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Years of high inflation and expe housing coupled with an early wi storm, highlight the need for safe shelter in Anc I can't pay $1,300 for a one bedroom apartment, so I got expedited out of the place and I've been homeless ever sinc We'll discuss Anchorage's cold w shelter plan and its role in lon solutions to homelessness.

Right now on Alaska Insight.

Good evening.

Tonight, we'll find out how Anch leaders are working to provide s for people who are currently unh or in vulnerable situations.

The need has become much more ur as South central Alaska has been hammered by multiple sn Before we get to that discussion are some of the top stories of t from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide News Net A federal judge says the ConocoPhillips Willow O Project can move forward.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled Thurs against environmental groups who argue that the government's to greenlight the project was fl Gleason found the government's a was consistent with environmenta well as with goals Congress esta for the National Petroleum Reser Alaska Environmental groups say they'll appeal that.

New Yorkers who sit in a borough really reelected conservatives i but one race for assembly and sc board on Tuesday.

Prelim Preliminary election resu show incumbents winning in each race except for Assembly District fiv where Bill Gamble led a majority incumbent Mulkey.

Two voters also supported a tran bond, which passed with 67% of ballots cast in favo Voter turnout, however, was low 9.5% of registered voters.

Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola voted Wednesday night in favor of defunding the new White House Office of Gun Violence Preventio She was one of only two Democrat in the U.S. House to vote for the measure.

It failed by a vote of 208 to 21 Hill told his office declined to comment on her vote.

You can find the full versions o and many other stories on our we Alaskapublic.org.

Or by downloading the Alaska Pub app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion for the The weather in South Central cha dramatically this week and the heavy snow makes warm, d for unhoused Alaskans more urgen In Anchorage, a 150 bed shelter opened October 31st in an unused municipal building.

It was supposed to be the final of anchorage's emergency cold weather shelter plan for th But less than a month into the s there's a shelter waitlist with about 1000 people on it.

Despite that large list, Alaska Public Media's Jeremy Hsieh saw a low number of people when he visited the new shelter He brings us this story.

This this might be the calm before the sto So it is very empty when the sun and it's still kind of warm and there is a congregate shelte They don't usually come until it cold or it starts snowing.

Crystal Abbott works for Henning a nonprofit with contracts to run Anchorage's three main winter shelter sites, including this converted city bu They have a common area in the m which they can congregate, talk to each other, but they can't cross the lines.

Congregate basically means the beds are in a shared common For this facility, that space is a converted vehicl There are two other winter shelt Henning is running for the city that are non congregate.

They're in hotels.

And those rooms did fill quickly after opening.

Abbott says a lot of the people on the don't want to go into the group A lot of them are couples who want to stay together in a r so they will wait until a room becomes available.

They stay on the list.

That lines up with the results of a survey.

The Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness ran in Septe and October at outreach events.

Respondents said they strongly p a more private space and separation from a significan What's the most common reason those surveyed gave as a barrier to going into shelter?

That was followed by a disabilit or mobility challenge.

And then pets, which generally aren't allowed in the hotels.

There is space set aside for pet and this shelter.

So this will be one of the rooms for the pet shelter.

Nobody wants to leave their babi outside.

Henning also ran the mass shelte the Sullivan Arena last winter.

Thank you.

Around 500 people would fill the and crowd into an overflow warmi area on the coldest days in.

The beginning of Sullivan.

We were slow to open, and then we got fairly full, fai So I believe that's what's going here, too.

Sean Steak was one of the 22 peo cot at the shelter after the COV Then the rent prices went skyroc I can't pay $1,300 for a one bedroom apartment.

So I got expedited out of the pl And I've been homeless ever sinc City officials and non-profits created hundreds of new affordable apartments this summer through hotel conver Despite that, demand for winter shelter appears to be much highe last winter.

Dramatic increases in the averag in Anchorage in recent years is likely a big factor in that.

When rent becomes less affordabl that directly contributes to more people becoming homeless Researchers studying pre-pandemic national data found thresholds of unaffordability that predict homelessness.

They published an academic paper in summary in 2021 about their f Now I live out of a two boxes Steak grew up in Anchorage.

He says he spent the last seven or so mostly camping outdoors on a hill near the Alaska Railroad depot in downtown Anchorage.

After one night in the shelter, he's already feeling better.

