OPINION: Solving Anchorage homelessness will take more than local funding

There’s a narrative taking hold in Anchorage that the homelessness crisis could be solved if the mayor and Assembly would just work together, and that homelessness is the result of ineffective local government, and that a tent at the corner of Tudor and Elmore is the answer. However, focusing on local government’s role alone misses the big picture of state, national and global problems that have amassed to get us here. It’s of little consolation, but almost every community in the U.S. is dealing with this problem, and while Anchorage has made incredible strides to address homelessness, it’s still the equivalent of putting a finger in a hole in a dam when the water is pouring over the top.

To put Anchorage’s problems into perspective, housing costs have skyrocketed nationally in a very short time period. In Anchorage, the median listing price jumped from $311,000 in January 2020 to $446,000 in May 2023 – a 43% increase in three years. Anchorage’s problem is made worse by the lack of new housing coming on the market – Anchorage currently adds less than 400 units per year, while Alaska averages 700. As to rentals, it’s virtually impossible to find a one-bedroom apartment for under $1,100 a month, and with a 3.2% rental vacancy factor in Anchorage, there are few options to choose from. For a snapshot of Anchorage’s housing market problem, visit ancgov.info/housing-snapshot.

Layered on top of the housing crisis is a national 30

health crisis. In its 2023 “State of Mental Health in America” report, the organization Mental Health America found that in 2019-20, 20% of American adults were experiencing a mental illness and that 59.8% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment. The report cites costs of health care and lack of mental health providers as major contributing factors. This means that like everyone else, people experiencing homelessness are increasingly dealing with mental health issues and there are not enough resources available to serve their needs.

As a result, Anchorage is working to address national-scale problems with only local funding and resources in hand. Today there is very little federal or state funding available for Anchorage to create more housing and shelter or increase mental health services.

Anchorage receives an annual allocation of $4 million for homelessness resources from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but due to an outdated and inequitable funding formula, this is small in comparison to the $16 million and $26 million that Fort Worth, Texas, and Baltimore receive respectively to serve the same number of unhoused individuals counted in the annual point in time count. If we compare ourselves to cities with actual homeless counts determined by the Homeless Information System, we have roughly the same amount of unhoused individuals as Houston, which receives more than $46 million annually, or $15,000 for each unhoused individual, where we receive $1,000. Extraordinary inequity.

As to state funding, in 1986, the state contributed $56 million to Anchorage’s operating budget (about $150 million in today’s dollars), in 1999 it contributed $20 million, in 2010, $15 million, and in 2019, $4.5 million. This year’s allocation was $1.7 million. At the same time, school bond debt reimbursement has been reduced and other state costs have shifted to the municipality. Despite some one-time funding boosts, overall the municipality has had to absorb more costs that have been historically paid for by the state, leaving Anchorage with fewer funds to address our needs.

This funding shortage puts the burden for solving homelessness on municipal taxpayers and the funds we have available under the tax cap. The new funds from the alcohol tax, about 30% of which have been allocated toward homelessness, have helped address some of the needs, but fall short of funding a complete solution. Anchorage is already taxed to the cap, so new funding for shelters and housing would have to come by cutting other important services, like snow plowing, libraries, or police and fire. Anchorage’s private and nonprofit partners make major contributions to addressing homelessness, yet we can’t rely solely on private donations to solve these problems.

Thus, the Assembly and mayor are working to develop new funding streams, such as asking the state of Alaska to make contributions to housing and mental health and working with Sen. Dan Sullivan and our congressional delegation to address the inequitable HUD funding formula. An equitable increase in these funding streams would get us a lot further toward eliminating homelessness in our community.

Even with these challenges and limited funding, Anchorage has made considerable progress in recent years by implementing the Anchored Home Plan which was created by the community in 2018. We have a mayor, an Assembly, nonprofits and a majority of community members who want to solve this problem. Thanks to wise investments of federal COVID-19 relief funding, Anchorage has purchased and is steadily bringing online hundreds of new housing units for people experiencing homelessness. Hundreds more will be housed when the Golden Lion, Barratt Inn and Providence supportive housing facilities open in the upcoming months and years.

Thousands of people avoided eviction during the pandemic due to $30 million in rental relief grants. As an example, 18,694 individuals alone were served by CARES Act rent and mortgage payments distributed through United Way and Lutheran Social Services between June 2020 and February 2021, and thousands more were served by Alaska Housing Finance Corp.’s rental relief program in 2021 and 2022. Just since June 2 of this year, 62 individuals have moved into long-term housing through the alcohol-tax-funded Home for Good program. Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness outreach workers are meeting with people who are displaced to connect them with resources and get them on a path to housing.

The Assembly and administration are working together to create options for new permanent, year-round low-barrier shelter, and the “clean slate strategy” is engaging community experts and regular citizen volunteers to work together on two task forces and in community meetings to produce actionable plans for the Assembly and Administration to consider, fund, and implement.

Finally, if the municipality’s advocacy efforts pay off, we will have new sources of state and federal funding to permanently address the homelessness crisis. You can help by calling your state legislators and congressional delegation and asking them to help deliver more funding to Anchorage for homelessness. Working on solutions to help the unhoused in our communities won’t be easy, but if we all work together, we can make a difference.

Christopher Constant represents District 1 and is chair of the Anchorage Assembly.

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