In Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, applicants for programs including SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, and Adult Public Assistance, among other programs, cannot access in-person help with the application process from the Division of Public Assistance. Anchorage currently has only one small DPA office, with services limited to “General Inquiries Only,” defined as, “Help with general questions and paperwork pickup and drop-off.” Applicants who endure the approximately two-hour wait for assistance cannot get information specific to their case.
Other parts of the state have DPA offices open for full-service inquiries. You can now get in-person assistance with your public assistance applications, four days per week, in Bethel, Homer, Juneau, Kenai, Kodiak and, as of a couple of months ago, Wasilla. However, there is no full-service office in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Ketchikan, Nome or Sitka.
Alaska has always struggled to provide service to small, dispersed communities — perhaps there are other ways to access help from DPA? Not by phone. DPA’s phone line, currently staffed by contract workers in New York, is also only open for “General Inquiries Only.” All of this information is set forth on DPA’s website health.alaska.gov, if you go to the “contacts” and “DPA Office Locations” pages; and the accuracy of this page of the website was confirmed to me two months ago by a state representative at an administrativehearing. The COVID-19 crisis has long passed, yet the state government shows no signs of restoring public access to benefits assistance for the majority of the state’s residents, relying instead on a jumble of nonprofits to step into the void and help with the “crisis”. Applicants do not know where they can go to access help, and non-profits deplete their own resources by filling in for the state. It is past time for the Division of Public Assistance to reopen its Anchorage, Fairbanks, Ketchikan, Nome and Sitka DPA offices for “full-service,” and adequately staff them; and to return to the days when applicants could also receive “full-service” assistance by phone.
— Nicole D. Stucki
Anchorage
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