A lot more safer, warmer.

And I didn't have to worry about being stolen from the midnight.

You go by Ship Creek and you look up that hill.

That's all you see is trouble.

I mean, everybody's back and for passing deals.

I mean, if you want to have a go you wouldn't want to hang down t And I was tired of getting tired of watching over my steak as worked for several r as a dishwasher in downtown Anch He says he hopes he can get back into it, back on and stay out of the cold.

That was before Anchorage got any significant snowfall.

Now it is snowing.

And like Abbott predicted, a lot the cots inside are starting to She thinks it's just a matter of and temperature until the rest are filled, too.

In Anchorage, I'm Jeremy Hseih.

Clearly a lot has changed since Jeremy reported that story in just the last few days.

Anchorage has been slammed by overlapping storms and now se inches of wet, heavy snow blanketed South Central.

It's hazardous for everyone, but especially for people who are living outdoors right no Joining me tonight to give us an on the Anchorage Shelter plan for this winter is Alexis Johnso Alexis is the housing and homele coordinator for the municipality And Felix Rivera.

Felix is an Anchorage assembly m and the chair of the Assembly's Housing and Homelessness Committ Welcome, both of you.

Thank you for being here, especi such a day as this weather has p So for both of you, as we've bee conditions are really harsh with so much wet snow on the gro A woman died earlier this week from a fire in a tent.

Given the current dire weather, and assembly leaders planning to an emergency warming shelter.

Alexis, start us off.

Any movement there?

Yeah.

So I think in the beginning when we planned originally, the number was between four and We brought on 524 shelter beds and we quickly realized that that just wasn't going to suffic So we are in conversations right to look at additional facilities whether that be warming or additional emergency cold weathe And that's something that we need to prioritize, especially with this type of wea outside.

Felix, your thoughts here that the mayor said that that th there was sort of a wait and see as he said he was waitin to see what the assembly wanted It seems like this is really urg We need something immediately.

Yes, absolutely.

So for several months now, myself and other members have communicated to the administration, especially around warming, if you want some warming areas, which we are largely in support please let us know what those pl And so, as I understand it, the administration has come up w a possible plan for warming and looking forward to seeing wh so that the Assembly can take a at it, do our oversight role, and then have our discussion and So following up a bit here, the number of outdoor deaths this year is nearly double that of last year.

43 people as of last month.

Why isn't there at least one fac kind of on standby for this, especially when we see the situa as it currently is?

It seems like the need is right and is there a way that you can something quickly for at least f so that people can get out of th mess that is out there now?

Yeah.

So I think right now what we nee is a couple of things we need to Do we need to expand the current shelter space that w And I think by and large right n the answer to that is yes, we do need more shelter beds.

The total number, I think, is is still something we need to fi of how many more shelter beds we Based on a request from the administration.

The assembly is going to be call a special meeting on Tuesday to vote to add 50 more shelter b to the current congregate facili So we know that those shelter be hopefully be online next week after the Assembly goe through its deliberative process and then hopefully in short orde after that, we will have a warmi stood up both I think we need on in downtown and in midtown.

Thank you, Alexis.

The focus for this year's winter shelter plan is more was on the non congregate shelter spaces first.

This is different from the Sulli You referred to this as a pilot program, smaller non congregate Why do smaller settings help people get back on their fe Is that the aim?

Or are these rooms more for people with complications who just can't get by in a shelt Yeah, I think the answer is both I think that, you know, with the era of the Sullivan Are we really haven't had an opportu to show what a smaller site can do or how it can be successful.

We did prioritize people on some called a coordinated entry list, which really ranks people as as far as vulnerability.

And so we prioritize that list with our waitlist to get people into non congregat because it is a private area.

You have better outcomes in situ where someone who needs like additional supportive services.

And so we really this year took of, well, let's pilot it.

Let's be true to a small neighbo shelter and really see if the success can be matched that we think accompanies a smal or if we still face the same cha that we would as a larger shelte All right.

Felix, you said structurally the shelter plan is similar to l but with a very different politi and policy angle.

Tell us what you meant by that.

Yeah, so really this year, shelt focused and really built around the idea of housing first And it's really built around the of making sure that we live up to the ideals of anchored home, which is our c plan to end homelessness.

