ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee

Travis, are we recording? We are. Okay, great. All right, I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Assembly Housing and Homeless Committee. It is Wednesday, May 20th at 11:01 AM.

Welcome everyone. We'll start by just getting a sense of who's here. Let's start with those in person. Erin Baldwin Day. Sydney Scout.

And this is Cameron Perez Verdia. And on the phone, Mr. Johnson, are you there?

Here. Miss Brawley, are you there? Yep, I'm here. And Mr. Goecker, you're there? Yep, here.

Sorry, Goecker. Sorry, sorry, everybody gets one. All right, um, all right, we have a pretty, pretty full agenda today, so we should just get started. For those online, if you want to get into the queue, just remember to send me a text. And for the record, we've been joined by Ms. Park.

Okay, let's, let's get started. We're going to start with the 2026 Point-in-Time Count. Would those involved in that presentation come forward, please?

Welcome.

All right, thank you. Let me know if you can't hear me or if you need me to repeat anything. Actually, before I have you begin, I do want to make note that Mayor LaFrance is here, and I just want to give you a moment if there's something you want to share with the committee. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Chair Perez Verdia, and thank you, Assemblymembers, for being here today. Ms. Parks, for taking a few moments before you begin to make some comments. Since I took office, my team has been focused on reducing the number of people experiencing homelessness in our community.

We have been very focused specifically on the people who are unsheltered in Anchorage and have been working to see a reduction in that number. This year's Point-in-Time Count shows a 28% reduction in unsheltered homelessness compared to last year. That is fewer people sleeping in our public spaces, fewer people susceptible to our cold winter nights, and fewer people unsafe in our community. This is good news, but the problem is not solved and there is still more work to do. The ultimate goal is to have accessible housing options for all Anchorage residents.

As we work toward that goal, I'm proud that we have stood up year-round shelter for the first time. This provides people not only a safe place to stay, but also a way to connect to the resources they need. This year, our shelter beds across the municipality were full at the time of the count. This highlights the need for these beds and the critical role they play in keeping a vulnerable population safe. But we still need more shelter beds.

I also want to highlight that while we've been working to cut red tape to get more housing built— and thank you to the Assembly for that collaborative work. We've been offering shelter beds to keep people safe, eliminating large and dangerous entrenched camps and preventing those camps from reforming, and moving people from unsheltered homelessness. We are also working to prevent people from entering homelessness. We started a housing rehab fund to fix aging housing stock. We have rental assistance through the Health Department, and we have funds to make mobile home repairs to keep people in housing.

Finally, the transition from homelessness to being housed can be challenging. There have been struggles to ensure that people stay housed. I'm happy to report that 72% of people housed 2 years prior were still housed in 2025. We're also helping connect people to the resources they need. In just the first quarter of this year, the HOPE team placed 18 individuals into shelter or housing.

They made 171 referrals to partners for care or services. And that's just one of our teams. We have the mobile intervention team, the mobile crisis team, and the core team out there alongside other community service partners making connections and getting people help. So as I mentioned, these numbers are all encouraging, and you'll hear more details today from Ms. Park with the Coalition to End Homelessness and Ms. Agnew-Bemben. Special Assistant on Homelessness, Health, and Community Safety in my office.

I want to be very clear, the work is not done, but what we are all doing together is making a difference. There are still people experiencing homelessness in our community, and we want to find housing or shelter for them all. Solving homelessness takes a multi-pronged approach that includes housing, shelter, treatment, community partners, outreach workers. Critically funding. So I will let Ms.

Parks and Ms. Agnew-Bemben get into the details here about the point-in-time numbers and how the work of the municipality helps shape these results. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today at this meeting and for the Assembly's work to help reduce homelessness. I'm very grateful for your partnership and commitment to addressing this issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor LaFrance, for being here. Thank you for your comments.

Seeing no questions, I'm gonna move us forward on our agenda. Ms. Parks, you have the floor. All right, thank you so much. As was shared, my name is Jessica Parks.

I'm the interim executive director at the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, and we facilitate the annual Point-in-Time Count. This is a a HUD requirement of Continuums of Care, which are geographic regions designated by HUD to receive funding. So the Point-in-Time Count is done across the country, the same time, every jurisdiction. So this year it was January 26th, 2026, and we had a multitude of partners assisting with the Point-in-Time Count. Go to the next slide.

So as I said, January 26th, 2026. I do just want to call out the partners who helped us perform this count. This count counts people who are unsheltered, but also counts people who are in shelters and transitional housings— housing programs that night. So all of our shelter and transitional housing partners facilitated the count at their locations, and then counting people who are unsheltered was a a real group effort. We had staff from ACH as well as Covenant House, Catholic Social Services, staff from Henning, the VA. We had the— with the mayor's office out there with us, as well as our partners with the HOPE team and the Anchorage Downtown Partnership who helped with the downtown area count.

Next slide.

So this is the results of our unsheltered and sheltered Point-in-Time Count. I have—. I apologize just for a second, I'm sorry, I missed a question that we have for you. Okay. Ms. Balwande.

Yeah, thank you, and thanks for being here, Ms. Parks, with this update. Were there any shelters that did not participate in the Point-in-Time Count? We did not have any shelters that did not participate. Excellent, thank you.

So this is a comparison of our 2026 count to our 2025 count. As you can see, and as the Mayor highlighted, we did have a reduction in our count of unsheltered individuals by 111 people. We'll talk a little bit more about some of those demographics later on in the presentation. And then I wanted to highlight the shift in the numbers between our year-round and our seasonal shelter. This has been a concerted effort for the past 2 years to transition a lot of that seasonal shelter into year-round shelter.

So we see that reflected here in these numbers. That we had more year-round shelter beds available for people this year as compared to last year where a large portion of those beds were still seasonal. They were only being stood up in the wintertime. So we show that shift there and then a fairly steady population in our transitional housing programs for an overall decrease in our number from 2025 of 103 people. Next slide, please.

This slide shows our housing inventory count. So this goes alongside our Point-in-Time Count where we say not just how many people are experiencing homelessness, but what capacity did we have? Where were those beds, both in shelter and transitional housing beds serving people experiencing homelessness, but rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and other permanent housing that's dedicated to people experiencing homelessness, and how occupied were those beds? So this is just looking at the 2026 count and those, that utilization rate. As the Mayor pointed out, our single adult shelter beds that are operated by the municipality were all at 100% capacity, including those seasonal beds or the surge capacity beds that we had open.

The 93% utilization rate that you see for the year-round shelter is primarily family shelters. Family shelters can be really difficult to count because most of our family shelters operate using units, not beds. So they have a room that has a set number of beds inside of it, and that might have a family of 2 in it, it might have a family of 7 in it. So that makes that count a little bit challenging, but we did have vacancies in our family shelters on the night of the Point-in-Time Count. We did not in our single adult shelters.

Actually, I have a question for you before you move on. So the, in this case, the emergency shelter seasonal, can you describe to us where is that, what is that, is that within a shelter that has year-round or is it a separate building? Give us a sense of what emergency shelter means in this context. Sure, the seasonal beds were actually a combination of both of those things this year. We had surge capacity beds at Linda's Place and 56th Avenue that were turned on just for the just for the season, just for the cold weather.

And then we also had activated at the night, at the time of the point-in-time count, a overnight-only shelter beds at the transit center operated by the Anchorage Safety Center. So we had a little bit of both. We had facilities that were stood up just as a seasonal shelter, and then we also had seasonal beds or surge capacity beds at existing year-round shelters. So just so we're clear that the way that you're differentiating that is that the maximum number, is that the maximum number of beds at the shelters were used, or is it that, what I'm trying to get clear on is the surge, right? And that is because we're now surging down, or we're, so at this point, the 1,000 in inventory, is that the maximum number of beds that we had at that time, and then we were, we were having folks in cots or on the floor, or give us a sense of, I guess, I guess how you, how you decided this is seasonal and this is not.

