Data shows homelessness rising dramatically in Alaska, but the numbers also tell a complicated story

A federal report of annual survey data, published late last month, detailed sobering national statistics: Homelessness reached its highest level on record in the U.S. in January 2024, with an 18.1% increase over the previous year’s count.

The annual survey data also shows rises in homelessness in Anchorage and statewide in Alaska in recent years.

But a closer look at the recent local trends reveals a more complex picture. While rates of homelessness are increasing in some places, so are the available services like emergency shelter or street outreach, and the counts are getting more accurate.

On a single night each January, the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness attempts to count everyone who is experiencing homelessness in the municipality, while the Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness surveys other communities across the state. The count is part of a federally mandated annual survey conducted in cities and states across the U.S.

Last January in Anchorage, that survey recorded a 53.8% increase in people who were homeless compared to January 2019′s count.

Alaska overall has seen homelessness rise 40.8% since 2019, according to the data. On one night in January 2024, there were 2,686 people in Alaska experiencing literal homelessness, which means staying in a shelter or transitional facility, or living outside unsheltered.

In the years previous for which the data is publicly available, 2012 to 2019, the number of people homeless in the state fluctuated by about 200 people, from between about 1,800 and 2,000 individuals in any year.

Unique challenges in Alaska

Taken over time, the point-in-time count offers a consistent, year-over-year measure of homelessness.

However, the survey has long been regarded as an underestimate of a community’s homeless population. That’s because it’s a one-night snapshot, and some people aren’t captured in the data, especially in Alaska’s rural communities.

“We’re supposed to have a count, in our entire geography, of people experiencing unsheltered or sheltered homelessness, and it’s completely unfunded. And in many of the communities, we don’t have a single service provider,” said Brian Wilson, executive director for the Alaska coalition.

Alaska’s often bitterly cold winters mean people couch surf and families double and triple up in homes, remaining off the radar of homeless service providers.

“We see extreme overcrowding numbers at a higher level than anywhere else in the nation, in our rural communities, particularly in our villages,” Wilson said.

Even in Anchorage, with teams of service providers and volunteers to count, they might miss some who stayed the night in vehicles or slept outside and weren’t seen. A person who slept outside the night before might be staying on a friend’s couch the night of the survey, and so wouldn’t be included, even though they lack a permanent home.

Wilson said he thinks that much of the rise in homelessness seen in recent years actually reflects an increase in emergency shelter beds in communities across the state, beginning in 2020 with the pandemic. For Alaska communities, excluding Anchorage, the total number rose from 311 emergency shelter beds in 2019 to more than 1,000 in 2024.

“We’ve seen communities make a really concerted effort to increase their emergency shelter capacity,” Wilson said.

And when people are in a shelter, rather than living outside or on a friend’s couch, they get counted.

“So the change is kind of more of a methodological change,” Wilson said.

In Anchorage, the data shows unsheltered homelessness skyrocketing in recent years. Between January 2019 — one year before the pandemic — and January 2024, it climbed 256.7%, from 97 people to 346. That means in January 2024, about 3.5 times more people were counted as sleeping on the streets or in tents, lean-tos and in vehicles.

Over the last few years, and especially during summers, large encampments took root in several Anchorage neighborhoods, including downtown near Fairview, in Midtown and in Mountain View.

The number of people staying in Anchorage-area emergency shelters rose 38% from the count in January 2019 to January 2024′s count, according to the annual data.

But during that time, the pandemic drastically changed the approach to homelessness. The city opened mass shelters that used the statewide homeless data system. It funded more robust street outreach programs, reaching more unsheltered people. Outreach teams started using the city’s map of reported homeless camps to find unsheltered people, connect them to services and, in January, to count them.

The changes resulted in more accurate point-in-time count data, said Meg Zaletel, executive director of the Anchorage coalition.

Those factors, plus some increases in homelessness, are all likely contributing, she said.

In Anchorage, overall, the point-in-time count data hit a peak in 2023, with at least 1,760 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.

By last January, the total dropped by about 50 people — down about 2.9%.