You know, in the past, I think a word that gets tossed a lot and frankly, members of the community, I thin that in the past, our shelter has been sort of a w and we really want to shift away from that framework of just warehousing individuals to helpi move people along their housing And so the assembly put in a lot of policy provisions for how this funding for emergen weather shelter needed to be use With the biggest one being we set a benchmark of 90 days.

So that is how long an individua should be in a shelter from day one to day nine, day and on day or before then they should be mo whatever is next in their journe whether that is housing, that's whatever it may look like.

And that is, I think, a big para from what we've had in the past.

So for the folks who are in the congregate settings, you mentioned a 90 day timeline that I assume is associated with the congregate shelter faci but do you have a timeline for s and a limit on how long people c in the private rooms before they to be able to really get on thei and support themselves?

Yeah, so shelter is shelter.

It doesn't matter whether it's c shelter or non congregate shelte So for the entire emergency, cal the weather shelter system, we are looking at a 90 day bench and we're hoping to meet that 90 as much as possible.

We know that we have some housin coming online later this month with the buried in.

And so we have those units comin and we're doing our best to brin as many other units as possible.

As we heard in the story, for pe making lower wages, high rent causes people to lose their housing.

If someone is paying more than 32% of their income in they are really vulnerable, as we saw from this report.

That's kind of a big tipping poi Have Anchorage rents reached or exceeded that threshold?

I think absolutely.

I mean, if you are a single pers and you're working 40 hours a we and you're not making, you know, well above $25 an hour there's really no place in Ancho you can afford to live in a one Our median rent far surpasses, especially minimum wage workers or young people.

You know, we as a city would like to see young people s you know, create families and li and love our city just as much a And we're seeing a huge outflow because affordability in our cit is just not there.

So how are you wrapping your heads around this very large problem, even for people who get stable, get the medical or other help that they need, get a job?

There's still this enormous problem of affordabilit How can people become stable and independent when wages just are not keeping pace with r Yeah.

So this is actually 100% why the Assembly hosted a housin summit last week and declared Housing Action Week from October 30th to Novemb because we need to focus on housing as a solution to this.

And we know that we need to build more housi And when we do build more housin that should hopefully level off the increases that we're seeing who maybe can't afford homeowner And then when we build more rent that should also hopefully stop that that inflation that we in rent increase year over year.

You know, during that summit, I did a little bit of an exercis to see could afford that moving because I'm a renter.

Could I afford to move to a new one bedroom apartment?

And the answer was no.

I could not afford a one bedroom in a lot of neighborhoods that I would love to live in.

Yeah, a really large problem for Give us an update on the Golden that was converted into private People are paying rent there, But Alexa, some of them have sai they want to end their leases th What's the issue?

Yeah.

So the Golden Lion was a long awaited project, and I think we had really good e to turn it on its housing.

It was kind of a bipartisan effo with the administration in the A and I was so happy to get it onl It provides 80 units, leased uni at $800 a month, and they're cur when Emergency Cold weather shel did come online.

We have some people in that faci that are self-pay, which means that they're not on They're not funded.

They pay for themselves.

And so when you really start to some of the things that we didn' really prepare for, an emergency weather shelter as people are pa a month for a converted hotel ro and now the city is offering a h for free with three meals a day at no cost to the client.

And so the question becomes, you why am I paying $800 for a lease when I could be offered the exac thing, plus food for free down t And so that's not something we really preplan for.

It's a conversation that we have with the client or the tenant, I should say, and we really advo You don't want to take a step ba towards emergency cold weather shelter because that unit may not be ava when an emergency cold weather shelter ends.

So so that leads us to the waitlist for emergency shelter.

It was expected to be around 450 As you mentioned.

It ended up at around a thousand or a little more than that.

But not all who call to get on t are currently unhoused.

So parse out for us what's going Yeah.

So this is the first time the city has ever done a reserva We wanted a single point of entr to get navigated through the emergency cold weath shelter system.

Henning was the operator that wa for all three locations as far as like supportive servic And so they took on the the waitlist or the reservation when people started calling.

It wasn't only unsheltered peopl that were calling.

You had people who were sleeping on their family member's couch or sleeping in th We had some people that were in settings, so like brother Friend the Shelter or Gospel Rescue Mis that wanted to advocate for them to get in the non congregate or into a hotel room.

