” Joe reported in a call to the police in the fall of 2021.

“They’re throwing rocks from across the street at our windows,” he said in another call a few months later…

Within a half-mile of their restaurant, the police had been called to an average of eight incidents a day in 2022. There were at least 1,097 calls for emergency medical help, 573 fights or assaults, 236 incidents of trespassing, 185 fires, 140 thefts, 125 armed robberies, 13 sexual assaults and four homicides. The remains of a 20-to-24-week-old fetus were burned and left next to a dumpster in November. Two people were stabbed to death in their tents. Sixteen others were found dead from overdoses, suicides, hypothermia or excessive heat. The city had tried to begin more extensive cleaning of the encampment, but advocates for the homeless protested that it was inhumane to move people with nowhere else to go, and in December the American Civil Liberties Union successfully filed a federal lawsuit to keep people on the street from being “terrorized” and “displaced.”

And now Joe and Debbie arrived for work on another morning and noticed a woman sprawled on the sidewalk with her face against the pavement.

Joe and his wife joined a lawsuit filed by other businesses in the area and a judge agreed and gave the city a matter of weeks to clean up the Zone. Months later the transformation in the area has been almost miraculous. It turns out that cleaning up the streets is possible.

Joe Faillace looked out the front windows of his sandwich shop this month and barely recognized the neighborhood where he has worked for almost 40 years. There were no tents within view, no emergency sirens, no campfires, no drug users slumped over on his patio or the sidewalk. Instead, he saw customers walking down quiet, clean streets toward his restaurant in time for a lunch rush that now doubles his average daily sales from early in the year.

“The difference over the last six months is something I never believed was even possible,” he said. “It’s an entirely new place. Every day feels like a miracle.”

It may not be too late for Joe’s sub shop but it’s too late for him. His wife has already moved to Prescott and he’s hoping the business can recover to the point that he can sell it and join her in retirement. “She couldn’t stand being down here anymore with all the bad memories,” he told the Times.

It wasn’t just bringing in police that got this done. The city opened three new homeless shelters and offered shelter options to all 700 people who were living in the Zone. The city also designated one covered parking lot a designated camping area. That site includes security and toilets but only a few dozen people are living there.

It’s too early to call this mission accomplished. This local news report was published last month just after the city finished the court ordered cleanup and, at least for a moment, it was a major relief to residents as well as business owners.