With several inches of the season’s first snow on the ground, Anchorage on Tuesday began moving dozens of homeless people into emergency winter shelters.
Municipal code requires the city to activate an emergency shelter plan for homeless persons when ambient temperatures drop to 45 degrees or below.
This year, the municipality has a $3.7 million contract with local homeless service nonprofit Henning Inc. to open 200 non-congregate shelter beds, mostly in double-occupancy rooms at three different locations: the Henry House downtown, Merrill Field Inn in Mountain View and the Alex Hotel in Spenard.
Henning’s director of strategy, Alexis Johnson, said the nonprofit moved 42 people experiencing homelessness into the Henry House on Tuesday. Another 58 people should move into the Merrill Field Inn on Wednesday evening “if everything goes according to plan,” she said.
Johnson said Henning hopes to open another 100 beds at the Alex Hotel by the end of the week.
“With this much snow and how cold it is, there’s going to be a significant need for more shelter very soon,” said Johnson, who was the city’s homeless coordinator under the former Bronson administration.
Officials with Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s administration say the city is negotiating a second contract for another 200 shelter beds with another organization. It’s not clear exactly when the administration will introduce the proposal to the Assembly for approval — a process that must occur before the beds can open — though LaFrance officials have said it will likely be up for a vote during a meeting next month.
[State report finds high rates of frostbite and hypothermia injuries for Alaska’s unhoused]
Meanwhile, privately run shelters have largely been full for weeks or months, including Catholic Social Services’ Brother Francis Shelter, Anchorage Gospel Rescue Mission, Downtown Hope Center and Covenant House, according to the city’s online shelter data.
For the last two weeks, the city’s 200-bed mass shelter, or congregate shelter, on East 56th Avenue has been full “pretty much every night,” said David Rittenberg, homeless services director with Catholic Social Services. The nonprofit took over management of that shelter on Oct. 15.
Shelter occupancy data shows it’s been full for most of its lifespan since the city opened it last October.
That means people seeking a bed at the 56th Avenue facility often can’t get one.
“If we’re full, we do have to turn people away. I don’t have numbers on that, but I think that’s something that’s happening in all shelters” in Anchorage, Rittenberg said.
It’s not clear exactly how many people are living unsheltered in Anchorage.
During a meeting with the Assembly earlier this month, the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness estimated about 475 people are staying in places not meant for human habitation. That includes people sleeping in vehicles, on the streets and those living in encampments in city parks and greenspaces.
In September, there were 2,461 people were experiencing homelessness in Anchorage, including people in staying in shelters, transitional housing, and living outside, according to the coalition’s data.
In recent public meetings and in interviews with the Daily News, some current and former street outreach workers have raised concerns that the estimate may be low.
The coalition’s data comes from Alaska’s Homeless Management Information System, a collective data sharing system many social service providers use. However, it doesn’t quite capture everyone who might be accessing homeless services or living on the street.
That’s because a homeless individual has to interact with a service provider using the system in order to be captured in the data. And, the person must also agree to give information to that provider. People living in their vehicles or in far-flung camps around Anchorage may not be interacting with outreach workers or service providers regularly, or may decline to share their name or other personal information.
It’s also not clear exactly where people living unsheltered should go, or what steps they need to take, in order to get a city shelter bed.
The mayor’s office on Wednesday did not answer questions except to confirm that 42 people were moved into shelter. A spokeswoman for the mayor said that Farina Brown, LaFrance’s special assistant in homelessness and health, would be available for an interview on Thursday.
City officials have said that people will be moved into shelters based on the “coordinated entry” list, which prioritizes people by the most to the least vulnerable.
Many local shelters and organizations provide the assessment, and the coalition’s outreach team provides assessments to people in camps. Still, not everyone who may need shelter has been reached.
LaFrance’s administration in September announced plans to fund 500 winter shelter beds, but later whittled plans down to 400 beds total. City officials said the change will allow the city to use funding to move some people out of homeless shelters and into permanent housing over the winter.
“We really want to ensure that we are creating flow in the system. And if there’s not a place for people to go between shelter, congregate or non-congregate, we are not going to see movement, and we’re not going to see change,” Brown said during a meeting earlier this month.
LaFrance’s administration last month had proposed a $9.2 million contract with Henning to handle all 400 beds this winter. But Assembly members pushed back, raising concerns about Henning’s previous shelter management, and of it becoming the sole organization to handle winter shelter. The administration then halved the proposal.
That resulted in shelter beds opening about a week later than the administration originally anticipated, with a contract for 200 more beds still in the works.