Anchorage Assembly OKs spending of what city leaders hope are the final millions for emergency homeless shelters

The Anchorage Assembly has approved $7 million for mass care shelter operations in what the city says will be its final spending on emergency homeless shelters at Sullivan Arena and local hotels.

The funding package comes as Anchorage moves ahead with a plan to end the operations entirely by June 30 and transition individuals in mass care into other shelters and housing.

After Assembly members voted to approve the funding Wednesday night, the Assembly and Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration in a joint statement reiterated that their goal is to shut down the Sullivan Arena shelter and hotel room program in June. They also announced that the city’s shelter operations at the Sockeye Inn in Midtown will be temporarily suspended March 31.

“This important milestone marks the beginning of a transition from pandemic-driven mass care to long-term supportive housing that will ultimately place residents on a path to greater independence while continuing to protect our most vulnerable,” the Assembly and mayor’s office said in the statement.

To stand down the approximately 500-person Sullivan Arena shelter and the non-congregate hotel rooms sheltering about 350, and account for more people living in illegal camps outside, the city must find shelter or housing for about 1,000 people. It’s an enormous challenge on such a short timeline, city leaders and local homelessness experts have acknowledged.

City leaders last month announced the ambitious timeline to end Sullivan operations and have been fast-tracking several projects in a scramble to implement a mass care exit strategy negotiated between the Bronson administration and the Assembly.

That includes purchasing the Sockeye Inn and turning it into a 120-bed complex care shelter. Assembly member Felix Rivera, a member of the working group negotiating the mass care exit plan with the Bronson administration, said that facility is expected to be up and running June 1.

It will be operated by Catholic Social Services, according to the most recent update from the group negotiating the exit plan.

Anchorage has seen a longstanding gap in homeless services targeted to properly care for individuals who are medically fragile or have other complex needs, Rivera said.

“Right now if you go to a (shelter) facility, you hope that they’re able to meet whatever complex needs that you have, but you don’t really know. So this will provide I think that kind of assurance, where we know if you have complex needs, medical or otherwise, that this is the place for you to go,” Rivera said. “I definitely feel like this is a win for the city.”

The city is housing about 40 people there now, he said. According to the announcement, they must leave by late next week.

[City’s plan to close Sullivan Arena homeless shelter before July faces big challenges]

Those individuals are receiving help with applying to the Alaska Housing Finance Corp.’s housing stability program or securing self-pay housing options, according to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. The coalition is coordinating much of the city’s effort to end mass care.

“We are now out of sort of pandemic-era mass care, and now we’re really moving into transition-era mass care,” Rivera said. “We’re really moving forward with getting people housed who are in our mass care facilities.”

Assembly member John Weddleton called the Assembly’s action on Wednesday night “quite notable.” Weddleton is also a member of the homelessness plan negotiation group.

“This is dramatic. What have we done? We’ve done a lot. We are moving out of this mass care situation we’ve been in for over two years,” he said. “We are augmenting a system that the city had not taken a role in, but the mayor made it a priority when he was elected. What we were doing wasn’t working. We’re going to make changes, and what we saw this evening was another big step in that change.”

Before the pandemic, the city wasn’t actively involved in sheltering the city’s homeless population. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, privately run shelters had to cut their occupancy by more than half to mitigate the spread of the virus. So in a matter of days, the city stood up a temporary homeless shelter at Sullivan Arena and for a few months another at the Ben Boeke Ice Arena.

“It was an incredible moment for the city because all of a sudden, we’re in the business of running shelters. And that was very new to us because we were hands off until then,” Weddleton said Wednesday.

After clashes with the administration over a previous Bronson proposal to construct a 450-person temporary shelter in East Anchorage, the Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on homelessness that outlined an agreed-upon “exit strategy” for Sullivan Arena in a compromise with the mayor. That agreement stemmed from a monthslong negotiation process that is still ongoing.

The city has yet to put in place the several other puzzle pieces of its exit strategy. Those include a 200-person shelter and navigation center for single adults in East Anchorage; a 120-bed “special population” shelter for women and LGBTQ individuals, also with a navigation center; increased substance misuse treatment capacity with housing; and about 200 workforce and permanent supportive housing units.

Bidding for a contractor to build the East Anchorage shelter closed last month, and negotiations on a contract are underway, according to the city’s implementation update. The city has picked a new site for the shelter — directly west of the mayor’s previously preferred spot of the Anchorage Police Department’s evidence vehicle lot. Construction at the new location will be faster and cheaper because it won’t require relocating the more than 500 vehicles in the APD lot, according to the update.

The city had planned to also purchase the Barratt Inn in Spenard to convert into about 90 units of workforce and supportive housing, but that purchase is on hold “pending additional information about the cost and timing for renovations,” according to the update.

[Previously: Anchorage official overseeing city’s homelessness response resigns]

Meanwhile, the negotiation group has found an alternative site and entered preliminary discussions with the owner, according to the update. It has not yet named the alternative site.

The negotiation group has also not yet identified a location or building for a special population shelter.

The city is working with the Salvation Army to return its 48th Avenue facility to use after it was damaged in the 2018 earthquake. That will provide 68 substance abuse treatment beds, but work is on hold until funding is secured from the state’s earthquake response funds, according to the update.

Meg Zaletel, interim executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness and a Midtown Assembly member, said a more detailed announcement on the transition plan is forthcoming next week. She declined to provide any further details about what steps are next as the city seeks to end mass care.

“I think until that time there isn’t much more we can share as we continue to work with partners on the details,” she said.