LaFrance administration lays out Anchorage winter homeless shelter plan

Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s administration is planning to open 500 emergency winter homeless shelter beds in late October, according to Farina Brown, LaFrance’s special assistant in homelessness and health.

The administration is aiming to open 500 “non-congregate” shelter beds, such as in hotel rooms, in addition to the 200 beds currently at the city’s mass shelter on 56th Avenue, Brown said.

Brown presented the administration’s broader draft plan for addressing homelessness in Anchorage during a Monday meeting of homeless and health service providers.

Based on data from the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, the administration anticipates 450 to 500 individuals will need shelter this winter, she said. The city will also prioritize services at shelters, including case management, navigation into housing and peer support, she said.

“Because at the end of winter, what we don’t want is 500 people to return to being unhoused,” Brown said.

However, housing in Anchorage is scarce, especially low-income and supportive housing, making it more difficult to move people from shelter into housing.

“I want to be incredibly practical in understanding that there’s not enough capacity in our system for permanent supportive housing and low income housing that all 500 people would be able to move into something,” Brown said. “But that we are creating that flow in the system as best that we can.”

[An Anchorage program is moving scores of people from shelters and camps into housing]

Also, the city will continue to look for more low-barrier shelter options throughout the winter, Brown said.

“This is just getting us started,” she added.

The city is still in the midst of its contracting process for shelter operators and hotel locations, but it should be ready to open winter shelters during the week of Oct. 21, she said.

In recent years, the city has sheltered homeless residents in the Alex Hotel in Spenard and in downtown at the Aviator Hotel.

At the meeting, Brown also briefly discussed the LaFrance administration’s approach to dispersing homeless encampments, saying it will continue to clear camps with its prioritization process.

Over the summer, the city forced homeless residents to leave a handful of encampments that the administration said posed significant public safety threats.

“It is very difficult to abate when we don’t have somewhere safe for an individual to go. As we have shelter, you will see us looking at and being more attentive to larger camps,” Brown said.

She said that the administration wants to work with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness and other organizations in order to coordinate shelter and housing resources for people moving from camps, prioritized by vulnerability.

“Starting with advanced outreach and coordination is critical, because we understand that there are many vulnerable individuals within those camps, as well as some folks that are just intentionally engaging in criminal activity. That’s where we have and will continue to use abatement, but it feels so much better when we are able to abate people with somewhere to go,” Brown said.

A copy of the administration’s draft plan is not yet publicly available. It will be discussed during an upcoming public meeting of the Anchorage Assembly’s Housing and Homelessness Committee on Wednesday.

The plan uses four main strategies, Brown said: Creating adequate, low-barrier shelter for people who are unsheltered, improving access to behavioral health and physical health care services, increasing housing availability, and taking better advantage of community partnerships, funding and data in order to reduce systemic problems that contribute to homelessness over the long term.

“The municipality can’t own everything,” Brown said. “We have to look at, where do we create collaboration so that we build the system that’s right for Anchorage?”