Alaska officials told the head of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development Tuesday that they’re concerned about homelessness and housing availability in the state.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner met with elected officials and housing advocates in Anchorage, where a major topic was the formula used to distribute funding to cities to address homelessness.
Currently, that funding is tied to the size of a city, rather than the per capita population of homeless people. As a result, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said Anchorage receives about $4 million in federal support, much less than some other cities that have roughly the same number of homeless people.
“Indianapolis, which has almost the identical number of homeless, gets almost three times as much, about $15 million,” Sullivan said. “And Houston gets about, I think it's almost $40 (million) with the same number of homeless.”
Two years ago, Sullivan said he and other Alaska officials brought similar concerns over formula funding to Turner’s Biden-era counterpart, former HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, when she visited the state.
“I'm not going to dwell on it, right, but it didn't go anywhere with the last administration, and they just didn't follow up on it,” Sullivan said. “We pressed them a number of times. It was kind of… we just didn't get any follow up.”
For his part, Turner didn’t make any public commitments to alter the federal funding formula either. During a press availability after the roundtable, he said he is mostly in the state to listen to concerns.
“Now it's my job, and my team's job to go back and discuss the formula, and also our colleagues, obviously in the Senate, and see what can be done,” Turner said.
Turner is set to travel to Bethel Tuesday evening to learn about more rural Alaska housing challenges. Another Trump cabinet member, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, also visited Anchorage Tuesday. And, while details are still scarce, President Trump is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the city on Friday.
