Anchorage officials are close to approving a contract to provide private rooms for up to 500 people without homes to use as emergency shelter this winter.
That probably sounds familiar. This will be the city’s third winter in a row paying for private rooms to be used as part of a seasonal, winter shelter system. It’s a way to keep people from losing limbs or freezing to death outside, and potentially get vulnerable people on a path to stable housing. But for others, it’s also become a cycle of placement, displacement and tragedy.
But this time, there will be significantly more of these beds, for a significantly smaller target population. Local homelessness service providers work together to maintain data about who needs what. They now estimate the number of people living out of tents, cars or other situations considered “unsheltered” in Anchorage is about 500.
“While the visibility of homelessness often takes our attention to the immediate, last year at this time, we were looking at the need for around 900 beds,” Farina Brown, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s special assistant on homelessness and health, told an Assembly committee last month. “So there’s been significant progress that’s been made over time and we hope to continue that momentum.”
On Wednesday, the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness’s Chief Operations Officer Jessica Parks was excited to share data updated through the end of August about the overall number of people experiencing homelessness in the city, sheltered or otherwise.
“So we are continuing to see the trend of that number of people experiencing homelessness going down every month,” Parks said. “So we now have had nine consecutive months of outflow exceeding inflow.”
And yet, Assembly member Anna Brawley, said there’s a notion that homelessness continues to get worse in Anchorage.
“I think people feel like it is worse,” she said. “So I’m trying to square those two things, ‘cause I think people’s perception is reality to some extent, but it’s not matching up to what the actual story is.”
Parks said part of the mismatch may be because last summer, most people living outdoors concentrated themselves into a few large encampments. Earlier this year, the Anchorage Assembly passed a measure that set a soft limit of 25 tents at a single location, so now there are many, smaller encampments spread out.
“Not everybody who is outside on the sidewalk is experiencing homelessness,” Parks added. “Our street outreach teams frequently encounter people who do have housing, and they are just outside. They are in the park, they are hanging out outside.”
Brown said the change will continue to be incremental. She outlined the administration’s evolving strategy to address homelessness through shelter, health care, housing, various partnerships and data-informed decision-making.
Providers know that some of that data shows that sheltering in a private room leads to better outcomes than sheltering in a mass setting or living outdoors.
City purchasing officials want to award a contract worth up to $9,177,800 to the nonprofit Henning Inc. to run the city’s private shelter rooms this winter. Final approval from the Anchorage Assembly is expected at its regular meeting on Tuesday.
Details like the specific locations aren’t public yet. However, the city’s list of requirements include providing safe, private space for up to two people per room, support services to help users transition to permanent housing, and pet sheltering for service and emotional support animals. Meals are also expected to be provided on site through a separate vendor.
Last winter, Henning had a similar contract, but for fewer people. It ran rooms for up to 374 people in two local hotels to serve as temporary, cold weather emergency shelters.
Henning has also been running the city’s 200-bed, low-barrier, mass shelter in the Midtown area. It first opened last fall as a temporary winter shelter. Earlier this year, state lawmakers set aside $4 million to keep it running until this fall. The city is also reviewing new contract proposals to keep it going through at least next April.
