Alaska Insight is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers just like you.

Thank you.

During the pandemic, the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage provided temporary beds, meals and running water for hundreds of people who are homeless.

Now, the Sullivan has closed to all but about 90 people.

The closure has many Alaskans concerned about the well-being of the former residents.

But officials with the shelter say it was necessary.

It's time for this place to close.

It's absolutely time for this place to close.

What were the reasons for the May 1st closure and what is the long term plan to help the city's most vulnerable residents?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska INSIGHT.

Good evening.

Although the extreme amount of snow anchorage saw this winter is finally melting, temperatures are still cold at night and snow and rain continues to make ground conditions soggy and challenging for anyone who has to sleep in it.

And as we'll hear tonight, that's what many people were faced with this week as the city's largest homeless shelter closed and people were forced to head out on their own.

We'll learn about why the closure happened now and what the long term plan is to assist the most vulnerable among us.

But before we get to that discussion, we'll start off with some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

A U.S. district judge in Washington state has affirmed a controversial recommendation that could shut down summer trolling for King Salmon in southeast Alaska this summer.

Judge Richard Jones signed the two page order on Tuesday, which now requires the National Marine Fisheries Service to remedy a violation of the Endangered Species Act concerning a threatened population of killer whales in Puget Sound.

In a press release, the Alaska Trollers Association, which intervened in the suit, says it will work with the state of Alaska to appeal the ruling.

Alaska's Office of Public Advocacy says a shortage of workers means it can no longer take in new wards to its public guardianship program.

According to a letter to the court system from the office sent in late April.

Public guardians are appointed by courts for adults who can't take care of themselves and who don't have close family members who are willing to take care of them.

Guardians do things like pay rent, get food, and apply for social support programs for their wards, according to the office's director, James Stinson.

The Department has been losing staff over the past few years due to high workloads and relatively low pay.

In an interview with Alaska Public Media, Stinson said the remaining guardians are in triage mode, but that they're working on restructuring to free up work time for Guardians.

The board that governs school sports in Alaska decided against adopting a change to its bylaws that would have prevented transgender girls from participating in school sports.

But the Alaska School Activities Association said its board could still adopt the change in the future if State Department of Education rules compel it, too.

The association announced the decision Tuesday after two days of meetings in Valdez.

In the announcement, they stated that the ACA board felt that until the Education Department changes the current regulations, it would be premature to change the bylaws.

You can find the full versions of these stories and many more on our website alaskapublic.org or by downloading the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion for this evening.

The Sullivan Arena in Anchorage is no longer Alaska's biggest homeless shelter.

Capacity was slashed on May 1st, down to a quarter of what it had been for much of the winter.

The city has not solved homelessness.

Some people who trickled out of the hockey arena got last minute housing placements.

Some caught flights out of town to stay with friends or relatives.

But many left looking for a place to camp.

Alaska Public Media's Jeremy Hsieh reports.

Do you guys want coffee?

Ready?

The city owned Sullivan Arena.

Coffees ready.

If you guys would like it.

Has been anchorage's defacto homeless shelter of last resort.

Thank you.

Since 2020.

I'm feeling pretty chaotic right now, to say the least.

It was David Marsits final morning here.

He was one of 166 people who stayed the last night before the assembly policy took effect.

Cutting capacity market had a work shift beginning soon.

I wasn't sure how to keep his stuff safe or where he'd be sleeping at the end of the day.

And I don't want to lose my job.

I'm trying to keep it.

So I'm doing the best I can to try to make this work.

But, you know, getting re evicted is not helping matters.

When the COVID 19 pandemic slashed, established shelters capacity and triggered wide disruptions in the economy, that fueled homelessness.

The shelter inside the hockey stadium closed last summer as pandemic restrictions relaxed, but several efforts to establish new low barrier emergency shelter spaces where stymied by politics and neighborhood pushback.

The Sullivan Arena reopened in the fall and hundreds of people crowded in again to escape frigid temperatures and snowstorms.

What I think has been unfortunate is that is it has become a symbol by default because we haven't had a longer ranging plan.

The Anchorage Assembly hired Kathleen McLoughlin to help with the Sullivan Arena's final days as a shelter.

She thinks converting it to a shelter made sense during the pandemic.

But now it's time for this place to close.

It's absolutely time for this place to close.

She thinks its users need a permanent facility and that the wider community should get its hockey and events venue back in the days leading up to the scale down.

Nick and shelter workers set up what they called a war room in an office inside the Sullivan.

A dozen or so big sheets of paper spanned the wall, each with headers for different types of clean needs or potential aid with the individual's names and cot numbers listed below.

They hope to connect people to whatever services they're eligible for or get them some basic provisions for living outside.

