Small food portions, bedbugs, lost laundry: Reports detail challenges in Anchorage’s shelters

Recent reports from the organization performing third party oversight of Anchorage’s winter emergency shelters shines a light on several ongoing challenges, including not enough food or transportation, and problems with laundry and bedbugs at one site, among other issues.

Many of the problems described in the reports are not new to the city’s emergency homeless shelters and have been commonly reported by homeless clients and service providers over the last few years. The reports offer a window into the conditions for homeless shelter clients and the many challenges faced by operators.

The city contracted with the local organization Restorative Reentry Services, or RRS, to work with the city’s contracted service providers at the four winter shelter locations to audit their contract compliance and help to ensure better quality of care for clients. The organization’s CEO, Cathleen McLaughlin, produces a weekly report on the shelters to the mayor’s office and the Anchorage Assembly.

Since mid-December, homeless clients have reported to RRS that they aren’t receiving enough food, though the city has a $1.7 million contract with a business to deliver three square meals a day to the about 530 people staying in city shelters. That amounts to about $14.57 per person, per day.

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In her latest report, which covers Dec. 30 through Jan. 5, McLaughlin wrote that food requirements weren’t being followed for portion sizes, the daily caloric baseline and quality.

“Clients are hungry and asking for seconds every day,” McLaughlin wrote about the Alex Hotel in Spenard, where about 230 people shelter nightly, two to a room.

The Anchorage Health Department worked with the contractor, ESS Support Services Worldwide to address the issues, and the consistency of meals has improved, a spokeswoman for the Health Department said.

A director with the company said its food production line prepares and packages about 1,600 meals a day for the shelters, and that everything is weighed and portioned to the guidelines. “We don’t want to be under-serving anybody,” the director, Terry McIntosh, said.

While city contract requirements for food follow federal meal standards, it’s not enough food for most adults, said Alexis Johnson, director of strategy for local nonprofit Henning, Inc. The organization is running three non-congregate shelter locations and a warming area under contracts with the city.

“Food, year over year, continues to be a problem,” said Johnson, who was the homeless coordinator under the previous mayor and who oversaw city shelters during the last few winter seasons.

“It’s the same USDA guidelines for like, kids and adults. It’s just this very small portion,” she said.

At most shelter sites, there aren’t a lot of options nearby for clients to buy their own food. It’s even more difficult for people with mobility challenges, the RRS reports say.

At the city’s 200-bed congregate shelter site on E. 56th Avenue, RRS found that operator Catholic Social Services hasn’t been complying with all its contractual obligations, particularly around problems with laundry.

The facility doesn’t have on-site machines, so sends out clients’ belongings to a local laundry. Shelter clients say their things often go missing or are returned dirty, wet, or to the wrong person, the reports say.

The Health Department on Friday said the city is working closely with CSS to fix laundry issues and any others that are identified.

The city requires each shelter operator to give out bus passes each day to any client who needs one — providing critical transportation access to medical appointments, jobs and the like. Those passes have been in short supply at the 56th Avenue shelter, RRS found.

The shelter runs out each day, and shelter clients who have jobs sometimes are left without transportation and can’t get to work, McLaughlin said in the report.

Catholic Social Services is experienced in working with the homeless, running longtime low-barrier shelter Brother Francis in downtown and several other programs. In 2022, the nonprofit opened Complex Care, a facility that shelters homeless residents with high medical needs.

The nonprofit did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The organization took over operations of the shelter from Henning in October.

A few weeks later, McLaughlin reported that bed bugs and lice were widespread at the facility.

Combating bed bugs is often a perennial challenge for low-barrier homeless shelters, which see daily client turnover.

The organization has since obtained heat treatment tents to help curb the problem, McLaughlin said in recent reports. It also has an on-site medic and weekly visits from an Anchorage Neighborhood Health clinician to provide medical care.

Some clients expressed concerns about safety, stealing among shelter clients, and disparate disciplinary actions by staff.

“They said that for various behaviors and infractions, they are required to have a ‘time out’ outside that can last from minutes to hours and that the ‘punishment’ is different depending on which staff is issuing the consequence and how close that staff is to a particular client,” the report said.

Similar issues with discipline and stealing have been reported by clients in city shelters run by various operators since the days of the former Sullivan Arena mass shelter.

Farina Brown, the mayor’s special assistant in homelessness and health, told Assembly members during a meeting earlier this week that theft deters clients from leaving shelters to go to other resources, and the city is working on ways to bring more outside services directly to shelters, she said.

“While our congregate and non-congregate (shelters) are absolutely safe places for people to go, you still have individuals that steal. You still have a concern for your belongings,” Brown said.

The city’s shelters have been full nightly, as have privately-run shelters. Recently, the city opened an additional overnight warming area for up to 60 people on nights colder than 20 degrees at Henning House on Fourth Avenue near downtown.

Due to recent “unpredictable and unusual weather,” the city will keep it open continuously, Brown said.