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Alaska winters can be formidable, especially for people who don't have a home.

But Anchorage officials are creating new connections with vulnerable Alaskans to offer help.

There's a lot of good people out there that just need a little bit of, like, assistance.

And if that's something that we can help with, I would love to be part of that journey.

What services are most needed to get people off the street?

And could the approach by city leaders provide answers for other Alaska communities?

We'll learn more right now on Alaska Insight.

Good evening.

Alaska's coldest, darkest days are quickly descending.

And for Alaskans who are without housing, the coming months are not only challenging, they can be deadly.

We'll learn about efforts in Alaska's largest city to address the need.

But first, here are some of the top stories from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

Former Southcentral Foundation executive Kevin Gottlieb and two other dentists signed a plea agreement on Tuesday to resolve criminal charges related to his work in the Anchorage based tribal health care provider.

According to the original charging documents, the defendants had listed Gottlieb's name as the provider of hundreds of dental procedures he didn't perform in order to keep him accredited as a dentist.

Gottlieb was fired in 2020.

His wife, a former chief executive for the organization, resigned two weeks later at the that at the time of the firing, Southcentral Foundation said in a message to employees that all procedures were performed by qualified dentists and no impacts to patient safety.

Under the deal, prosecutors are asking a judge to give Gottlieb a suspended sentence of 100 hours of community service and a $2,000 fine.

A state commission has approved the City of Hoonah request to form a bureau after decades of trying.

On Tuesday, the state's local boundary commission accepted the petition in a 3 to 2 vote to annex neighboring areas to create Alaska's 20th borough.

The commission's approval comes despite a recommendation this August by its staff to deny the petition, citing substantive concerns.

They argue the proposal fails to meet state requirements for borough incorporation and doesn't appear to benefit anyone but the residents of Hoonah.

The city, however, argues that forming a borough would give residents more say in the future development in the region.

Commission staff will issue a written decision in the next 30 days.

Then the state will hold a special election for registered voters in the proposed region to decide whether to accept it.

Homer police arrested a man on Monday as the suspected shooter in three incidents of gunfire at two local nonprofits.

30 year old Josiah Kelly of Anchor Point was arrested after a second shooting at Ketchum Back Bay Family planning Clinics, Administrative and Education Building on Monday evening.

The clinic had also been shot at earlier in the day.

Kachemak Bay Recovery connection also had its building shot at in late October, according to Homer police Chief Mark Robl Kelly has confessed to all three shootings, citing religious reasons.

Kelly's pretrial is set for November 22nd at the Kenai Courthouse.

You can find the full version of these and many more stories on our website.

Alaska public dot org, or download the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now onto our discussion for this evening.

Helping vulnerable Alaskans find connection to service.

Winter has arrived in Anchorage and the city's cold weather sheltering plan is in effect.

But there are still hundreds of people living outdoors without adequate shelter.

As the city's unhoused population weighs how they'll make it through the coldest time of the year, a new team in the Anchorage Police Department is working to meet them where they are and provide assistance.

Alaska Public Media's Wesley Early went on a ride along with APD's HOPE team, and has more.

Hello!

Anchorage's HOPE team has been operating since July.

How are you?

We're just checking in, making sure everybody's doing okay.

The team is made up of Ruth Adolf, a police officer, and Tanya Van DeBoss, the social worker.

We're going to either come back or call you guys.

We'll get Ahold of you somehow.

The two have been reaching out to homeless camps around Anchorage and monitoring where new camps pop up as we're driving down the road.

If there's one that we noticed hasn't had outreach, we'll try to stop in there just to connect and say, hey, you know, what do you need?

And are you on housing list?

Are you interested in cold weather shelter?

Like, how can we help connect you to those things that should get you through for the night for the puppies?

On this shift, the two start at Davis Park, handing out snacks and letting people know about an upcoming veterinary clinic.

What do we do?

Do they head to a new camp off to the road to check on a couple of tents and hand out cold weather items like hand warmers, heat offices?

She tries not to judge people for the situation they're in.

At one point they made maybe a crappy decision and it got it.

Got them where they are today or or they have a traumatic experience and it ended up ended up being like, now they're on there without a house.

There's a lot of good people out there that just need a little bit of like, assistance.

And if that's something that we can help with.

I would love to be part of that journey.

And while the Hope team is more focused on outreach than arrests, the team does aid the rest of the department in addressing crime in camps.

We know that the campers are victimized.

They are usually targets of criminal activity in the in the camp itself.

Lieutenant Brian Fuchs oversees the Hope team.

He says officers would often run into problems investigating these crimes because campers didn't trust the officers.