Sure. And some of it comes from the providers themselves as to what is their year-round capacity, the number of beds that they have available regardless of the season, and how many beds were added to them because of cold weather or other— in this case it's just cold weather, but sometimes it's other things. So nobody's, as far as I know, nobody slept on the floor on a mat. Everything is cots or beds.

Some of them are bunk beds, but for the most part they're, they're cots or beds.

Yeah, so as we're looking at this as a number to look at for next year, for instance, the inventory may change, right? It could. So, but it's helpful to sort of see this as these are the seasonal surge, which you would say. Yes. And I'm happy to at any point have more detailed conversations about what makes up that inventory, where those beds are, and what types of beds they are.

Yeah, I'm just thinking about how we're going to track this over time and using the same sort of metrics, definitions, whatever, so that we can look at how it's compared to previous years. Yes, and we do try to use the same methodology every year. If we ever update the methodology, we'll share that with HUD and with you all if we ever change how we're counting. But that is how we have counted year-round and seasonal beds for at least the past 5 years. Okay, great.

Ms. Baldwin-Day. Yeah, thank you. So would you, would you explain briefly the difference between transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and permanent supportive housing, and then other permanent housing? Like, how is all of that? Yeah, how do we differentiate between those things?

Absolutely. So transitional housing is considered, at least by HUD, it's considered to be essentially the same as, as a shelter. Someone is still experiencing homelessness if they are in a transitional housing program. What differentiates it is that transitional housing typically has some type of occupancy agreement that comes along with it that's usually usually a longer stay. Transitional housing isn't intended to be you come in for one night and then you leave.

It's more like a program that is nested within that particular facility. Everything else— rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and other permanent housing— is all permanent solutions. Rapid rehousing is rental assistance with case management support up to 24 months. Most of our rapid rehousing projects here in Anchorage are about 12 months, but it can go up to 24 months. They are typically tenant-based assistance, assistance where the person would qualify for that project and then they would receive rental assistance at a scattered site apartment around, around town somewhere.

Permanent supportive housing is similar to that, but there's no cap. On that assistance, so it doesn't end automatically at a set point in time. It can go as long as that need continues for that person or they continue to be eligible for the project. Permanent supportive housing here in Anchorage looks two different ways. We have site-based permanent supportive housing.

Those are projects like Karluk Manor where it's everyone in one building operated by one particular project as well as the owner of the building. And then we also have permanent supportive housing that is scattered site, like the NeighborWorks Rise program, where people will get that assistance out in the community at a private rental, and then case management will visit them or have meetings with them off-site. Other permanent housing is housing units that are dedicated to people experiencing homelessness but don't have those ongoing supportive services along with them. So there are units at Cook Inlet Housing properties that are dedicated to people experiencing homelessness as well as NeighborWorks that are counted in that other permanent housing.

Thanks.

All right, so on this slide you can see that utilization rate overall for Anchorage on the night of the Point-in-Time Count, we had a 95% utilization rate across all of our programs. That's extremely high. Is essentially full. When you have a utilization rate above about 93%, that is the normal churn. And if you have conversations with individual providers, they'll often tell you that their programs, while they might have had an empty bed or an empty unit on the night of the Point-in-Time Count, if you look at their overall year-round utilization, it's usually higher than that.

The Point-in-Time Count is really just a snapshot. One night.

Next slide, please. So this data, this chart shows the Point-in-Time Count, the unsheltered Point-in-Time Count by zip code. So I've broken this down and compared it back to '25, '24, and '23. So you can see some of the changes over time in the various areas of town where people who are unsheltered um, are and where we encounter them. In 2024, we had 33 people that we didn't have a report of a zip code for, so that's why there's a line of no zip code for 2024.

But all of the other years, we have comparisons year over year for those zip codes. We did not track that information prior to 2023, so that's as far back as I have zip code data. But I wanted to share this and just show the changes over time in the different areas of town and where we were encountering people outside on the night of the Point-in-Time Count. Next slide, please. One of the things that we've asked for the past 2 years as part of the unsheltered Point-in-Time Count survey is asking people why they didn't go to shelter.

So they were outside on the night of the Point-in-Time Count. And as you can see, there's many different reasons that people might have for not going to shelter. Out of the 291 people who were outside on the night of the point-in-time count, 160 gave us an answer to this question. This was an optional question, people didn't have to answer it, but 160 people did. And you can see that of those 160 people, 85 of them said that they would have been in shelter had there been a bed that they could have gone to on that night.

The next highest reason was the safety or security concerns at the shelters that existed, followed by need for privacy, privacy, negative past experiences, lack of transportation to shelters. We see that come up a lot where people are just aren't in the right area of town to get to a shelter, and so they don't have the ability to make it there that night. And then going further down, we have reasons given regarding pets, reasons given regarding staying with a significant other, But I do, do want to highlight two relatively small numbers there. One is don't know how to access the shelter. That's exciting to me personally because it means we're doing a good job of letting people know shelter beds are out there, how you can get to them.

In the past, the answer to that question has been higher, so it makes me feel good that that answer was so low on this night, as well as people who are on a waitlist banned from accessing shelter. So really trying to reduce as many barriers as possible to getting to shelter for people. I have a question for you from Ms. Silvers. When you ask people this question, do you ask in a way that's open-ended or do you give them like a selection of options to choose from? Both.

So there is an option that is none of these, none of the above. But we have the choices available. So the way I can speak for myself personally, when I was asking this question, I would ask it open-ended, you know, hey, you spent the night outside last night. Why were you outside? Did you not know?

You know, what was— why were you outside? And then if they answered one of those things, I would just check those boxes. I can't say that everyone who gave that survey didn't just start reading them off, though. And then why do you think there's this disconnect? So there's 85 said a lack of available beds, but only 4 were currently on the waitlist for a shelter bed.

So why do you think there's that disconnect? So we, we don't operate using waitlists for shelter beds. Brother Francis Shelter has a waitlist, but no one else does. Thank you.

Another question from Miss Baldwin Day. Yeah, how do these, um, I was trying to quickly pull up this same chart from the presentation last year to just compare. Uh, can you give us a quick narrative of as to how these responses have changed since the Point-in-Time Count 2025? Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and I don't have it in front of me either, so this will be my memory.

Um, but lack of available beds was the number one reason last year as well, and safety and security concerns ranked pretty high up there last year as well. I know that pets has increased slightly, the ability to have your pets with you in shelter. That is something that we have available for people, but it is limited. It's limited on the types of animals you can bring, and it's limited on the number. So we did see that increase.

That was a pretty small number last year, and it's number— well, Number 5 from the bottom, number 8 from the, from the top. But last year it was a much lower number.

Did that answer your question? Yeah, that did. Do you, do you have a sense, you know, based on sort of this data set that we're building, what the, what the true demand is for shelter at this point? And I think looking at, looking at our utilization rates, I mean, and to your point that 93% is full or greater, it does make me wonder, you know, where, where should we be looking? What should our capacity, what should our real capacity be?

Is that if we're maxing out our shelter capacity every single night? Yeah. And I don't want to steal Thea's Thea's presentation has some of that, some of that in there. Great, I will hold my question for the future. Yep, and happy to get into the details.

I think sometimes it's matching the right shelter with the demand, and that is something that is an ongoing challenge that can change every day. But having multiple types of shelter available, I think, is really important so that there is a place that everyone can go to. Yep, and knowing that we're gonna get into that, we're gonna hold that. Thanks. Ms. Park.

Thank you. In those 85 people that thought, that said that they were not in housing due to a lack of beds, was that a perception on their part that there would not be a place for them, or were there actual beds, or did you not have beds? We did not have any beds on the night of the pit, but I think that is a really important question that sometimes people don't know that there are beds available, and that's why I was kind of excited at the very low number of don't know how to access the shelters. I think we have done a much better job with our coordinated outreach, making sure that when we have beds available, we are very quickly getting people who want those beds into them.