On Monday, May 1st, the Sullivan Arena's doors shut to all but its 90 most vulnerable users.

These tables of donated clothes and odds and ends were among the last stops for clients leaving Sullivan.

Mercer wishes he had a little more time to get back on his feet about having to scramble.

It seems to me that they're creating homelessness, not helping it.

I feel that there should be something more there, you know, so that people don't wind up on the street living in a tent.

By lunchtime, he had sorted out his work shifts and found temporary storage for his stuff, but he still didn't know where he'd be sleeping at the end of the day.

In Anchorage.

I'm Jeremy Shea.

Joining me tonight to discuss why city leaders closed the shelter now and what the plan for addressing the needs of unhoused people is, is Felix Rivera.

Felix is an Anchorage assembly rep for Midtown and the chair of the Assembly's Committee on Housing and Homelessness.

Also here, this evening is Alexis Johnson.

Alexis is the municipal housing and homelessness coordinator.

Welcome, both of you.

Thanks so much for being here this evening.

Thanks for having us.

So the last line of Jeremy's story, Mr. Marr, said part of the job is trying to put it together and keep it.

What do you know about the demographics and situations of of people in need of housing support?

I saw some information from a legislative update about how people would need to work more than 70 hours a week at minimum wage in order to afford housing.

How many are working?

Do you have an idea of that but just can't make it and are without housing?

Yeah.

So I don't have an exact percentage of how many people.

But we do know that people currently in tents, people who are staying at the Sullivan, people who are staying at other shelters are in that same scenario where they are working full time jobs, but they just can't afford the market rate.

Rents that we have in the municipality of Anchorage is just too high.

So they're forced to make other alternative arrangements and it truly is frustrating that we are in that situation, which is why we have such a big gap and need for more affordable housing in the municipality.

Well, as we heard, the shelter is closed to all but 90 of the most vulnerable folks.

Any I know it's hard to have an accurate count, but do you have an idea of how many people did have to just try to figure it out through camping?

Yeah.

So the last number that we had roughly estimated about 775 people would need shelter come June 1st.

So with 90 staying at the Sullivan through the month of May, we're looking at around 685 people.

Do you think that is that the number that you're thinking is out trying to camp at this point in time?

Or is a certain percentage of those were they the folks that maybe got housing assistance through friends or family or found a couch perhaps?

Yeah, I think the roughly 700.

You know, that was worst case scenario.

A lot of people self resolved in the final weeks.

We had people that were reconnecting with family, had opportunities for sober living facilities or rehabilitative opportunities.

And so the number that we estimated was roughly around 550 exiting and going unsheltered.

Felix You said earlier that it's going to be a rough few weeks for everyone.

What concerns you the most?

Yeah, I think certainly for me, safety is a big concern for everyone, for the community at large.

People staying in those camps.

I want to make sure that they are safe, that they have what they need.

They're warm at night.

And for neighborhoods who are concerned about potential impacts and businesses, I mean, I've already heard from businesses who have gotten broken into because folks are desperate.

They don't have any other any other solution.

So they're breaking into places to provide a warm place to stay.

So I think it is going to be rough for a few weeks as we sort this out as housing comes online.

Is the city or the assembly?

Are you concerned about lawsuits, litigation, maybe by either community members or folks who are without housing themselves saying this doesn't work?

I think liability is always a concern for the municipality.

We work for all residents of the municipality, not just, you know, ones who are property owners or taxpayers.

We also work for people experiencing homelessness.

And so I think from a standpoint, municipality, we always want to limit our liability.

But I personally think with summer rolling around, our focus is going to be now on winter shelter and making sure that we're not liable.

And when come winter, when temperatures are really cold.

The numbers that we discussed, you were both on talk of Alaska earlier this week.

Anchorage needs more than 2000 new housing units and that's just for the low income population for housing.

We know that there's housing shortages everywhere in the state.

The Housing and Urban Development Department HUD released figures this week saying $3 million is coming to Alaska to help build affordable housing that would cover six or seven, maybe single family homes.

And Anchorage, certainly less than that in rural Alaska.

What else can where else can funds be secured to address this enormous problem?

If HUD isn't providing more funds?

How will we get past this chronic housing shortage?

And for me, you know, it's almost laughable to think that HUD considers 3 million enough two to even scratch the surface of our need.

So we're absolutely going to be going back to HUD and saying to Secretary Fudge that we need more assistance and we need equitable assistance.

You know, compared to other cities our size or who have similar homelessness populations our size, we need a greater share of that pie.

But also have to go into the states because the state has a role to play in this, both from a housing perspective, but also from a behavioral health and services perspective.

And we absolutely need them to be at the table and bring in their resources.

During Talk of Alaska on Tuesday, we we talked about the Houston model, what it's called that a successful system of taking people directly off the street into housing.