He says the Hope team has created a constant police presence in camps, more focused on building and sustaining that kind of trust.

I'll talk to you later.

I think that people feel comfortable talking with Ruth when it comes to criminal aspects of of camp activity.

I think that, you know, she's building that relationship.

Tonya's building that relationship.

Yep.

The team ends their shift working with a couple named Scott in Virginia.

Scott has an injury that needs medical attention, and he and Virginia live in their van.

The goal for the day is to help get the couple a hotel for the week, so they have somewhere to recuperate.

And we're going to go figure it out and see how we can get a result.

And then we'll text you or call you and let you know.

And then let me have a snapshot of it.

And, you know, but I'm going to leave some two bus passes just in case, because that way, even if that's not running, you guys can check in tonight.

Ultimately, the whole team gets the couple a week long stay at a midtown hotel using some donated gift cards to cover the stay.

You see the lady there?

She looks good.

You know, for Adolph, it's a satisfying end of the day.

But she knows there are others who need assistance.

And I know there's a thousand other people out there that that also want to want to help, to have a little bit of help or need a little bit of help.

I okay, but we just one person at a time.

That's all we can do right now.

And you know, if we have somebody that's willing to work with us and we can help them in any way that we can with what we have the resources, then that's what we're going to do.

Fuchs says the Hope team is currently a pilot project, but they want to get a second team on the road in the near future.

With help from James Oh, Reporting in Anchorage.

I'm Wesley Early.

Joining me tonight to describe the current plans for helping unhoused Alaskans as winter's grip tightens is Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance.

And Farina Brown is a special assistant to the mayor on homelessness and health.

Welcome, and thank you both for being here tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Mayor, I want to start with you.

It's been incredibly cold in recent days, and we may see single digits next week.

There has been so many ideas, as you well know.

Plans, partial plans related to addressing homelessness in Anchorage, ideas for mass shelters or smaller shelters distributed through the community.

Give us an overview of where things stand currently for congregate shelter space and individual rooms.

Well, you know, before I came into office, I heard over and over from people that it just feels like Anchorage is spinning its wheels with homelessness and that we don't have a plan and we're not making progress.

And I understand those feelings and the skepticism some people may have around the idea that we're going to make progress.

And when I came into office, there wasn't a plan sitting on my desk.

But the good news is we have a plan and we're taking action.

And we have already abated more camps than the prior administration.

We are standing up and have stood up shelter, and we're also ensuring that there will be housing or places for people to go when they come out of shelter in the spring.

It's, you know, it's not going to be a change that happens overnight.

But we're very committed to getting out of crisis mode and having a plan.

And emergency shelter is a big part of that.

We're a winter city.

It gets cold here and it's part of our short term response.

At the end of the day, doesn't solve homelessness, but it's something we need to do as we work towards making long term progress and currently, what is the number of congregate and non congregate spaces that are available and how many of those are filled.

And I can take that question slowly.

I am very grateful to the mayor for stepping in and recognizing that we needed to stand up and address the immediate need of providing shelter.

We have been able to stand up the initial 200 beds, and we are working with the second vendor for an additional 100 plus beds for individuals in non congregate.

We are also operating 200 congregate beds at the 56th Avenue shelter.

Really ensuring that we have a place for individuals.

And we will also be standing up our warming centers, because there are going to be many individuals that are not ready or interested in shelter right away.

But we want to ensure that as the temperatures drop, that they have immediate resources like a warming center.

And do you have an idea of and I'm sure the number is somewhat dynamic and changes, but how many people are still in need that are in camps around the city right now that will still need some kind of service?

Absolutely.

You hit the nail on the head.

The number is always, really difficult.

We primarily work with our kind of point in time counts, which are really a very static number.

But through our partners with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, we anticipate that we are going to need shelter services for about 350 people who care.

Homelessness is seems, and it is so much more visible than in past years in Anchorage.

What the on the expense of housing does research say about the other factors that are making people so much more vulnerable?

Absolutely.

What?

Well, first and foremost, what is important for us to remember is that we are just coming out of the pandemic and the pandemic really pushed people who were on the cusp over that edge.

And that then on the cusp of and the ongoing impacts of the opioid epidemic, we really see those that were vulnerable, those that were one paycheck away from experiencing homelessness at their lowest points.

So for us, it is the most important to ensure that we are serving individuals that are most vulnerable.

But we're also standing up resources like rapid rehousing, so that we can catch those that are in that early experience of being homeless, and they just need that initial support, because we do.

We want homelessness to be rare and brief, and not for individuals to have chronic experiences of it, because it's traumatic for both the individual as well as the community.

Absolutely.

