William Gonzalez Jr. leaned down to let his dog Baby out of her crate. She wiggled up to a black cat nearby.
“Say ‘Hi’ to your friend!” Gonzalez cooed.
They were in the pet room at Linda’s Place, the newest homeless shelter in Anchorage. Gonzalez said his Pomeranian-wiener dog mix has made a lot of friends since they moved in. But it’s an unusual place to find animals. Often when people are homeless, they have to choose between shelter and their pets.
A 2023 survey from the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness found that pet and animal ownership was a significant barrier to shelter in the city. Nationally, it’s rare for shelters to accept animals, despite the fact that studies show that people are usually unwilling to give up their pets or service animals, and will choose to stay outdoors instead.
And advocates say there are other benefits to allowing animals in shelters. For people like Gonzalez, an animal’s love can be the most dependable thing in their life. Gonzalez became homeless nearly a year ago after his wife filed for divorce and a domestic violence protective order against him.
He doesn’t know what he’d do if Baby wasn’t allowed in the shelter, he said. She helps get him through anxiety attacks and depression.
“All I have to do is just hold her and she knows something's wrong, and then she'll start licking my face and like, ‘Okay, I'm here,’” he said. “And then she'll sit in my lap and I'll pet her, and everything's good from there.”
Thea Agnew Bemben is special assistant to Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance.
“I think there's a lot of reasons why, when your life maybe has kind of fallen apart, that having an animal is one of the things that can help bring you back towards connection and stability,” she said.
When LaFrance took office in 2024, the city had just started rethinking its policy on pets in homeless shelters. It was an easy decision for the LaFrance administration to allow animals in shelters whenever possible, Agnew Bemben said.
Animals are currently welcome in two of the three city-run shelters.
There were only six people with pets at Linda's Place in early April. But for homeless people with animals, it makes a meaningful difference, Agnew Bemben said. And it’s part of a bigger philosophy toward homelessness, she said.
“To treat people with respect and dignity and to accept that they have full lives just like everyone else, and that we're trying to help them move to stability with their full lives intact,” she said.
Animals help some people regulate their emotions, like Baby does with Gonzalez. Chris McClelland manages Linda’s Place and he’s also worked at other shelters that didn’t allow animals. There’s a distinct difference in the way people behave, he said.
“We didn’t allow pets in the building for whatever reason, so they didn't have the luxury of being able to go and self cope,” he said. “And you see a lot more lashing out that way, a lot more anger.”
It’s not just dogs and cats at Linda’s Place. McClelland said they’ll accept any animal as long as they’re able to house the pet properly. So far, the most unusual animal to stay at the shelter was a ferret.
And according to McClelland, there’s no real inconvenience to having pets at the shelter. As manager, he loves the policy.
“Sometimes that pet is the only thing they have, the only thing that understands what they're going through at the time,” he said. “And so they really do serve a purpose.”
Linda’s Place provides some pet food, and has a partnership with an organization that comes through to give veterinary care to the animals. When outreach workers are looking to transition people to housing, they look for places that will accept the animal, McClelland said.
In the pet room at Linda’s Place, Gonzalez scooped Baby up in his arms, ruffling her fur. Her well being is his top priority, he said.
“Before I do anything for me, she gets everything done for her,” he said. “And that's food, that's water, that's shots, if she gets basic checkups and stuff like that, she gets it first, and then I worry about me.”
Gonzalez said he tries to keep Baby as comfortable as possible, but she still isn’t completely used to sleeping in a crate, away from him. Sometimes he hears her barking and goes in to calm her down with cuddles, returning the favor for all the times she’d done the same for him.
“She's more dependable than money,” he said. “She's more dependable than friendships. I mean, she loves me for just me, and that's it.”
He can’t wait until he gets housing, he said. Then Baby can have the run of the place like she used to.
