Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s administration announced it will be issuing over $5 million in direct housing assistance to help address the city’s homeless crisis.
LaFrance made the announcement Friday at an Anchorage Coordinated Response to Homelessness summit. She said nine local organizations will be chosen by the Assembly to distribute the assistance.
“Organizations will then disburse funds directly to individuals who are at risk of homelessness or who are currently experiencing homelessness,” LaFrance said. “At least 150 households will be served.”
The funding comes from the federal Emergency Rental Assistance program and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
It’s part of what LaFrance describes as a bold approach to address both homelessness and the city’s housing shortage. Part of that plan is an ambitious goal of building 10,000 new homes in Anchorage over 10 years.
READ MORE: Anchorage homelessness leaders say the city faces an affordable housing emergency
Assembly member Randy Sulte, who co-chairs the Assembly’s Housing and Homelessness committee, said the city has to be able to compete with the Mat-Su Borough, which has constructed considerably more homes than Anchorage in recent years.
“It also takes roughly six months additional time to build a house in Anchorage, as well as cost $30,000 to $40,000 in addition,” Sulte said. “So the Assembly, Planning and Zoning, the administration have been working through Title 21 to make cuts on the rub points where builders come to us and point out the difficulty in the process.”
The city’s goal to improve housing comes as federal funding has become less reliable during the second Trump presidency. LaFrance said she’s hopeful that the summit will help foster public-private partnerships to offset that uncertainty.
The city is also moving forward with plans to keep emergency shelter space open year round, instead of just in response to cold weather. LaFrance said the goal is to move away from a mass shelter model.
“We are working towards setting up smaller, scattered site shelters that'll be more agile and able to, like, ramp up with the number of beds,” LaFrance said.
She said her administration will soon put out a request for bids on those scattered shelter sites, and currently has no indication of where those sites would be.