And just to be clear, this is, in the information we have, this is what they said, is that there's a lack of beds. Yes. That's not necessarily the number of Black beds, that's what people just— just be clear, thanks.

All right, next slide. This slide breaks down our Point-in-Time Count by age. This is inclusive of people who were in shelter and transitional housing. So as you can see, under the age of 18 and over the age of 65, the number of people who are unsheltered is very, very low. We see the majority of our people who are sleeping outside on the night of the point-in-time count in that age range of 25 to 54.

And then you can see the spread of the transitional housing as well, that we have more transitional housing in our community for people who are up to age 24. We have transitional housing with Covenant House and our transition-age youth partners, as well as transitional housing for families, but not as much transitional housing that's available for single adults. So this is where we see that, that spread of where people were based on their age.

I think I'm going to continue to ask this question: how does this compare to last year's? Very similar distribution, very similar.

Next slide, please. Uh, and this is just some demographic information on the people who we did survey as part of the Point-in-Time Count. When we look at adults who are categorized or classified as chronically homeless, which means that they have been homeless for more than 12 consecutive months, or they've had 4 or more instances of homelessness in the last 3 years, so they may have been housed for a while and then re-entered homelessness, that's what Hud categorizes as chronically homeless. We had 92 people— of the people who were chronically homeless, 92 of them were unsheltered, and 392 were in an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program on the night of the Point-in-Time Count. Uh, for the people who were unsheltered, we asked the question, where did you sleep?

So you were, you were not in a shelter or in permanent housing, but where were you? The majority of people were outside or in a tent, followed by people who were sleeping in a vehicle or in an RV. And then the other category are things like warming centers. They spent the night in a waiting room of like an emerg— of an emergency room at a hospital. We had a few people who spent the night at the airport.

So that's that, that 26 there was a a pretty wide variety of places where they spent the night that wasn't outside or in a vehicle. And that does track pretty closely with last year in terms of the, in terms of the percentages. Disabilities, we saw 133 people with one or more conditions compared to 158 without. Again, self-reported, this is self-reported data, so That tracks with our overall population of people experiencing homelessness. That's, that's about what we see there.

And then veterans, continuing a trend, a very low number of unsheltered veterans. We have a really great team doing outreach with the VA, and we are, we are really good at when we encounter a veteran who is outside, getting connected with those resources and getting them into shelter or into housing.

We have a question for Ms. Silvers, and for the record, Ms. Brawley has joined us in person.

What do you think is different about what's working for veterans and everybody else? So I think one of the resources that veterans have is access to funding and resources that can very quickly help them. We have a supportive services for veteran families program that is run by Catholic Social Services that can step in and provide that emergency shelter and housing assistance for a veteran very quickly if they qualify. And then we have federal resources in VASH vouchers, which are available to veterans who qualify for them to provide that ongoing housing assistance that has a very very small waitlist if it has a waitlist. It, it fluctuates throughout the year, um, compared to the housing vouchers, the Housing Choice Vouchers that we have available to people who are not veterans.

Um, that waitlist opens once every 2 years for 30 days, and you're usually on that waitlist for anywhere up to 3 years. So, so the extra resources that you have to spend on the veteran population, you would say that's mostly going to housing? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

Would you repeat those numbers? The Housing Choice Vouchers, the waitlist opens once. So the past 4 years, it has opened every other year for 30 days, and that is for the opportunity to get on that waitlist. And then once you are on that waitlist, There's a lottery performed to determine your place on the waitlist, so it's not a first-come, first-served, and then you're assigned a number on that waitlist, and that can be anywhere. We call it time to voucher, so your time to voucher can be anywhere at that point from 1 to 3 months to up to 48 months.

And does that difference in time scale depend— I mean, what would influence you being on a waitlist for 1 to 3 months as opposed to 4 years? It's a lottery. So it's just the luck of the draw, literally. Astonishing. Go ahead.

I have a comment for Ms. Brawley. I got the broken one. Just a quick comment on veterans. I think there's a direct, very direct correlation between the number of resources, the amount of resources, the number of housing vouchers, the number of programs that are connected to veterans. And there's basically a lot— two lines.

One is the number that in Alaska unsheltered in the system overall, and the amount of resources that were put in by Congress over time. So we've increased those vouchers. So that's just— it's important to understand there is a complete correlation between those two things. And that is the only population, to my knowledge, that has ever had that level of resources, and the numbers speak for themselves. So just comment.

Thanks. Thanks. Okay. Thanks. Next slide.

So some key takeaways that we had from the Point-in-Time Count this year. So this year we saw our capacity better matched to the demand. We were able to fill more beds on the night of the Point-in-Time Count than we necessarily have in the past. But it's still not sufficient to meet that need. And Thea is going to talk a little bit more about that.

Abandoned buildings are really difficult to count. So when you have places where people are staying in abandoned buildings, or maybe not abandoned buildings, but they're not supposed to be there, that's really difficult to count because our teams can't just go on private property and count people. So most of our people who get counted who stayed in that type of situation are self-reporting, seeking out the survey somewhere else. They may have been encountered later on in the day on the streets and reported that, or they may have gone to a location like the Navigation Center where someone might have been doing surveys. Our expanded outreach coordination, as I shared earlier, made it so much smoother this year in terms of coordinating the actual count, having teams assigned to zip code who were canvassing that zip code, surveying people.

And then last, just to call out that Girdwood has a severe lack of affordable housing, and we have people sleeping in vehicles in Girdwood experiencing homelessness, including the families with minor children.

Yes, Mayor LaFrance.

Thank you, Chair. And just question/comment about Girdwood. I understand that in 2025 there wasn't a count in Girdwood in the zip code 99999. 587 Includes Girdwood. I'm not sure if there were folks along Turnagain Arm who are also included in that number, so it shows 0 in 2025 going up to 30 in 2026.

Is it, is that just for Girdwood? It might have included people outside of Girdwood. The count was in Girdwood, so at the health clinic they held an event and had people come and be surveyed there. Okay, thank you. And yes, so that is, that does kind of stand out that it goes from zero last year to 30 this year.

Yeah. And that was coordination with the team down in Girdwood getting a count down there. We have had outreach visits to Girdwood over the past few years and there are definitely people experiencing homelessness in Girdwood. But this was the first time we were able to coordinate a count for the Point-in-Time Count. With them.

That is the end of what I have. As I shared, I'm happy to go into more detail with any of these numbers or any of the specifics in terms of population or projects that are dedicated to people experiencing homelessness, and always open. You can email me or call me and I can Talk more. Thank you, Ms. Parks.

We have a pretty full agenda, so I'm going to move us right along into our next item, and it's homelessness and health metrics dashboard, quarter 1. Ms. Agnew-Benben is here, I know. Is that the—. Great. Okay.

And can we have health, fire, and police up for questions because I think that'll be useful.

You can sit there. Do you want to sit here? Yeah. Or this team. Oh, there you go.

Good job, ma'am.

Okay, you're good. Thanks. Great. Thanks so much, Chair. Um, Thea Agnew-Benben, Special Assistant to Mayor LaFrance, working on homelessness, health, and community safety.

Um, this is the dashboard that we've been developing. We shared the first version of it with you in January. This brings together data from a number of different sources. So we do have some data coming from the House— Homeless Management Information System, but we also have brought in data from APD, from Restorative Reentry Services, from the Health Department, Parks and Rec. So we're really trying to give you a set of metrics that reflects the entire body of work that we're collaboratively trying to achieve.

