Housing and Homelessness Committee Meeting - July 16, 2025

Okay, I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Assembly Housing and Homeless Committee. It is Wednesday, July 16th at 11 AM. We will start by calling roll for members that are here so far. On the phone, Mr. Constant, are you here?

Yes, I'm here. Okay, thank you. Catherine Perez-Gurdia.

Here, Silvers. Okay, and then for those on the phone, phone. Um, and we've just been joined by Mr. Johnson. Uh, for those on the phone, if you want to get into the queue, if you could just please text me, that would be great. Um, and today we have really two large items for discussion.

The first is post-abatement review of the Davis Park/Snow Dump abatement process— what happened, what have we learned, and what do we need to do next. So we have a variety of speakers who are speaking to that. And then afterwards, the adjustment Parks from the Anchorage Coalition on Homelessness will be here to review the HIMS current data, talking about data in general and understanding how they collect it and report it, and then a report out on the 2025 Point-in-Time Count report. So with that, I think, um, why don't we have the, the folks who are going to do the presentation on the Davis Park come up already. I know that, um, it's been— been on the phone, but can other members who are going to report out on that come forward?

Yeah, just sit right over here. Uh, and Lieutenant Hughes, he's here as well. Why don't you come up? I think my understanding is, is, uh, Shanna is not going to be here. Uh, Thea, are you on, on the phone?

Yeah, I'm here. Okay, great. Uh, just for the record, Mr. Myers has joined us as well on the phone. All right, uh, uh, if you want to go ahead and share your name for the record and go ahead and start.

We have a number of folks up here that are part of the presentation as well.

Excellent. Okay, thank you so much, Chair. This is Tia Agnew. I'm a special assistant to Mayor LaFrance. Um, our goal today is really to give a full overview of the work that happened, uh, to lead up to the abatement of the encampment that was at Davis Park and across Mountain View Drive at the snow dump site, um, and how it went on the day.

But then we also really want to focus on the perspective of members of the Mountain View community in terms of what their experience was, and also looking ahead, what do we want to how do we want to build from here? So how do we want to revitalize the park, and what are some of the other needs of that neighborhood that we can be focused on as we move forward into, into the next year? So I just want to start with an overview of the effort, and I will also report out on the behalf of the Parks and Rec Department of some of the work that they completed. And then I'd like to hand it over to Lieutenant Duke to share a bit from APD's perspective, and then we can hand it over to Pastor Phil and Pastor Adrian to report from the community point of view and from their own point of view. So first off, I just want to share that when the mayor came into office, which is about a year ago, we knew that the camp that existed at Davis Park and at the Snow Dome was something that had been there for a number of years.

It was a long-time source of concern for the neighborhood. At the same time, I think Mountain View community had taken an approach of really being, you know, wanting to just make sure that we were also taking care of neighbors who were unhoused. But I think over time, the camp had become more dangerous and had bigger impacts on the community. So even when the mayor first came into office, we knew that this is something we were going to have to, to work on and to prepare for. And because of the size, you know, at one point the estimate was there was about 150 people there, it wasn't something that we could just go in and do really quickly.

Like, there needed to be a lot of preparation in order for it to go well. And so it started really with conversations with Mountain View Community Council and Brina Brown, who is no longer at the mayor's office, but really led this coordination of this effort. Both Serena and I and other members of the administration, APD, frequently met with the leadership of the Mountain View Community Council and also at their meetings in order to really hear the perspective of the community. We also knew that we really needed to build capacity in the system, that if we, you know, did this project in the middle of the winter or at some point when we didn't have enough services to offer that it would really cause a big impact. So, you know, over the winter we really were working to coordinate and make sure that we could build resources.

One of the big pieces of that ended up being the federal rental assistance that we were able to start deploying in May. That was $5.5 million, and we were able to focus a lot of that towards people who are either in shelter or who were unsheltered. And what that did is really allowed us to create some more capacity in our shelter system. We also were able to extend some of our non-congregate and warming beds with the approval of the Assembly until June 30th. We then also were able to secure state funding to continue 100 non-congregate beds from July 1st through the end of this year and potentially in the next year depending on our budget.

So once we had those pieces in place, then the real work around coordinating the operation of the abatement began as well as the very intensive outreach. So Thanks to our community partners, to the HOPE team, to the Health Department. There was a lot of outreach that occurred, you know, especially the 30 days leading up to the abatement date. You know, that was what we noticed, you know, in terms of a public notice of abatement. But even prior to that, there was a lot of work going on with those partners as well as community members who were doing a lot of outreach and engagement with people in, in that camp.

