Anchorage can build housing with this grant now. Residents asked for teardowns

For the first 50 years of the federal Community Development Block Grant program, cities could not use the money to build new housing. A law Congress passed in July changed that, and Anchorage can now put about $400,000 of its roughly $2 million annual grant toward construction starting in 2027.

At the first public hearing on how to spend it, nobody asked for that.

Jamar Hill, who runs a youth sports program across from Mountain View Lions Park, told the city's housing commission that the park got safer after the city tore down a meth house next door. "I'd like to see funds go to demo of properties," he said, noting that abandoned buildings in the neighborhood tend to end up foreclosed by out-of-state banks. He also raised the shuttered Circle K beside the park, where he said the community council voted unanimously last week to push for turning it into something the neighborhood can use, citing homicides and assaults on the property.

Dawn Morse, who has lived in Mountain View four and a half years, agreed, saying the neighborhood needs "more fields of flowers in Mountain View and not boarded up buildings" full of asbestos.

Staff said they heard support for clearing slum and blight, a longstanding national priority under the program that Anchorage has not emphasized in recent years. The city has paid for demolition out of other pots: the Assembly spent $500,000 in pandemic relief money in 2024 to tear down ten vacant properties.

The same federal law carries a provision with larger consequences. Starting in 2028, how much block grant money Anchorage receives will depend in part on how quickly the city adds housing, a change that has worried officials in cities where construction is constrained.

The commission held this hearing months earlier than usual, before any draft spending plan exists, in an effort to get the money moving sooner than in past cycles. A second hearing follows once a draft is written.