And again, this is the same kind of strategy that we've been deploying since the Mayor took office. So hopefully the work that we're doing sounds very familiar, and you're now getting to see some of the metrics that show you how much of that is happening and hopefully what good it's doing in the community, because that's, that's the whole point. So today we're really going to be focusing on the first quarter of 2026, but we do have some kind of revisiting 2025 data because there was ones that kind of were— the data changed from when I shared it in January until today. So we're going to give you some updates on those. Okay, so next slide, please.

Yeah. So again, just— we're deploying the same strategy that we have been working on since the mayor took office. Our main overarching goal is that we have a safe community for everyone who lives here. Who works here, who visits here, and of course that's both if you're housed or unhoused. We want our community to be safe for everyone.

And our specific objectives under that, as Jessica was just speaking to, we are very focused, and the Mayor, Mayor said at the beginning here, very focused on having fewer people sleeping outside. We are deploying a year-round safety net system, and when I say that, I'm really combining the coordinated shelter and outreach that we're doing, but also the crisis response that we do in terms of when that is meeting the needs of someone who's unhoused. You're gonna see in the presentation that many people that are served by our crisis teams are housed, but in this context, we're talking about those that are unhoused. We wanna make sure that we get crisis care to people who need it when and where they need it. Overall, we're looking to add housing, and for this work, it's really, uh, we're focused on supportive housing, very low-income housing, um, housing we can stand up quickly.

Um, and to do this, we need to always be building our partnerships, um, leveraging our funding because the municipal budget is not growing for this, um, and sharing data back with all of you. Next slide, please. So this is the slide you just saw from Jessica, so I won't go into it further, but just so you know, it's in here. And the version that I sent out a couple days ago that probably got posted didn't have this updated slide, so just so you know, it will be updated in the, in the version that Travis posts next. So we are very happy to see that unsheltered number go down.

I think every time I've come here, I've told you that was the goal, so we're very happy to see that number go down, and as the Mayor said, we, we're not declaring victory, but we are very encouraged to see that going in the right direction. Next slide, please. This is another count that I feel like I show you every time I come here. It's very important for us to remember what is the underlying issue for many people in our community, and that is issues related to health access, healthcare access, so that's why we talk about homelessness and health, because for many people who are unsheltered, If it's just simply that someone is unhoused, it's not that hard for us to solve that problem. But if they are unhoused and also dealing with a serious addiction or a serious mental health issue or the longtime effects of trauma, that is a much more complex picture to solve.

So when we look at the number of opioid-related incidents happening in our community, and this is taking you back to January 2025, and of course May is only a partial month, so you maybe just ignore that last bar there. But basically, we're still seeing between 152 and 207 opioid-related incidents per month. So this is when we combine public Narcan, when AFD administers Narcan, when we, when we go on an overdose. So it's a variety of things when we transport someone for those services. But that's about 5 per day.

So that's a very heavy burden that our community is is bearing right now. We do have some, a lot of work which we'll talk about here about how we're addressing that, but one of the things that the Health Department does is distributes Narcan kits in the community. So just in this first quarter, Health Department distributed 442 of those kits. I have a question or comment from Ms. Spraulley. Oh, Ms. Silver, sorry.

Do you have data that correlates this to unique individuals? I'm gonna punt that to Dr. Pierce. It's not something that we pull directly. It is probably something we could probably look into if it's something you're interested in. Thank you.

Great. So that's kind of the context. That's the work we're working within is both how many people are experiencing homelessness and what are some of the health issues they're dealing with. So how are we addressing that? Let's go to the next slide.

Again, this is information we've been sharing over time, so shouldn't look new to anyone, but the, the graphic on the left shows you our Safety Net Shelter-in-Crisis system. So it's a combination of doing relentless outreach and crisis response, which helps people sometimes get to the safety center, sometimes get home to family and friends. We're trying to expand access and increase access to, to immediate access to treatment. But then sometimes if you're experiencing homelessness, you also might need shelter. So you can see our 300 year-round beds there with our surge beds.

We also coordinate with all of our community providers, both those that we fund and those that we don't fund. And then at the bottom, they're really trying to help people get into transitional and affordable housing. On the right-hand side, that's The Crisis Now framework that the municipality has been collaborating with people or partners across the city as well as the state. So we, we really are deploying across those 4 areas of someone to call, sorry, 3 areas, someone to call, someone to respond, and a place to go. We're still very excited for the opening of crisis stabilization centers later this year, and we do have a monthly work group with all of our municipal partners of just really coordinating all of that care.

So those are our overall approaches.

I have a question for you, Ms. Baldwin-Day. Thank you all for being here. How would you suggest that we respond to reports from community members that 311 goes unanswered sometimes?

Can you define that a little bit? Like nobody answers it ever and they go away, or there's a delay? What's—. No, no, not, not that nobody answers it ever. I'm just that, that there are— I've had multiple constituents, enough to make me go, okay, this isn't just one person who's being a nag, um, report that they call 311 and no one answers the phone.

It just rings and rings. Rings and rings and no one picks up. And I'm wondering how we, how we could respond to constituents who report that. That's a little bit of a challenging question to answer because we test the system. We have, we know people that call in, and we have a lot of people that call in that have no wait time, very little wait time.

And then we have some folks that are calling during high call volume, or there's a significant call that's taking place and all of our operators are on 911. The system's obviously designed to put you through a tree and then when a dispatcher becomes, or excuse me, a call taker becomes available, they answer the phone. So it really depends. I think by and large, the wait time for 311 is not substantial, but I can tell you my answer with just about everything right now, only because it's the world we're living in, is there's some technology that we're looking into right now so that those calls can be addressed very, very quickly. Having an officer respond is still going to be based on staffing, but at least the caller who's calling in can get the call answered and put in queue much more rapidly.

And we are hoping by the end of the year that, that, that system will be in place so we can drastically reduce the issues of frustration when we— even when we do have high call volume times. Thank you.

Okay, so the way this dashboard— and I'm using the term dashboard a little loosely right now because, as you'll see, there's a lot of words in here. We were— we are working with the IT team to get it set up more like our crisis response dashboard, which looks like the slide you're seeing right now. We're not quite there yet, but it's really set up around you know, kind of the sequence of steps that a person might take, you know, from, you know, being unhoused, being in the community, being in crisis to having that resolved. So first question is, are we reaching people in crisis? So you can see in the chart there, that's looking at both our Mobile Intervention Team at the police department, that's in blue, Mobile Crisis Team at the fire department in that red color, and then the Safety Patrol in the orange color.

And you'll see that over time, looking back to January of 2025, we did, you know, the MIT kind of stays pretty steady and sometimes we'll have blips, mostly when we have changes in staffing levels. But we did see an increase in the MCT over time, partly because you'll remember last year we added a second rig and really started doing more outreach with that team. You'll also see the volume of the safety patrol is, is pretty heavy and grew. As we started having them do more voluntary engagement with folks. And then on the right-hand side there, the HOPE team, just in the first quarter, had 581 contacts.

So those are duplicated. All of this data is duplicated. That's one of our long-term goals is to get to where we actually have a client record and more, better data. But just, just know that the same person could have had contact with all 3 of these teams, so 5, 6 of these teams. Clinical Outreach Team does a lot of work.

They had 2,400 contacts just in that first quarter of this, this year. And our Restorative Reentry Service actually had a little bit more than the number that's on here. It's, it's a little over 1,300 contacts in the first quarter. So that is evidence that we are really trying to get out there where people need us and try and answer their needs in the community. Next slide, please.

I have a question for you, for Ms. Silvers.

Do we still have ACEH doing outreach? They do outreach within our— so they're not— sorry, they, they, you'll— I'll tell you where they come in. They're not kind of— I'd like to see if they're doing outreach. I'd like to see this data for them as well. Yes, you will.

