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In advance of the April 6 Anchorage municipal election, the Anchorage Daily News asked candidates running for Anchorage mayor a series of issue questions. These include questions suggested by readers. Read all the mayor and school board candidates’ responses here.
Q: Homelessness remains a persistent, significant problem in Anchorage. What specifically would you do differently from previous administrations?
I’m not sure that I would do much differently. Ideally, you would be able to provide mental health services to those who need it, but the nature of mental illness and the medications used to treat it is that many people do not wish to pursue treatment. Drug and alcohol addiction, of course, contribute to the issue. But I don’t think those populations can be addressed with the same tools. I am concerned with the public health issue created by encampments, and do not think they should be tolerated near playgrounds or schools.
In the simplest terms, I would first ensure that, while we provide those necessary rooms and meals for those in need, our measure for success is the number of people no longer living on the streets. I would work to enhance those public-private partnerships which continue to serve Anchorage. There are many very skilled and motivated people striving to end our homeless and vagrancy crisis. I will work with them.
I will enhance public-private partnerships like the homeless hub services complex proposed near Brother Francis. We need outreach workers identifying homeless people’s needs and their ability to access them, and mental health and addiction services in the same places we provide food and potentially. I also feel that the COVID-19 congregate shelter at the Sullivan informs us that this model can be used after the pandemic. Homeless persons have to want help and seek out shelter, and many don’t want to or won’t live in a supported living environment. Congregate housing is a good option. We need community policing and outreach workers to keep homeless camps from forming as havens for criminality, drugs, violence and alcohol abuse, and potentially, disease. We can’t criminalize the homeless. Police and outreach workers can guide the homeless to services that they can choose to access, and the community patrols can deal with nuisance behaviors.
The long-term solution to homelessness is appropriate, affordable housing, coupled with supportive services in some cases. If we focus on camp abatement alone, people experiencing homelessness will have no choice but to move from park to park; that’s not a solution. There are also constitutional limits to what the city can do. Fortunately, revenues from the 2020 alcohol tax are dedicated directly to substance misuse treatment, prevention programs and transitional housing. I am also encouraged by the news that additional federal grants and major private investments are coming online this year too. Finally, my administration will seek better coordination between the municipality and private, state and federal partners, as well as facilitate better communication between those entities.
Anchorage must decide if it wants to solve this issue or not. If we do, we must first commit to providing enough shelter space for our homeless population. Not only does that make sense, it is also required by law. We must also address the visible homeless problem in order to allow Anchorage to compete. If we create the shelter capacity, we can then get people off street corners by removing their incentive for being there -- and that means stopping people from giving them money from their cars. It is already illegal, we just have to ensure it is enforced. You then have to stop the game of chasing camps around the city and cleaning up after them. You need to have a facility in which you can store the homeless campers’ property for a legally sufficient period. If you have that, you can remove the camps immediately and stop tagging them and chasing them all over town.
Homelessness is a visible and growing problem in the community. It’s unsafe for those living outside, and it’s causing negative impacts to our greenbelts, neighborhoods, and business districts. There is a perception that the municipality has for years been spending a tremendous amount on homelessness. But that isn’t true. As a community, we’ve invested very little in direct homeless response. But homelessness is now off the charts—we have 200 more people in the shelters today that we’ve ever had in any prior year, we have nearly 400 people living in the Sullivan Arena and more than 150 in other settings around town. We need additional shelter capacity in new locations — selected through an open, transparent and community-driven process that involves credible business plans and no surprises, a rapid, more effective camp abatement program that connects people to services and better coordination with private partners to make more timely and effective use of philanthropic investments.
Veterans Housing, working with Native corporations and having our own local plan for housing to get people back on their feet into society as wage earners.
A Rapid Impact Plan that will transform our homeless situation:
1) Get people off the streets by activating a clinical transportation program for assisted living, supportive housing and shelter clients.
2) Build paths to dignity and independence with a daily dignity jobs program with wrap-around services.
3) Fixing data gaps to improve coordinated entry and resource tracking.
4) Expand the independence plus scattered-site model of services with limits of 20 beds to increase accountability and improve outcomes. We could have 200 stable beds for less than the cost of current strategies.
5) Ensure that all services are culturally responsive and trauma-informed.
6) Never pit community members against the unhoused through bad policy design and faulty implementation.
Solve the problem. Work with the service providers, nonprofits and faith-based organizations to devise a model for slowing down, stopping and reversing the growth of the homeless population in Anchorage.
The current range of homelessness varies from 1100 to 2500 on a day most recently. Historically we have had around 1,000 to 1,200 with 40% to 75% of these being Alaska Natives. I was born in 1950 in downtown Anchorage and still live downtown. All of my life this group of Alaska Natives have existed in Anchorage initially suffering from alcoholism and then later in my life drugs were added and in the last 5 years drug issues have increased. The other primary groups are the mentally ill, some that choose such a life style and the least a group that has suffered financial and/or emotional distress. A section of these Alaska Natives are responsible for crimes as well in their villages. The Alaska Native corporations need to increase their responsibilities financially and in programs and other areas, this should not fall all onto the people of this city.
Read more questions:
Why are you running for mayor?
What’s the biggest challenge facing city government and how would you address it?
Describe how your administration would approach the coronavirus pandemic
Would you make changes to the Anchorage Police Department and policing policies? Why?
Is the Anchorage Police Department adequately staffed?
Describe, with specifics, how you would expand and diversify Anchorage’s economy.
What’s your vision for Anchorage’s economy in the future?
Is taxation in Anchorage too high/about right/too low?
Do you have ideas for alternative sources of city revenue? Explain.
Are there city programs or services you would cut? Explain.
Are there city programs or services you would expand? Explain.
What’s your view of current Anchorage land-use plans? Would you push for changes?
Name a program dealing with homelessness in Anchorage that you believe is working
Are there specific transportation projects you would initiate in the municipality if elected?