Mayor, you mentioned in an earlier interview that you're working on assessing what's available for behavioral health treatments, and I imagine Trina has ideas about this as well.

But what are you learning in that regard?

Well, we're learning that or we know that it's so important for folks to be able to access services and that, you know, if we're going to make the progress and we're committed to action on homelessness, we need to take that step beyond providing emergency shelter.

And you know, we saw, like with the Hope team, how critically important it is to do that one on one outreach and establish trust.

And so we're going to be looking for ways in which we can further establish trust.

You know, we talked about earlier in the video about another, hope team and then also working with partners.

That is such a big piece of this too, is being able to access what's already out there in the community.

Frame is something you said earlier really stuck with me.

The city working on warming centers and places where people can get out of the cold during the day.

These spaces are not just for unhoused folks, but you said people who can't afford to adequately heat their homes absolutely also need them to have a sense of how many people are that close to the edge and vulnerable to, as you said, one paycheck away or one heat bill away, perhaps?

Absolutely.

When we think about standing up warming it is to ensure that end of it.

The elderly are often have very fixed incomes.

And as utility costs rise, we want to ensure that they have a safe place to go.

Families that are on the cusp, often individuals that are couch surfing will need somewhere to go.

So having a static number of how many that would be that would fall into that we don't have.

But for us it is the most important is to shore to ensure that there's a resource for those individuals.

What is the plan for those centers?

When will they be online?

We are excited to have those in the coming weeks.

Right now, it was most important to ensure that we have those beds available for individuals, both in our congregate shelter space, in individual beds, and non congregate and emergency shelter will be coming online in the coming weeks for both of you.

Do you think the city needs a place where people can set up permanent camps of some kind?

Is that in the thinking, or do you prefer to think in terms of getting people into more stable housing?

Yeah, I mean, that's a tough one.

We know that we've got to provide shelter.

We've got to help people access services, and ultimately people need housing.

I mean, we've got a housing shortage too here in Anchorage.

And so, I am more focused on bringing online more units, as you know, and concentrating those efforts on long term solutions.

Now, one thing that people have brought up, and this is true, we're seeing more vehicles.

And so we've had some conversations about safe parking spaces as part of that.

I mean, that's not something for the winter months, but definitely that's a, you know, a possible tool that we may consider to address that aspect of the issue.

Absolutely.

And I will add on to that, the the goal is really to provide shelter that allows individuals to move into housing.

The mayor stated it very clearly that we are in a housing crunch, but housing is going to be the way that we help and support individuals.

With being able to bring shelter online, individuals are able to bring their pets as well as park their vehicles both at the congregate and the non congregate shelter, so that we're keeping people safe and they have access to case management, behavioral health as well as EMTs to provide linkage to services and to really kind of mediate any of those lower level medical concerns that they have.

When you ask the question about safe camping, getting people inside and connected to resources is the primary focus.

Talk about why there is a need for both congregate shelters with, stricter rules about sobriety and things, and low barrier options that may not require that.

What's the thinking there?

Absolutely.

If we are serving individuals, if we're meeting the need, we want to make sure that we have the right resource for the right person.

And so to for life safety, if I have, serious addiction issues, I want to be inside.

I want to be warm.

But I also understand that I am chemically addicted to something.

And so making sure that there is that opportunity for that individual and recognizing the complexity of their conditions, that they have a safe place to go.

And for individuals that are highly vulnerable, that need to feel safer and more secure and not having someone in that may be slightly under the influence, having the right resource for the right person is what we can do to ensure that their safety for everyone and something I want to note.

Excuse me, that's really important, is that we have recently stood up 200 non congregate beds and of those 200 beds, 136 individuals who have serious disabilities have been moved into those rooms.

And these are folks who are in wheelchairs, who are amputees, who have walkers, who have serious medical conditions like cancer.

And these are folks who have very difficult time camping or even being in these bigger, congregate shelters.

So it's really important, you know, to provide those options to vulnerable people in our community.

I think oftentimes people don't picture someone in a wheelchair or someone with severe mobility challenges.

As someone who is without housing.

When you think about that longer term, need some folks.

You'll be able to get them services.

They'll get on their way back on their feet.

Yeah.

Some people are going to need assistance for the rest of their lives either because of, of severe, mental or physical challenges or they are working jobs that will just never pay a living wage, and they're going to need some kind of assistance.

What is your thinking about how that works long term for funding support and where that should come from, especially when you're up against the the vulnerabilities of changing federal administrations and how that could affect funding, in the future.

And this is where the partnerships are so critical.

You know, we're not going to solve homelessness solely at the municipal level.

We need the other organizations, the nonprofits, the agencies who bring resources and assistance to the table.