Thanks. Okay, next slide, please. Okay, so this is just looking at our mobile crisis team and mobile intervention intervention team, and this one, mobile crisis team in the red, mobile intervention team in the blue, and looking at the number of unique individuals per month. So they may be duplicated across months, but within a month they're unique. So you'll see that the mobile crisis team kind of, again, the number of folks they were serving grew between kind of mid-2025 to now.

So they're now, you know, kind of bopping around between 350 300 to 400 folks a month. And with the MIT staying steadier, kind of between like 120 and 160 folks per month. I did want to just mention that, and we don't have the chart to show you this, but for both of those teams, 60 to 70 people, 70% of the people they're serving are housed. So those teams are both serving people who are unhoused and housed, but mostly people who are housed. Just a comment, and then I'd love to bring you in.

And that is that one of the hidden numbers here potentially is fewer, for instance, fewer emergency trips to the hospital, right? Is that one of the impacts of this is that they're not only housed, but they're staying, they're being treated within wherever they're housed, and it's being taken care of and not having to be transported to an emergency services. Dr. Pierce, do you want to speak to that briefly?

So yeah, that is our goal, is to help people de-escalate, help keep them safely in their homes. And then also another data point we're not able to really look at is how are we keeping people housed by stabilizing them where they're at, getting connected to resources so they don't lose their housing either. Thanks. Ms. Baldwin-Day. Yeah, I think I heard you say that we don't have a way just yet to be able to identify how many of these people are sort of our frequent flyers, if you will.

Is that something that we anticipate being able to understand at some point in the future? Can I answer that when we get further in the slide deck? Okay, great. Ms. Park.

Do you have, do you have a metric on how many of these how many of these contacts involved using Narcan?

Narcan? Yes.

Through the chair. So, so all of our contacts. So there could be obviously incidents in our contacts, both with MIT and MCT, where Narcan could have been used. We are not tracking that as an independent metric for our contacts with our— well, at least MIT isn't— with our teams. It may be captured someplace else, but not within our own response data.

Thank you.

At the Anchorage Fire Department, we do track, um, individuals who are provided Narcan, whether it's before—. If—. Whether it's a public someone had publicly had given Narcan and then we arrive, or when AFD arrives. I don't have that data directly in front of me. I do know it is provided to the city on the dashboard that we provide, but it's not usually through the mobile crisis team that provides the Narcan, but just Anchorage Fire Department in general.

Great. Let's go to the next slide. Okay, so this is looking at the Safety Center. So this is our number of admissions to the Safety Center. And also looking at the frequency of visits.

So you'll see when you look back to January of 2025, in that month we had 579 admissions. And then if you fast forward to January of 2026, we had 1,323. So that really speaks to our goal of, of really using that resource because it's something we're paying for, whether there's 2 people there or whether there's 40 people there. It's also, it's staffed by EMTs, and we have a really good contractor doing that work. So it's overseen by Dr. Pierce and her team at the fire department.

So we've really worked to increase their, their role kind of in our, in our crisis response. When we look at who's using the safety center, 61% of the safety center clients had one visit only, 34% have between 2 and 9 visits, and then 6% had over 10 visits. So when you look for high utilizers in this group, 54 individuals accounted for just over 1,000 visits. So that's an average of 19 visits per individual. So again, you know, when we— and this is very common in almost every type of healthcare— is there's, there's going to be a small group that takes a lot of resources.

That's how it works. But it is part of our job to figure out how do we stabilize and meet those needs. Ms. Brawley. Thanks. Yeah, on that point, do we have any sense of, or is there a way to quantify, kind of avoided ER/hospital stays?

Because I mean, to your point, right, there's folks who cycle through, and this center is presumably less expensive than an ER or a hospital that can cost $1,000 a day. So I'm just wondering if there's any, because I think anecdotally we could say probably that has been the case to some degree, but do you have a sense of that or is there a way to measure it? So we can give you that data. I don't have it in front of me now, but we track how many people we actually take under an emergency detention. And then we can also take that number and bounce it off of who we are able to maintain and kind of give you a number on that.

I think Chad's probably the same. Okay. Okay, let's go to the next slide. So this is looking at the percentage or the, the two groups that are being served at the Safety Center. Some are under a Title 47 detention, so they are involuntarily at the Safety Center, and that's in that darker orange color.

And then one of the things we did last year was to broaden who could be served at the Safety Center and allowed people to come voluntarily. So you'll see that in that high, that that lighter color there. So again, that's part of what's accounting for the increased use of that location.

Okay, next slide. So now we're going into sort of the next bucket of metrics. Are we preventing people from becoming homeless? So, and this is one of the metrics that I mentioned changed from when I shared this with you in January until people today. In 2025, we had, and this is looking at data that comes from the Homelessness Management Information System.

So this is looking at kind of across the board, the different entities that are doing prevention work, one of which is at the Health Department through our Aging and Disability Resource Center. We provide access to the Emergency Solutions Grant, which is a federal fund that helps do prevention for people who are at risk of losing their housing. So in 2025, we had just about 1,350 clients in just over 800 households that we helped prevent from becoming homeless. And then just in this quarter, uh, we've had about half that same number served, so 730 clients in 431 households prevented from homelessness in this quarter. When we look at the Health Department, and we're still continuing to do some rental assistance through some of the funding that we deployed last summer, Over just, just over 200 people were helped to maintain their housing in our first quarter of 2026.

We completed 11 mobile home repairs. This is through our mobile home repair program that is deployed through a contractor, but we completed 11 of those this quarter. That work may have started last year, but they were completed this, this quarter. Also, the mayor alluded to this statistic, which I think is very encouraging, that 73% of people who are housed housed from homelessness 2 years ago are still housed in this quarter and— or sorry, in 2025. And then in this quarter, it's about 71% of the folks that were housed in the same quarter 2 years ago are still housed.

In this— in 2025, we had about 57% of the people that use shelter or transitional housing were using it for the first time. So about 2,400 people. And in this quarter it was about 39%, so 552 people who use shelter or transitional housing were using it for the first time this quarter. I have a question for you, for Ms. Silvers. What do you think is driving those numbers of people using shelter for the first time?

That's a big question. I do think that is what shelter is for. So I think that's a way of thinking about shelter is it's kind of like the emergency department at a hospital. So the point of it is to be there when you need it. And so it's appropriate that, that people would use it for the first time and then not need it again after that.

I mean, if your question is what is driving homelessness in Anchorage, I think there's lack of housing, increased cost of housing. The opioid epidemic. It's a massive one. And just our state went from being filthy rich to not so rich, or at least all our money's in the bank and not being used. So, I mean, those are having real— and this, you know, our economy is shrinking.

Like, it's all the things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, next slide. So now we're moving from prevention to once somebody is experiencing homelessness, are we immediately connecting them with the things that they need?

So in this case, shelter, treatment, and housing. Our HOPE team, as you know, is now coordinating daily huddles, and I think Jessica alluded to this as well when she talked about how our approach is very coordinated now. We have about 40+ regular participants on those 9:00 AM calls. It's, it's a great way for us to deploy different resources most effectively each day. In the first quarter of 2026, the HOPE team was able to place 18 individuals into shelter or housing and made 171 referrals to partners for care or services.

This community outreach, this is where the ACEH number comes in, Ms. Silvers, that you asked about. They are one of our community outreach teams that's counted in this number. 146 Contacts with those community partners helped 26% of those individuals enter shelter or housing. So I think a way to think about that is a quarter of the folks that we're, we're reaching are accepting shelter or housing. So it kind of tells you on average, we have to contact somebody probably 4 times for them to accept that sometimes.

And our Good Neighbor Fund pilot project, that those funds go out both through Restorative Reentry Services and through our HOPE team. We helped 130 people enter shelter or housing this quarter.