The drop coincides with about when the city’s housing efforts were really ramping up: The municipality spent tens of millions of dollars to convert several hotels into low-income housing, adding a total of about 350 apartment units between late 2022 and the end of 2023. Federal pandemic assistance in the form of housing vouchers and rental aid also helped.

A recent rise in Anchorage

Monthly local data from the Anchorage coalition shows similar, albeit far more nuanced, homelessness population trends in Anchorage. The total number of people who are homeless can change daily, as some people move into housing and others become homeless.

The monthly total represents the number of individuals who were actively homeless at the end of the month in the Homeless Management Information System, a database that tracks the services used by individuals. That means if an unhoused person hasn’t engaged with any services, they aren’t counted in the monthly total.

Beginning last January, the city saw a seven-month-long decrease in the number of people who were recorded as actively homeless. (That means they used some sort of service, like engaging with street outreach or staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing.)

That’s about when the coalition’s pilot housing program, the Next Step, ramped up. Between December 2023 and August, the program moved more than 175 people out of shelters and encampments and into apartments around Anchorage.

The monthly totals of people experiencing homelessness in Anchorage decreased by about 14.6% in that timespan, from 2,769 in January to 2,364 in August.

But in September, the number of people moving into housing slowed significantly. At the same time, there was a big influx of people using homeless services — and many had never before been homeless.

The result: Homelessness is on the rise again.

“We’ve seen almost the double whammy,” said Jessica Parks, the Anchorage coalition’s chief operations officer.

Nearly 300 newly unhoused people entered the system in October, along with 285 who had been unhoused previously. Only 92 people moved into housing. (About 220 people in the system “went inactive,” after long periods of no contact with homeless services.)

“All of our existing services, so our permanent supportive housing projects, our rapid rehousing projects — they’re full,” Parks said.

By the end of November, at least 2,965 people were experiencing homelessness in Anchorage — an increase of more than 600 since August, according to the coalition’s data dashboard. Shelters are full nightly, and at least several hundred people are living outside.

Homelessness fluctuates throughout the year, due to a wide variety of factors, and there’s a consistent bump in the fall, Parks said.

The end of summer seasonal work usually contributes to a spike in numbers, while colder weather drives more people who were living unsheltered to seek services, along with those who were living on the fringes of homelessness.

Also, more people are captured in the data as outreach programs ramp up their efforts to contact unsheltered people, to get them winter survival gear and on the lists for the city’s temporary shelters.

“We see emergency cold weather shelters open, and so people who may not have been engaging in services, or they may have been couch surfing, or living in a vehicle, moving every single day where it’s difficult for outreach to really engage with them — they may come and say, ‘All right, it’s cold now, I’m going to go to shelter,’” Parks said.

Less visible homelessness on the rise

While large homeless encampments draw public attention and controversy, much of homelessness in Anchorage is far less visible, service providers say.

And families are becoming homeless “at an alarming rate,” Zaletel said.

Anchorage housing prices and rents have soared in recent years, with economists reporting similar statewide trends.

“So many people in Anchorage are housing-burdened that it doesn’t take much to push someone into homelessness,” Parks said. “It can be your car breaking down.”

Between 2023 and 2024, homelessness among families with children increased nationwide by 39.4% and in Alaska by 19.3%, according to point-in time-count estimates.

There’s now limited federal and state money for programs to prevent homelessness, like rental assistance, Parks said. Without more resources for diversion, it’s difficult to stanch the inflow, she said.

In one bright spot, Alaska saw one of the largest decreases in chronic homelessness of any state, dropping 24.3% from 2023 to 2024. Alaska also saw a roughly 10.9% drop in the number of homeless veterans, according to the federal report.

And while the state overall saw a slight increase in homelessness of 2.8%, that was the third-smallest rate among U.S. states that saw year-over-year increases. Just six states recorded decreases, and one recorded no change, while several others saw increases upward of 25% and 50%, according to the federal report.

The coalitions are gearing up to again conduct the annual count later this month.