They've been able to house 25,000 people in the last decade.

Is that sort of something that you'd like to see modeled here?

Only with the support that's needed?

I mean, for us, I wish we had the housing units to be able to do that.

And I wish that we had the support systems available so that when people do get abated, literally from campgrounds or campsites to a house, to really wrap around the services, to ensure that they can keep their house, you know, work towards maintaining their house and really get all supportive services.

The problem is, as Alaska lacks federal funding, we lack staff shortages.

We have a very limited population.

And so the infrastructure is really hasn't been built out yet to allow for the Houston model to be successful here.

Well, and you mentioned talking to the secretary of HUD to try to help them understand that Alaska needs more support.

One of the problems is, is the Houston model is so successful because all the agencies came together, but also they have a tremendous amount of funding because it's based on per capita population rather than based on need.

Is that being addressed or worked on so that in the future, hopefully more funding will be based on how big the need is rather than how sparse your population may or may not be.

Absolutely.

So this is a point of great alignment between the administration and the assembly of asking HUD to be more fair and equitable with how they distribute their funds and make sure that we have the funding to deal with our need.

And that is how this should be allocated.

So pretty soon there should be a resolution that we're going to be bringing forward jointly between the Assembly and the administration, to Secretary Fudge, to HUD, to say, please reconsider this and to our federal delegation to ask them to act on our behalf.

What are both of your current positions on?

What would be the best for a shelter system in the future?

Is is the city's position still leaning toward one larger shelter, or are you thinking about a combination of smaller venues for helping people across the city?

Alexis, where are you at currently?

So personally, right now, in the instance that we're at, we're limited on funding and we're limiting on workforce.

And so I think going into the short term, we should really have more larger economies to scale shelter.

But in the long term, building out a shelter system to where you could decompress a larger shelter, and to have a lot more smaller systems.

Right now, we just don't have the adequate funding or the staffing to have, you know, five or six small shelters citywide.

Felix, your thoughts here?

Yeah, so for me, I have been pretty laser focused that we need to get a new permanent year round, low barrier shelter up and running by the end of the year, preferably by November.

And that shelter should be at about 150 people, which is the max that we have currently in municipal code for shelter that will break this cycle and prevent us hopefully from having to use the solar.

Then again, or consider using the Fairview Rec Center spread Rec Center, and we'll change the way we think of emergency shelter from maybe a mass care to maybe more non congregate sites where we just rely on hotel rooms to fill the gap.

That would be my dream.

All right.

Robin Dempsey, the CEO of Catholic Social Services, in an interview this week, she said she would have liked to see the Sullivan stay open longer rather than have people outside in the current weather.

She said the organization has been providing shelter for 60 years and from her perspective, smaller shelters dispersed throughout the city are better for everyone, but they're better for the people who are being served in those shelters.

It's better for staff and it's better for the neighborhoods as well.

And I think we really have seen that because we had a shelter that was serving 240 people that now is serving 120.

So the difference in the neighborhood, the difference in the way that the staff is able to interact with the folks that are staying there, it's making a huge difference.

So 100% smaller, scattered shelters.

So do you feel like you're sort of coming to more alignment around that idea of maybe a larger facility?

It has to be the interim, but then smaller shelters going forward or both of you more aligned in that along those ideas?

Yeah, I would say there is some alignment between the administration and assembly on smaller, you know, for me, I think what I want to do is make sure that we right size the amount of shelter that we know we need in the community and build to that.

So we know we need between 200 250 shelter beds on top of what we have right now.

After that, what I really want us to see is make sure we have a balance and investment between shelter and housing because we know the end solution is housing.

Mm hmm.

And I would echo what Felix said on I think the ultimate end goal is to have smaller site shelters and then to really invest in housing, because we know that the answer to ending homelessness is housing.

Alexis There has been an enormous increase in the number of people over 60 years old falling into homelessness.

There's an elder in my neighborhood, 81.

She lives alone, says rising expenses mean she's burning through her savings way too fast.

She's scared, and this isn't an unusual story.

How is the city thinking about assistance for vulnerable elders to help them avoid being homeless?

Yeah, that's a great question.

One of the things that we talk about often is we know now that one out of every four people who live in the city are over the age of 60.

And so our population is aging at a rate that we really haven't focused on historically with homelessness.

When we think single adult homelessness, we think of kind of a, you know, midlife person.

But now we're seeing more elders come into our shelter system.

And so I think one of the things that we talk about is how do we rightsize our budget to make sure that property taxes are not being raised so that we're not, you know, kicking the aging population out of their homes because they can't afford it.

You know, another thing that we talk about is do we have something similar to the Pioneer Home where it's not so much a homeless shelter, but more of like an elderly home where it's almost like a group home, so to speak.