So continuing, next slide, continuing on with how we're connecting people with shelter, treatment, or housing. We have launched the CORE team at the fire department, Community Outreach, Referral, and Education team. I'll just briefly go over this and then Dr. Pierce can add because this is her, she's that she oversees. This is a team that's a community paramedic with a mental health clinician. They're available Tuesday to Friday, 8 to 6.

They have some priority populations that they're serving. So people who frequently use EMS, people who are experiencing an opioid use disorder and they're seeking treatment or, and recovery services, and then vulnerable people who need help with basic needs, but really they need help with healthcare access. That's the focus. Maybe I'll hand it over to Dr. Pierce to just walk through the numbers. Absolutely.

So during this time period, we have had 285 total contacts, so that is repeat individuals, just trying to contact them, getting them to the different resources that they might need. From our EMS services, we've had 123 referrals in this time frame. As of today, I think we're up to like 147 referrals from our EMS providers requesting that we help individuals within the community they've come across. We have completed 102 unique cases, whether they have— we've been able to reach out to them, connect with them, and get them connected to resources, or maybe we were unable to locate them at the time, or we contacted them and they got the help that they needed already. Through those different referrals, referrals.

We've created 66 new connections to resources. So this is a resource they have not been connected to before. A lot of times people may have primary care, they just haven't seen in a while, or other resources. So that does not count those new connections. 28 Of those are continuing to receive services from those new connections.

And that's because we followed up with them and made sure they're still connected to those providers. About 30% of our referrals have been unhoused. Housed. Most others are at a high risk of losing housing. And so that's our goal is to help them take care of their healthcare, their mind, their body, so then they can stay where they are and being housed.

For the opioid use disorder, since March 1st is when we launched our sublingual buprenorphine program. So we're providing Suboxone within the community where everyone is at. We've had 8 different buprenorphine administrations. That's 6 different individuals and we've been able to connect all 6 of them to treatment pretty rapidly. 5 Are still actively involved in that treatment and are being successful.

The other one we were able— we lost track of and haven't been able to identify where they are at this time. And 3 of those individuals were unhoused.

And I just want to add to that, it's not on the slide, but there's been a great partnership with the Health Health Department as well for helping facilitate people connecting to treatment. And that— those numbers about opioid use disorder, that's just since March 1st. So that's a shorter time period.

Okay. Next slide. So of course, we also know we need to add capacity for treatment in our community, especially treatment that's easy to access and supportive housing. And that's housing where somebody is going to need significant supports in order for them to maintain their housing. Wanted to just flag, and the link should be live in the version that's online, that we've been working on a community care map.

It was something that Member Voland asked for probably like a year ago. So we, we at that time had emergency shelters, hospitals, supportive housing, and assisted living on there. Just in the last month or so, we've added behavioral health treatment locations as well on that map. So you can You can click through the different layers and see, see where those are located in our community. Short story is they're located all across our community.

We are working on, the Health Department is working on awarding a CDBG property acquisition grant. True North Recovery was the selected applicant and we're now engaged in some community process in order to see where that's going to go. The Health Department also facilitated an RFP for $1.35 million to help bolster and kind of add supportive housing in our community, and those awards will be going to you all in June. We have Willow Commons, that's our 32 micro-unit transitional living and substance use disorder treatment facility. It's open, it's full, it's going good.

And then Alder Place, which is located at the former Golden Lion. That outpatient treatment space is under construction. We just went and visited it last week. Anchorage Recovery Center will eventually be occupying that space as well once it's available. It's going to be really nice and it's opening fall of 2026.

Next slide. Okay, so the next part of our work is, are we cleaning camps when they are present and are we making public spaces safe and welcoming for, for everyone. So this just looks— this is from data from the Parks and Rec Department, and looking back over the past 5 years, you'll see that we did a lot of abatements in 2024 and 2025, and we haven't done any civil abatements in 2026. That's partly because we're addressing camping through the ordinance that was passed last summer in those safety areas, and we haven't had camps growing to the point where we are needing to do a civil abatement at this point. Uh, when we look at the amount of trash that's been removed, uh, last year was a big year, uh, lots and lots and lots of trash removed, and we're working every day on that as well this year, and are— I think we're up to 63 tons for 2026.

I have a question for you, Miss Scout. Thank you. Sorry, I'm going back a slide looking at the treatment and supportive housing map. I wonder if we could also share around— you made a spreadsheet and with the Fairview Community Council listing out where these different services are and tying them to the different neighborhoods in our community. Could we include that attachment as well?

And that's all on the map, just so you know, but yes. Yes, I can give you the table. Yes. Is it also on the map? Okay, so, um, Director— yeah, go ahead.

Um, so what we're going to do next is the map that Jed had shared at the Fairview Community Council. We're going to get that uploaded into it. It is not currently yet, but that will show all of our HUD-funded programs and where they are in the community. Perfect, thank you.

Okay, let's go to the next slide.

Okay, so next question is, are we providing shelter and spaces to connect with resource? So I know we've talked through this a couple times, but just so you're clear, we have 300 year-round beds, 100 at 5656, 100 at Linda's Place, 100 at the Alex. The Alex is non-profit congregate, the other two are congregate. And then between November 2025 and April 2026, we went up to 450 beds with our surge beds. So we added 100 beds at East 56 and we added 50 beds at Linda's Place and those have all now closed.

So we closed them through attrition over the course of April. In these two periods from December 29th, 2025 to January 15th to 26th, and then again from February 27th to March 27th when it was very, very cold, we added 25— oops, I'm sorry— we added 25 night-only beds that were overflow for the Safety Center. So we did not want the Safety Center to get to where we couldn't bring anyone else in, so we added those overflow beds. So that's what we did this year in terms of shelter.

Next slide, please. In terms of the number of people that we have served, this is just quarter 1 of 2026. The total number of unique clients served in emergency shelters— this is not just the municipalities' operated ones, it's all of our emergency shelters. So in our diagram, it's everything in that big blue box. This number is coming from HMIS.

We served 2,704 unique clients in emergency shelter. And for an individual, the median length of stay was between 8 and 50 days. For families, it's between 30 and 41 days. Our shelters were 95% occupied for those who served individuals and 87% occupied for those who serve families. We have done, to get to Member Baldwin-Day's question earlier in the meeting, we've been doing some debrief both with our shelter providers and with our internal partners around what did we learn this last winter from shelter.

Right now, our shelter providers are reporting, like, this was just a couple weekends ago, 85 turnaways. Those are duplicated, so I think you could say if somebody tried our two congregate shelters, maybe 40 turnaways, but that's quite a lot in early May. I think combined with what Jessica shared earlier about how people now know how to get to shelter. I'd say our demand for shelter and our acceptance of it is growing, which I think is a good thing. We don't have a good way of deduplicating those turnaways yet, so just so you know, that's duplicated data.

Our bed turnover has really slowed, so people are staying in their beds because they know that if they leave, they probably won't get that bed back. So we certainly are currently not meeting the demand for shelter. We also have been talking about this since last fall but we really, one of our big issues is that we don't have enough beds in our community for people who need assisted living care and who are paying with General Relief, which is a state program I could tell you more about, bore you to tears with it if you want, but not right now. But we don't have enough of that and so many folks that are qualified for assisted living have General Relief they're still in our shelter. We do have— our team at East 56 has done an incredible job of getting people into assisted living.

We've probably done more of that this winter than maybe ever before, but we just don't have enough of it in town. Okay, going on to the next one. So are we helping people connect with resource when they're in shelter? That table on the left-hand side shows you participation in case management for people at our different shelters. So there's a range.

But in this, in this first quarter of 2026, 66% of people staying at East 56 are engaged with case management. So that's pretty cool. Where do people go from shelter? Remember, it's our emergency department, so it doesn't mean that people come in for the night and then get right into a home often. So that's what you see here, 42% leaving to an unknown location.

