Anchorage Assembly Work Session on Shelter Contracts and Homelessness Strategy - July 28, 2025
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Anchorage Assembly Work Session on Shelter Contracts and Homelessness Strategy - July 28, 2025
This work session was convened to discuss two proposed shelter contracts (AR 567 and AR 562A) for operation of 100-bed low-barrier shelters at East 56th Avenue (Henning Inc.) and East Fifth Avenue (MASH), and a related $1.3 million funding swap from the Anchorage Affordable Housing and Land Trust (AHLT) for case management. The administration presented data on homelessness, the winter shelter plan, and efforts to increase housing. Assembly members raised concerns about the timing, location equity, funding transparency, and the balance between shelter and housing investments.
Discussion Items
- Data Overview: The Anchorage Coalition on Homelessness dashboard showed approximately 3,000 people experiencing homelessness, with emergency shelter beds at full capacity and about 600 unsheltered. The 2025 Point-in-Time count showed a 2% overall change from 2024, with unsheltered numbers rising by 56 people. Of 2,818 beds/units inventoried, 92% were occupied on the night of the count.
- Contract Details: The two contracts (East 56th Ave at $83.69/person/day and East Fifth Ave at $108/person/day) would run from August 30 to December 31, 2025, with year-round licensing allowing up to 150 people and surge capacity for cold weather. Both operators would provide food, transportation, case management, and data reporting via HMIS. The East 56th facility, currently housing 200 people, costs an additional $85.94/person/day for rent and utilities, including $15,000/month rent that could be saved if the municipality owned the building.
- Funding Swap: $1.3 million originally appropriated in 2022 for AHLT to rehabilitate deteriorated properties had not been spent. The administration proposed reappropriating it for case management to secure housing exits from shelter, with AHLT committing to hold 2-5 units per month. Assembly members expressed concern that this diverted funds from permanent housing solutions.
- Concerns about Location and Dispersal: Several members, including Mr. Volland and Chair Constant, noted that the East Fifth Avenue site is in Fairview/downtown, where many homeless services are already concentrated. They requested a map showing distribution of services relative to the 2018 Assembly Resolution 2018-167 supporting dispersed placement. The administration responded that the number of beds in District 1 would be a net reduction from the previous winter (which had 140 beds in non-congregate shelters and 45 warming spaces).
- Process and Timing: Mr. Volland indicated he would move to postpone the items, citing lack of time to review and consult community councils. The administration urged approval tomorrow (July 29) to allow a smooth transition from the current Catholic Social Services contract expiring August 31, and to give MASH time for renovations. A postponement could delay opening of the East Fifth site, potentially reducing bed capacity in September.
- Long-term Strategy: The administration highlighted plans for micro-units (12-30 recovery residences), a crisis stabilization center from Southcentral Foundation expected in 2026, and an ordinance to rehabilitate vacant properties. They noted that current system has 991 beds/units (91% shelter), and the proposed plan would increase to 1,068 with 58% shelter by December 2025.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken; the work session was informational in preparation for the regular assembly meeting the next day (July 29, 2025).
- The administration agreed to provide a map showing distribution of homeless services across districts, including future developments.
- A motion to extend the work session by 15 minutes was made and passed informally; the session concluded at approximately 3:45 PM.
- Assembly members signaled interest in postponing the contracts to allow further review, though the administration emphasized the urgency of approval to avoid a loss of 100 beds.
- The administration committed to providing quarterly performance reports and a public dashboard for homelessness investments.
Meeting Transcript
Is going to be presenting to come up to the table. So please remember to say your name and then we'll move forward with the presentation. So starting with Ms. Nevin. Good afternoon. Thea Agnew Bemben, special assistant to the mayor. Kimberly Rash, Anchorage Health Department. Becky Wimpierson, municipal manager. Ownabras, director of the Office of Management and Budget. And CCM Fleet Green Chief staff to the mayor. Thank you. So we'll go through our presentation and just a very brief reminder. We will take questions during the presentation, but we also want to keep things moving. I understand there's a lot of content. So we'll try to keep to the hour. And then also those on the phone, please remember to mute yourselves. Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you, Tira Braille. So as I was talking to some of you about some of these items, people mentioned that they would like a refresher on the overall strategy and kind of see where these shelter items fit within the overall strategy. That's why there's more content in here than maybe would otherwise be here. So please uh tell me to speed up if I'm spending too long on stuff that's not of interest to you. And we will spend kind of the middle and biggest section talking about the actual items that are before you tomorrow. First, I want to just to check in on some of our data. We always like to start here. This is the dashboard that the Anchorage Coalition and Homelessness puts together, and they do these snapshots every month. Um, this is from what's called the Built for Zero dashboard. And I think it's important to understand that the purpose of that is to help us measure the flow through the system. So as of this month, we have just under 3,000 people experiencing homelessness. That's been kind of the range that we've been in for quite a long time. There's a little bit of a difference in how they're presenting the information this month. They're trying to kind of hone in on the language that makes the most sense for folks. Uh so usually you would see about 1700 people in emergency shelter or transitional housing. Um, this month they're just showing that those beds are all full. And then they're showing about 600 people who are unsheltered. And you can see from that double asterisk there, it says approximate count based on street outreach reports. And so that I think is important to understand that the count of people who are unsheltered is we're trying to count a group of people that are moving and kind of coming in and out of shelter and hard to count. Um, so that's always a bit of an approximation, but that's where we are currently. I also wanted to just make sure that you knew that we have the 2025 data for what's called the point in time count. This is a count that's done all over the country. It's done one day in January every year. So it's a good way for us to uh compare to previous years and to compare to other jurisdictions around the country. Um, so what you'll see between 2024 and 2025, we just had a 2% change in our overall number, um, which means we're staying pretty steady. Some other jurisdictions around the country are seeing pretty major increases. So I think we're actually doing pretty good to be holding steady. You'll see that our unsheltered count did go up a little bit uh by 56 people, which is a significant number when we're going from around 350 to 400 people. Um we did see an increase in our emergency shelter beds, and then also an increase or sorry, um an increase in people who are in our year-round emergency shelter beds, but a slight decrease in those who are in our seasonal beds. So just wanted to share that for this year. Um, this one is what we call the um the housing inventory count. And I'm just showing the part that counts on that day.
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