And, you know, when it comes to folks who do need long term supports, being able to access those programs and vouchers and medical assistance is critical.

So the partnerships are really, really important.

What ideally would a successful mix of congregate and non congregate shelters look like?

Are you thinking that, and what are the conversations that you're having with Anchorage residents about?

I know in the past some people objected to we don't want this in our backyard or we don't want a shelter in our neighborhood.

Our sentiments changing as people learn more about who are vulnerable neighbors are is there more acceptance or what is the longer term plan for where these spaces will be?

And let me just start by saying, you know, I don't support mass shelters, big shelters of 500 people, a thousand people in a spot in a lot of some of the really, successful places are ones where sometimes people even know they're in existence and that they're actually in neighborhoods.

And so we are looking at a mix and the right mix for our community to meet the needs of people and to ensure to that ultimately, you know, we are providing shelter, but we are working to connect people to the services, the supports they need and housing you.

Frenette, you had mentioned making homelessness rare and brief.

How do things change in terms of helping people, get assistance if they've been on the street for longer periods of time?

That's where, interactions like what we saw with the Hope team, become critically important because it's about building those proactive relationships.

Sometimes it may take 5 or 6 engagements with an individual before they actually tell you their name.

So understanding and building a trusting relationship so that they feel comfortable with saying, I really need primary care.

I may not be ready to go inside, but I may be ready to see a doctor.

And from there it becomes those springboards that allow navigators, individuals like the Hope team, to connect people to the right resource.

So it is linkage.

And making those relationships, can't be understated and how important it is in making homelessness rare and brief, as well as having established programs like Easy Place for like a congregate shelter where an individual can walk in in an emergency, rapid rehousing programs that link people so that there is, again, that hand up at the right time when it's needed.

Talk about the coordinated entry process and how and why that was used to fill beds.

I think that goes back to the folks that have severe challenges.

Absolutely.

The mayor said it and we're we're really excited about this.

It this is th first year that we have partnere with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, to use the coordinated entry or by list, by name list.

And what that allowed us to do is to really target outreach efforts for the non congregate beds that were being stood up, that additional 200 beds to serve the individuals that had the most vulnerabilities.

So we are seeing individuals with three or more disabling conditions that moved into those beds.

And it is those are the people that will have that access and engagement and those linkages.

What is going to be the right level of care?

Someone may need assisted living home.

There may be individuals that have developmental disabilities that have been being taken care of by other campers in their camp, that we can now get them connected to the right resource.

And that, for us, is one of the most important things that we can do during this winter.

So shelter season is not just ensuring that we have flow out of the system into other types of housing, but are we connecting and serving our most vulnerable mayor?

How much realistically can the city do?

I know you've talked a lot about the importance of partnerships and other groups that can bring resources to the table, but is there a limit on how many beds and for how long that the city can really sustain their?

Excuse me, there are certainly limits and, you know, fiscal constraints.

And at the same time, we are very committed to ensuring that we have a basic safety net.

And so if you look at the budget that we've proposed for the first time, we've got emergency shelter included in that budget.

We have, included 24 seven for the mobile crisis team, for that kind of behavioral health intervention.

And, you know, we're also including rapid rehousing in that budget as well.

And again, while we are committed to providing emergency shelter, that doesn't solve homelessness, and we know that's really expensive and, and will need to continue to move towards connecting folks with those services and getting people housed who well, thank you.

We're just about out of time here.

But, Trina, you've worked in behavioral health for many years.

How does Alaska compare to other states for the level of need and available providers and service?

Alaska is right on par with what you will see in the lower 48.

We have for many years relied on our behavioral health and nonprofit provider communities, and that as the need and as the need for services grows, there's often a lack of capacity because there's always funding constraints when you're operating as a nonprofit.

So what we are experiencing here in Alaska, and very thankful to the mayor to be willing to actually budget into an up into the operating budget, ongoing services and support is absolutely paramount to see the change.

We are grateful for all of our partners who have stood in this space for decades and that have really understood and stood in that space to support individuals, and that we can come alongside and partner with them to make our city better, is it feels really good to be here and to work alongside the mayor, who has that commitment and has demonstrated that commitment in the budget.

So thank you.

Thank you both so much for being here and the work that you're doing on behalf of all Alaskans, and especially in South Central, being without safe, warm housing makes people vulnerable to illness, injuries and violence.

It isn't a personal feeling or a crime to be without adequate shelter.

Tragedy can befall any life, leaving someone without the capacity to help themselves.

Community response to those who are struggling should be quick, compassionate and without judgment.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight, visit our website.

Alaska public.org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, you can sign up for our free daily digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.