OPINION: No easy or cheap answers on dealing with homelessness

Count me among the milling herd of kibitzers without a clue about how to end Anchorage’s complicated, chronic and burgeoning homeless problem, but this much is clear: The lack of a solution is costing the city a boatload of dough.

Numbers crunched by the city at my request show Anchorage spent about $62 million just last year on homelessness and about $161.4 million in public funds on the problem over the past three years. Last year’s federally mandated point-in-time count to fix the amount of federal funding available for homelessness found nearly 1,500 homeless living outside or in shelters. That means the city spent about $41,000 for each of them last year alone.

That money came from city taxpayers, the Anchorage alcohol tax, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and various other sources. Those numbers likely fall short of the actual outlay because administrative costs, staff time, police and fire protection and cleanup are not included. Nobody is absolutely, positively sure of the total numbers — but the known spending is startling.

Despite that, homelessness in Anchorage does not seem to be getting much better despite the ballooning and costly government effort, which even includes buying hotels to house the homeless. It seems a predictable continuum for students of economic theory: The city spends more to solve the problem and, yet, there appear to be more homeless needing assistance.

It is a shape-shifting, amorphous problem that on the best day defies definition and quantification. Most of us are hard-pressed to agree even on who should be counted and classified as homeless, or “unhoused.” The only thing for certain is that one size, one description does not begin to fit all. While some homeless people desperately want homes or apartments, others absolutely do not, opting, instead, to live on their own without rules, regulations and pesky, nosy bureaucrats. Some are mentally ill, some are addicted to alcohol or other drugs, some are just contrary. Some check all the boxes. A few hundred are kids who attend public school, but have no homes. There likely are as many different reasons for homelessness as there are homeless individuals. That only makes the problem harder to address and the attendant health, sanitation and social problems harder to resolve.

Our city government, like many in major burgs across the nation, addresses the problem the way governments are wont to do — with money. Los Angeles spent about $500 million on its 70,000 homeless. Chicago spent more than $210 million on its 3,900 homeless. New Yorkers paid about $3 billion to help that city’s 65,000 or so homeless — or triple the spending of a decade ago. Seattle reportedly spent $155 million last year to care for its 13,000 homeless.

Such spending has shown only limited success and seems to spawn more government, social programs and spending. It feeds growing constituencies and special interests pushing everything from affordable housing to fencing. As some cities in the Lower 48 are discovering, dealing with homelessness becomes a big and growing business unto itself, a profit center, something the California Policy Center calls the “Homeless Industrial Complex.”

Anchorage hopefully will not careen down that road, but numbers cobbled together by city government show more than $37 million alone went to a variety of hotels and other shelters. Millions more paid for security, cleanup, laundry and a host of other services, including more than $139,000 for “tent rentals” — and even a few lawyers. The Alaska Hotel Group, whose list of partners reads like a Who’s Who of Anchorage notables and includes Mark Begich, a former mayor and U.S. senator, received $12 million.

Add to that: The city spent $68.4 million on homeless services expecting to be reimbursed by FEMA emergency funding — something that may not happen. If not, taxpayers likely will get stuck with the tab.

A study by the University of Alaska Anchorage and the city in the early 1990s estimated the homeless population in the city at about 700 in 1978 but concluded that population had doubled by little more than a dozen years later. Today, the homeless population continues to fluctuate, dependent on everything from COVID-19 to the economy to the weather. The Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness says the number of homeless was 1,094. in 2018 and 1,111 in 2019. In 2020, it was 1,058, and in 2021 it was 1,319. Clearly, despite years of spending, the problem is not going away and seems to be getting worse, with last year’s number approaching 1,500.

It is difficult not to sympathize with those who genuinely want to fix the problem, but at some point you have to ask: At what cost? How many hotels can we buy? How much can the city afford?

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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