24% To another homeless location. And then ones that maybe we would consider more positive exits, 13% to transitional, 12% to permanent housing, 4% to emergency shelter, meaning they went to a different shelter, 5% to some type of institutional care. And then that bottom box there is just telling you that many people who are in our shelters have very significant disabilities that they're dealing with. So 56% have one or more disabling condition, and 25% have more than 3.

Okay, next slide. This is— remember Baldwin Day? Pay attention.

So carrying on with our, our debrief from our season, what went well? So I think everybody agrees having year-round shelter is great. It really stabilizes the shelter. It helps us work on things like when you saw the earlier feedback that people worry about safety of themselves and their belongings, we've worked on that very, just, just, we just keep working on it and we're making progress. We've got lockers, we're doing all sorts of things to really try and improve that.

So year-round shelter just really helps us do that. It's, it's much more stable. Having voluntary admittance to the Safety Center, not just by The rest of us, but also the folks that work at the Safety Center, said that that was a really great thing. It actually reduces the level of intoxication because someone doesn't have to go out and drink again in order to get back in. So that's, that's great.

Our team effort was really good. We moved the curfew earlier, which helped us really use our beds because when it was at 10 PM, by 10 PM it's really hard to then you know, oh, I've got an empty bed, how do I find the person to get into it? So we moved it to 8:00 PM, which we recognize is a little more limiting for people staying in shelter, but it does make it easier for us to make sure every bed is full because if at 8:00 PM we have an empty bed, it's easier to find the person. Yeah, don't go away. Okay.

We also have done a really good job with case management and behavioral healthcare at shelter, helping people get into detox and treatment when they're ready. We've done a massive improvement at that this year, which was great. So some of our challenges, obviously we're still having the coldest year of our lives, and it was a very cold winter. I'm gonna show you on the next slide some really good analysis that the Health Department did related to that. But we just didn't really have enough shelter or kind of night-only beds because there are some individuals in our community who just aren't gonna really do well in, even in, in our low barrier shelter.

And so having that kind of night-only option that's even lower barrier, especially when it's super cold, that's something we, we didn't have enough of. So we were doing stopgaps that weren't great. I think the other things we've basically talked about, hospital discharges, very challenging because also huge demand on our hospitals this winter. And so it's not a place where people get to linger, and that, that's hard. We do want to add Gospel Rescue and Downtown Hope to our coordination, like just our weekly meetings, because we do coordinate with them a lot, but not as robustly as with everybody else.

So this is the punchline on the right-hand side, because you've asked me a couple of times, what would it, what would it cost to meet the demand? So I think we kind of have a number for you, which is we would love to have another 100 beds at East 56, you know, kind of starting tomorrow would be wonderful. We could fill those beds and that would be great. If we had another 50 beds at Linda's Place for November-December, so just carrying on with kind of our surge plan, as well as adding 20 beds at our non-congregate site. We don't even know if we could do that, like if those beds exist over there, but it would be very helpful.

Those beds are great, for people who have kind of like tricky circumstances, like maybe it's a couple that needs to stay together or blah blah blah. So having those for 2 months would be wonderful. And then we would like to do at the end of the year when it's getting cold, some night, night-only shelter. So this is, this is like our dream world here, right? Just that's putting it out there.

And so that would be about $2.45 million for 2026 in addition to what we already have budgeted. Actually, I'm going to pause you just for a second. Just, I think, I think folks to figure this out that we're, we're not going to be able to get to the remaining items on the agenda. So for those that are here to report out, the RRS report is put— is on our website, so you can review that and we'll make sure to have them back at our next meeting. And then the other items we'll push to the next meeting.

I do want to make sure we get through this presentation and then have some time for public comment. So just heads up.

Yes, sorry, Miss Baldwin-Day and then Miss Gallagher. I just have to share, I have to leave in a few minutes for another meeting with constituents. Okay, thanks. Miss Baldwin-Day. Would you say just a bit more about hospital discharges and how that factors into a challenge, just that people aren't staying as long in the hospital, or is there a handoff question?

I mean, what is that? It's a little bit of a grab bag term. I think probably if we were being more specific, it would be folks that go to the emergency department for a variety of reasons and then they can't stay any longer and they don't get admitted. And so that means that they might be coming back out at 3 in the morning. Usually if you're getting discharged from a bed, they try not to do it in the middle of the night, but sometimes we have people going and then not staying for any length of time.

And it was my understanding that there are also hospital beds set out for unhoused people, like in the hallways? I've heard that in the community. No. Well, I mean, I think like an emergency department really can't say no by federal law. So when they are at high volume, yes.

Like, you know, you might be in a bed in the hallway. Okay. So yeah. So that, that is why periods of high demand, they're not necessarily like their threshold for who can they keep, who can they treat. Who can they admit, you know, gets higher.

So I mean, it's probably pretty high anyway because our hospitals are always really tight. So it's just that then when that person said, they say, well, where are you going? And they say East 56th, they might show up there at 3 in the morning and we might have already filled all the beds. Or they might be somebody who is coming out of an inpatient bed and they say, well, I'm going to go to shelter and the hospital, I mean, they're okay, okay, that's where you're going. But they also might have medical needs that we can't easily treat.

So that is just a real— we've worked on it a bunch. We're meeting with the hospitals all the time now, and RRS is deep with them. It's not, it's not for lack of trying, it's just like our capacity is very tight. Miss Raleigh, do you have a question or comment? Yeah, I guess I'll just ask.

This is a bigger topic, but I wanted to bring it up here because it's going to keep coming up. I think I appreciate the picture of kind of what would it cost to fund this whole system. I think as we move into really this, the months before budget season, I think we also need to have a conversation about what it looks like to reduce this system. And I'm not saying that because I personally want that to happen. I'm saying it because this is an area that has grown very significantly in the last 5 years in our budget.

And I know, again, not for lack of need for it, because I think otherwise it does show up in our police budget, it shows up in our fire budget. So it's not that we can just cut this and then it makes the system better. But I think we also need to be saying, what is— what does a meaningful reduction of this look like, and what are the implications? And so I'm very interested in that. And again, not for today, but I think we need to show the public what the flip side of that looks like.

And I think we need to consider that maybe this is the maximum funding that we can do at this time, because this, this is competing with every other priority that we have, which competes with this. And so anyway, so that's an ask for a future meeting, but I just want— I'm going to keep saying it every time that I have an opportunity, is that that we have a finite budget and until something changes, all of these priorities will be crashing into each other to some degree, but we need to make it clear to the public what the implications of those choices are. Thanks. Yeah, I think that's really true. I guess the reason I put this in here is because if you read my email, you would know that people are seeing what it looks like to not have enough.

It's what it looks like right now. So my answer is, yep, we get it. We're doing everything we can. And this is what it looks like. So, and just in terms of timing, if you could try to start to wrap, that would be, that would be great.

And then we want to give a little bit of time. Okay, let's go to the next slide. We don't need to, to get deep here because we could come back to this later, but I just want it to be known that the epidemiologists and the Chief Medical Officer at the Health Department did an analysis looking back from 2023 to 2026 on cold-related injury amongst people experiencing Homelessness. And it's actually, it's very useful, like, because it gives us kind of an estimate, like, on average over that period of time, how many months and weeks we are going to experience temperatures that are at a certain risk level for people. And so I think it actually gives us like a little bit of a basis to say, okay, you know, 3 months of the year we're going to be at level 3.

So we really should try to have like those additional things during that time. Whereas other times of the year that risk is a little bit lower. Next slide. So I just wanted to remind you, this was the, what we called the Mayor's Community Safety Budget last year. So it really kind of looks at this whole strategy and what are the pieces and where's the money coming from.