So in total, we saw about just a little north of a thousand people requesting emergency cold weathe The people who were prioritized were people who overlapped on a coordinated entry list and als who were living unsheltered.

So if they were currently in a shelter system, we didn't advocate for them to move into a non congregate fa unless there was an absolute nee deemed by vulnerability, for ins And why did the city's shelter contractor, Henning and the Heal Department create a separate lis The Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness offered to d an emergency shelter needs list.

Why not let them take the lead o I think we worked really well with the coalition when we started our reservation They were helpful in telling us, we think you should set up a pho So we advocated for that and agreed to do it.

I really think that as unfortuna as it is that we had 1000 plus people on it, it really was opening to say that this many pe are wanting a situation like thi And so although the data wasn't great f because we do have a shortfall o I think the data is good for us to plan for in the future And Felix, your thoughts here about these l and kind of the confusion about who is really in the most Yeah.

So, you know, I'm not so surprised that the list i because if you look back in 2022 the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness put out a Ga and their gap analysis showed that we need 2500 new hou in the municipality of Anchorage So to see that, you know, when the word came out that you could get this free hot through April 30th, that so many people signed up fo that it's not very surprising to What I hope to do in the future is, you know, I really appreciat the Anchorage Department and Hen for working to stand up this lis You know, this was a little bit of a test, pilot of how this list is going I hope in the future we can work out the issues so that next year it's easier, I think, for folks, especially for folks who have a little bit more vulne who maybe don't have phones, who don't know how to access these things to to get on the li to be able to access them.

Because for me, that's a sort of a real equity i If if we have people who can kno how to easily access this list and get a hotel room and then we have another part of the population does not and they're not getting that hot So how can we make it a little b for folks?

Okay, so in the future, it seems like there is some diff sets that need to converge more.

Is that sort of the plan that coming out of this?

Are you thinking that maybe more coalition on lists is neede Yeah.

So certainly I think more coordi I think on the lists and and making sure that we are heav using our current data infrastructure to inform any she or wait list I think is importan The converted solid waste servic building that is a congregate shelter fac as we saw in the package story several day not so many people there.

I imagine it's a different scene What can you tell us about how many folks are there now?

Yeah, so as of last night, we had 150 checked in, which means that people have sho They've identified a bed for the And then every morning we roll o those beds for people who do not show up for their bed So it's it's an ebb and flow.

But we were full as of last nigh And then as of this morning, we had 28 vacancies.

And so I expect those to be fill We did put forward a resolution to increase shelter capacity at that facilit by an additional 50 people to max out at a 200 client capac And how will that be handled?

Is that coming up soon for consideration?

Yes.

So the assembly has called a special meeting on Tuesday where we're going to be taking t Okay.

Are there other spaces available beyond this building for if you this emergency overflow with thi weather for congregate shelter s I think that is a multifaceted q One of the things that we are co about not so much is funding because we can always find fundi but operators finding the staff to run the fac We have had community conversati with one entity for a warming fa and I think we're going to conti to have that conversation becaus that the need is great now.

But as far as municipal building we don't have any additional vacant municipal buildings that we would be able to turn on Nor do I think that we have additional operators to run a sh or facility of that size.

Are all of the non congregate rooms filled now?

Yes.

So The Aviator has 274 shel Those are all currently occupied And then the Alix Hotel has 100 and those are all occupied as we What would you like to see going year?

We've got about 30 seconds or so You had mentioned that you'd lik to see space for everyone next y What would that look like?

I think the more people that get housing and independent living or supportive housing, the less people seeking emergenc I think we can agree on.

Yeah.

N We need to do everything that we within our power and within the funding that we a that we have to bring more housi between now and October of next and I think additionally, we need to look at other solutio for folks.

We're going to be having a lot of conversations about all as an example for folks who maybe don't want to utilize any shelter which that populatio so that hopefully they have some that's organized, warm for them live.

All right.

Thank you both so much for being this evening.

Safe housing is basic but critical for everyone and supporting efforts to help our most vulnerable neighbors ha warm place to sleep, eat and kee their belongings is a bare minim that can save lives and help lead people to more sta through engagement with health p and employment opportunities.

This support, in turn, leads to a healthier and more stable community for al That's it for this edition of Al Insight.

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Thanks for joining us this eveni I'm Lori Townsend.

Goodnight.