Juneau’s cold-weather warming shelter was supposed to close for the season last week. Instead, the shelter will now be open year-round, thanks to a decision by the Juneau Assembly earlier this month.
Jno Diedrichson sipped a late-night cup of coffee as a movie played quietly on a projector at the emergency shelter last week. Diedrichson never thought he’d be here, sleeping on a small mattress on the floor of a warehouse surrounded by strangers. But then life happened.
“I’m an artist, and my economy just kind of fell right off the map,” he said. “So that’s why I’m here.”
Diedrichson said he’s headed back to school this summer to get his bachelor’s at the University of Alaska Southeast. But it’s mid-April, and he hasn’t been able to find a place to stay while waiting to get into student housing this summer.
Before the Assembly unanimously approved an ordinance to make the shelter in Thane a year-round operation, it was open from mid-October through mid-April. The decision means people without stable housing, like Diedrichson, now have a place to sleep every night of the year, no matter their circumstances.
“There are people who are just one medical bill or one accident away from landing here,” he said. “There’s been a lot of people that I’ve seen the last couple of years that are just holding down two or three jobs, that they still can’t afford rent.”
City officials say that opening the shelter year-round will help address Juneau’s current lack of shelter space and housing units and reduce the number of unhoused people camping in the summer.
The shelter is considered Juneau’s lowest-barrier option for people without housing. It’s open from 9 p.m. to 6:45 a.m. daily. It accepts anyone as long as they aren’t disruptive to other people resting there.
In prior years, the shelter typically closed on April 15. But that left the people who use it with few options for where to sleep during the summer months. The Glory Hall shelter in the Mendenhall Valley is also open year-round, but limited space means it’s constantly full.
Many people camped outside, but encampments raised health and safety issues last summer.
“When you see the encampments that were happening on Teal Street and Brotherhood Bridge, the sanitation and the things that are just really, completely unhealthy and unsafe for individuals, for community members,” said Mollie Carr, the deputy director of St. Vincent de Paul in Juneau. The nonprofit is contracted to operate the shelter.
Now, the city plans to do stricter enforcement to reduce the number of encampments around town. Carr said she supports increased enforcement and wants to make the shelter a place where people want to go instead.
She said now that the shelter is open year-round, shelter staff are working to find ways for it to go beyond just being a place for people to sleep, like hosting game nights, arts and crafts and a drum circle.
“We’re trying to create more of a community for them to have an understanding like, this is going to be your space. This is going to be your safe space,” Carr said.
Jolene Lapinski — a staff member at the shelter — ladled a steaming bowl of spicy soup to a patron. She benefited from Juneau’s services when she moved to town after being unhoused in Ketchikan.
“I’m in recovery, so I wanted to give back in some sort of way,” she said. “I thought by doing this, it would be a good community service.”
She said she’s glad that unhoused people in Juneau have a place to sleep year-round and get basic necessities to navigate their day-to-day lives.
“So they’re not sleeping outside, you know?” she said. “It’s somewhere … to get a hot meal, get some good rest, and then try to go about their day the next day.”