OPINION: Our plan to address Anchorage’s growing humanitarian crisis

Last week, we launched the first steps of our plan to address the current humanitarian crisis by introducing two resolutions to fund community partners to purchase and open up more than 300 units of housing before winter.

The closure of the Sullivan Arena as a COVID-19 mass care congregate facility on June 30, which forced 60 people onto the streets or into the Centennial Park Campground, has led to what has been widely considered a disaster. Without a comprehensive transition plan from the administration, we currently have 350 unhoused people on the streets of Anchorage, an all-time record high.

Although community members and nonprofits have put in countless hours and made extraordinary donations to make these efforts work in the short term, this work is not sustainable. By working with our community partners, we have developed a responsible, timely and humane plan that remedies this avoidable crisis and helps us prepare for emergency shelter needs for this upcoming winter.

Our plan includes five parts, four of which were incorporated in the items introduced at the July 12 Assembly meeting: 1) $500,000 to remodel and immediately open up 60 rental units, 2) $2 million to fund emergency shelter needs through the end of 2022, 3) $1.5 million for outreach services, 4) $3.4 million to complete capital funding for the Guest House opening up 130 units, and 5) $12.6 million for purchase of another hotel to open up 120 units.

This response to the current crisis is informed by years of community work to develop a comprehensive plan to address homelessness. In 2018, individual Assembly members and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Homelessness joined 70 organizations and 700 community members to create the Anchored Home plan, which recognized that a collaboration between nonprofits, faith communities, businesses, governmental agencies and residents is key for success. The Assembly’s role in the Anchored Home plan is to help community partners add affordable housing to the market, ensure that adequate emergency shelter exists, and use tax breaks and government funds to leverage private investment in housing.

Anchored Home identifies concrete actions to make homelessness a rare, brief and one-time event and emphasizes: 1. Prevention and diversion, 2. Housing and support systems, 3. Public health and safety, and 4. Advocacy and funding. Anchored Home recognizes that our community has both a moral and a fiscal responsibility to solve homelessness and care for our people. The plan we introduced this week fulfills the Anchored Home goals and remedies the humanitarian crisis by addressing the immediate need for emergency shelter, the long-term goal to add more affordable housing stock, and the overarching need for outreach and support systems to ensure that people receive the services they need.

After we fulfill this emergency need for more housing, we will work to develop facilities for substance misuse treatment and shelters for special populations, such as elderly and LGBTQIA+ community members. Meanwhile, other Assembly members are working to develop tax incentives and cut red tape to add more housing to the rental and real estate market for working families and individuals.

Our plan, if approved by the Assembly, will bring online an anticipated 300-plus units of housing and will, for the first time in the history of the municipality, forward-fund our emergency shelter needs months in advance of the upcoming winter season. The resolutions were reviewed at the Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting on Wednesday, July 20, and a worksession will be requested before the public hearing and Assembly action at the July 26 regular Assembly meeting. As always, community feedback is vital to solving this issue. Submit testimony and add your voice to the public record by emailing wwmas@anchorageak.gov.

Kameron Perez-Verdia, Daniel Volland and Felix Rivera are members of the Anchorage Assembly.

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