So, and this is really to Chair Brawley's point that out of general government for this, you know, kind of big picture that we're deploying right now, We have about $9.2 million, and that was a slight reduction from the year before of general government funds. From the alcohol tax, we have $15.1 million, and again, that was also a very slight reduction from the year before. And then we're leveraging about $5.5 million, $5.6 million of other funds. That's mostly state and federal, you know, from other sources, for a total of just shy of $30 million for this whole thing, not just for shelter but for all of this. So about 80% muni money, again not all general fund, only $9.2 million general fund, and about 20% other sources.

Okay, next slide. Okay, how do we make the pie bigger? Who else is helping do this? So the Good Neighbor Fund, we helped deploy that. It's community members, there's a steering committee now, and Our MUNI directors are ex officio on that steering committee.

It's established at the Community Foundation. Since October 1st last year, we've had almost 300 donors. We have 25 people who are repeating donors every month. We've raised almost $180,000, which is amazing. Thank you to everyone who's donated.

Please keep doing it. And if you want to come to a party to sort of relaunch and get get people excited again. June 17th, 5 PM, Cuddy Park. The next part, which we could skip, are our priorities for this year. I think we can move that to the next one.

Okay, just kind of anything you want to finalize, wrap in terms of closing comments.

I just want to say The muni's kind of rocking it. I know it doesn't always feel like it, but the level of coordination and cooperation and like awesomeness is very high. So I just want to say thank you. Very good job. Okay.

Yeah, I want to say thank you as well for all of this work. And this is what we've been asking for. We've been asking for this kind of detailed information to really begin to understand what's going on, what's happening in our community, and whether the things we're doing are beginning to work. Work or not. I know there's a long way to go, there's more, more to do, but I do think it's important that we celebrate the milestones that we've made.

And so I really want to just share my appreciation, all of our appreciations, for all of the work you've been doing and, and, um, and, and for the level of communication and collaboration that we're seeing. It's, it's, it's like I've never seen it before in the city. So thank you for your work. Okay, all right, let's, uh, let's take the last few minutes of our meeting to give an opportunity for the public Oh sure, go ahead please. Oh yes, yes, I told you I was going to give you 2 minutes.

Go, go for 2 minutes to update the body. Um, so at next week's assembly meeting, there will be an item in front of you accepting $70,000 from the state of Alaska, uh, CDBG-CV funds. So in June of last year, we received a little over $2.4 million from the state, same fund. That fund has been utilized with our non-congregate shelter. So we use those funds in 2025 and a bit in 2026.

They have an additional $70,000 that they would like to give us. So we are more than happy to accept their money. And there will be an S version as well on Tuesday, which just strikes out a line, which was just an internal misunderstanding. But these funds will be used at the Alex, and we have to use them by June 16th. And so it is a time-critical item.

That will be before you on Tuesday, and it'll be laid on the table on Wednesday. Yes, the S version will be laid on the table. The other item is already on the agenda, and I believe that number is 347-2026. Yeah, Miss Brawley, just very briefly, is this additive or is it replacing— like, is it a swap out of local money for the same amount? Um, so it is adding— it's swapping out.

Okay, yeah, swapping out alcohol tax funds because we're having to use those right now. Okay, thank you. Thank you all, appreciate your time today. How many people in the audience is planning on testifying? Jamie says there's 3.

Okay, if we could set up a microphone and the timer. Good. All right, Travis is on top of it. Okay, if you'd like to come up, please.

The microphone is on. Who'd like to speak first?

I don't see anybody moving. Is there someone coming up?

Okay, Jamie, would you like to speak first? Jamie?

All right, well, you can say whatever side you want. All right, uh, state your name for the record. You have 3 minutes and you can begin. Short chair and the short table. Uh, Jamie Lopez, East Anchorage, formerly Coalition, formerly homeless.

So, um, basically there's a gentleman behind me, Ricky, who I first met at Cuddy Park. Basically in the fall of 2023, and I fed them for an entire winter along with many others, and I was feeding approximately 150 people there with hot meals at least 2 to 3 times a week. And from there, I want to talk about celebrating milestones. Davis Park is in the process of being abated effectively for the 10th time since last June. Yeah, I don't know what to say about this.

Basically, uh, 80 years ago this would have been considered a war crime. Uh, today you're calling it progress, driving people endlessly around this town, uh, no food, no water, no shelter, no place to go. Um, literally yesterday, uh, I got on a, uh, a bus and I was heading downtown to take food to people that were at a house that just got displaced. And I worked that problem over a week, and in the process, two people jumped on that bus. One of them had gotten into Linda's place for that the other hadn't, who was at Davis.

And literally I came back on a bus and I was standing next to him and he got turned away. And so, you know, you've got data metrics in this and you're always posting bar charts, but very rarely are you getting people and asking them questions, whether it's people with lived experience or just people in general who are not part of this industry. And it's sort of an echo chamber. And I'm watching this endlessly where people explain away the bad things and they paper over them, and they're not really trying to play, make it better. Maybe it's looking better on paper, but for the people outside, it just isn't.

There was a woman named Randi Agony who effectively, she died and passed, and she was one of those people who was driven endlessly over this winter, time and time and time again, and it's a physical and mental toll to continue moving. She would call me, she would ask for food and supplies and space blankets, and it was causing stress on her relationship with her partner. And she, uh, as far as I can tell, she took her own life literally like a week ago. Swedish girl, never, uh, harmed anybody, never stole from anybody. She was 29 years old.

And, uh, somebody I know yesterday, again, dead. And these are not included in the metrics, which you typically have up here because the outdoor death sort of scenario has been manipulated in such a way to where, you know, it makes it look good on paper. And yes, no, it is, it is. And I'm just saying, I see people who lose fingers and toes and some that are just no longer here, but their memory isn't really cataloged in these presentations whatsoever. And so I wish, and I would ask this body, as you push forward this summer, to provide places for people to go.

If you can't afford shelter, provide a lot. Let them stay there, contain the issues, bring them food and supplies, improve their stability and their outcomes and the services that can be provided. But what you're doing right now is inhumane, and I do not respect military tactics being applied to civilians. That is what you're doing. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. Would anybody like— else like to speak at this time?

All right, well, I really don't know what to say except for, uh, homeless people, uh I've been homeless for—. Sir, if you can start to just tell us your name, and then you'll have 3 minutes. Justice. Thank you, thank you for being here. Excuse me?

I said thank you for being here. Oh, you're welcome. Um, how do you get off the street?

You know, somebody should be given a chance to get off the street. When people are cycling and they're not using the resources, it's a waste of time to do that. And these people I see in and out of the places. Why isn't the given a chance somebody that hasn't been there.

Like the housing vouchers or whatever, you know, you can't just get them. They have— you have to go through this long process, and then when you get them If you can't find a place to live, boom, they're just gone. You have to reapply again. So I don't know, they need to find some way to let the people that haven't had a chance to have a chance instead of them got them people blowing it. I don't know.

I'm trying to get off the streets. And there's got to be a way to do it where I can be safe and, you know, not have to worry about nothing, but I haven't been given a chance yet.

I can't make it around, but all these places you go to and you fill out all the paperwork You're told, oh, you're going to be on the list. Well, that doesn't work either. You know, I wish I had something good to say, but the Anchorage Recovery Place you talked about, I graduated from there and they kicked me out, but they promised me a place to go. What's that about? You said it was good for who?

I graduated from there last week. I've been on the street sleeping at bus stop. Why? Where's their promises?

They promised to not put me on the street, but graduated, I'm clean, I'm not dirty, I'm not using drugs, alcohol, call nothing because I went to Acres Recovery. Okay, what good is— what good is a certificate? It ain't gonna give me a place to live. Sir, thank you for being here today. Your time— time is up.

And I'm—. But why, why is it— why is he— why are you saying this is a nice place to go or a nice thing to do, the recovery? Yeah, I think that there's folks here that would like to— this is nothing Would anybody else like to speak as long as we have time today?

All right, seeing no one, thank you all for being here today. This meeting is adjourned.