These are just ideas that we continue to float around, but it's not something we've dealt with in the past.

But now that our population is aging, it's something we need to consider.

Yeah, really a big concern for elderly folks.

Felix Is the assembly thinking about that and are there any ideas for how to how to help these folks?

Yeah, so definitely when it comes to elders, you know, I think one of the reasons why we wanted to keep this all of an open effort, capacity, it was was for people who are dealing with mobility issues.

And one of the things we funded in terms of outreach for people, elders who might be in camps, is outreach specifically targeted, targeted for folks who have mobility or other complex medical needs, which tend to lean in that elder population, because we want to make sure that folks who are in those situations get the help that they need.

And really what we need is the state to really come in.

And I think that's going to probably going to be one of our biggest request for the state is to help us with our seniors.

Alexis, the circling back to the people who are currently on the street.

Is the city planning to create or have a sanctioned campground at some point this summer?

Yeah.

So I've long advocated for sanctioned camp.

I saw the benefits of Centennial last year.

There were some mishaps and so I think we could kind of grow upon those and and make a really robust homelessness response as a sanctioned camp.

That was something we had put forward as the administration in February, and it kind of caught momentum, I would say, when the assembly created a sanctioned camp task force.

And so that's convening today.

And we're going to be focused on is Anchorage ready for a sanctioned camp?

What does that look like and how can we make it more safe for people camping in those in those areas?

Your thoughts about that, Felix?

Yeah, you know, sanctioned camps has been something that has been bandied about in in Anchorage since before I got elected in 2017.

It's been talked about for years now.

I think we're at a place where we can have the discussion, talk about the feasibility of it, where where a sanctioned camp might be, what model of sanctioned camp would we want to invest in?

And then I think in the end, we are going to make the policy decision of whether this is right.

Is this a good fit for Anchorage or not?

We've heard a few times that this is going to be hard for everyone for the next few weeks.

Is part of the rationale here to cause discomfort in order to get people to demand more action and funding?

Is that part of the thinking?

Well, I mean, certainly I don't think anyone wanted to cause discomfort, but we needed to end the cycle.

And I think ending the cycle is by itself going to be a discomfort for individuals, for business owners, for residents, for people experiencing homelessness.

We need to move beyond the crutch that we have relied on, which has been the Sullivan Arena for three years now.

And so to do that, we had to make some tough choices.

Anything you want to add, Alexis, or swimming?

Yeah, I will agree with Alex and that it is going to be an uncomfortable summer, I think.

I think our recommendation would have been to continue the Sullivan Arena until we had a better plan.

But right now, we're in the situation that we're in, and we're going to do the best we can and join forces with the assembly to to really advocate and figure this stick of this out.

In thinking about the stress on people who are unsheltered and the stress that can also affect their neighbors who have housing, Catholic Social Services CEO Robin Dempsey says as summer approaches, she wants Anchorage community members to try to understand the complexity of homelessness.

People that are entering homelessness, they all have their own individual stories.

We don't know what those stories necessarily are, but they have a really, really kind of hard time right now that they're going to be dealing with.

And so I think the more that we can just show compassion and really kind of be empathetic about what's happening as we work towards long term solutions.

I think this is one of the most important things we can do as a community.

And so in reflecting on her comment there, what do you see as the responsibility of everyone, the folks that live in Anchorage?

And there was a story on NPR just this morning about, you know, realizing and recognizing the humanity of people that you see that there, the conditions they find themselves in are circumstances that could befall anyone.

And how do you want the public to think about this in just a few seconds?

Yeah, I would say at me, everyone with compassion, whether they're housed or not.

I think one of the things that we lack, I mean, as a worldview is compassion towards people who have fallen down on their luck or just have had a circumstance in their life that has ended them in that situation.

And it's almost like we look down upon them.

And so when people ask me, how can I help, how can I don't, I say, donate your compassion.

It's it's never ending.

And just really be understanding that each individual person has their own individual story and that it's just something that we really need to, like, wrap ourselves around and really embrace.

Thank you, Felix.

Final thoughts?

Yeah, I think we absolutely as a community need to understand the humanity of this entire situation and put yourself in the shoes of someone experiencing homelessness and how you might deal with that kind of situation.

And would you want someone coming up to you with a smile on their face, looking you in the eye and treating you like a human being?

Thank you both so much for being here and for the work that you're doing to solve this important problem.

We know the reasons that people fall into homelessness are numerous and complex and can often be the result of a sudden illness, injury, death of a family supporter or an unexpected major expense.

In other words, it truly could happen to any of us.

Finding the right ways to help those who are struggling helps us all have a healthier, happier, healthier and more connected, productive community.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit our website, alaskapublic.org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, 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.