We also had a lot of assistance from our behavioral health partners, so True North Recovery, Anchorage Recovery Center, those are two specific ones who were also doing that type of engagement to really, you know, help people access services. And what we saw is that people did start to leave the camp during that period, so by the time we got to the abatement date, we really don't think we had 150 people there, we had fewer than that. There was also a lot of coordination that went on between different entities within the municipality. So we got amazing cooperation from our safety team, from solid waste services who really helped bring some equipment and dumpsters that really helped with trash removal. We got help from tree maintenance and from AWU who also have a lot of heavy equipment and just a lot of expertise in that area.

Of course, Parks and Rec is a really central part of this project. We also had a lot of cooperation from J-Bear because the land, both the park and the snow dump site, really are J-Bear land that we leased from them. So there was a lot of work, again, led by Marina to really bring all those groups together and just talk through the logistics of doing this type of operation. We also had cooperation with the fire department to mitigate fire risk. And I hope I'm not missing anybody important.

There were so many people that came together. On the actual day, of course, I'll let Lieutenant Chief speak to the role of the police department, but we were able to also bring animal control there. We had the safety patrol. They were there giving people rides to either the safety center or to our shelter sites or to Third Avenue Navigation. We had our mobile crisis team there.

We also had a court hope team. We had our contractor, RRS, that's Kathleen McLaughlin and Emily Robinson. And so actually on the day when the evictions began, we were doing like real-time connections for folks. What we were able to do in the time leading up to the eviction and the eviction day we were able to move about 27 people into treatment, shelter, or housing. And then from the period after that, we had another group of folks, about 23 people, also connect with those services.

And when I checked in with Kathleen yesterday to ask, you know, how many folks are still engaged with services, she thought about half. And I know for some of you that might sound like, like we didn't succeed there, but I think the reality is Sometimes it takes many, many, many touch points to help people move from a situation like being in shelter to something more stable. Um, the Parks and Rec Healthy Spaces team did— it did and it has done really exceptional work. Um, as of the report that we got on Monday, about 453 tons of building material, trash, you know, other debris were removed from either the Davis Park area or the snow dump. And they— the Healthy Spaces team put in 4,299 person hours in that.

And that's really— that's year to date. So that's like since the beginning of this year. But a lot of that has been during that abatement period. We also had the assistance of a contractor, A1, A1 Landscaping, I think is the name. They really went above and beyond and did exceptional work in the snow dump site where we really needed some additional equipment and just some more capacity to help with clearing that area.

And we will be now, once that initial clearing has been completed, we will be now moving into a second phase. Where, um, and the municipal manager will be leading this, where we really determine if we can, um, do some additional like contouring and landscaping to make that area usable as a snow dump site. So that's our, that's our next step there. So with that, I'd love to hand it over to Lieutenant Hughes to speak to the experience of the police department during this abatement, and then from there we can go over to Pastor Phil and Pastor Adrian for their perspective. Thank you.

Thanks. Um, just one for the record, um, Ms. Paul-Linde and Mr. Gecker both arrived. Um, and just pausing, is there any questions for Thea at this point? Okay, I, I have one. I want to— I guess I want to get— it sounds like it was a tremendous sort of like coordinated effort, and I wanted to get an understanding of the, um, the, how that coordination happened.

And I'm trying to figure out, you know, if we were to replicate this, um, what were, what were the, generally in terms of the coordinating effort, um, what did that look like, I guess? And, and I'd love to just hear, hear about, you know, if, if we were going to do something like that again, what would you do differently?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] That's a good question, thank you. I guess one thing to point out is that this was the 28th encampment that we've abated since Mayor LaFrance came into office. And so, you know, and the abatement process has been in place for a long time, so, you know, for many years. There's been a collaboration between Parks and Rec, APD, and other departments to, to execute that part of our municipal code. Um, for sure, over the last 9, 10 months, 12 months, um, that was a really strong role that Farina played to really coordinate that interdepartment team.

And then especially as we you know, decided, okay, this is— the abatement of Davis is going to happen, um, this, you know, this early summer, you know, that became a really big part of the work that Karina was doing and I was supporting. Um, but I think it really builds on all of that cooperation that's already in place, and this probably isn't very visible to people outside the municipality. I mean, we have a weekly meeting every week, um, where we you know, look at the reports we're getting from the community. We look at the data that comes from Parks and Rec and from the fire department and the police department. We look at code, you know, from that we prioritize certain locations.

You know, we assess our outreach capacity and make sure that outreach is going out. You know, we, we look at shelter, we try and make sure there's shelter capacity available. Like, for example, at Fresh and Jack, which just happened this week, we were able to hold open shelter beds the day before. We had 10 people that went right into shelter. We had 4 more that were waiting to go, and then we had 3 more that went later that evening.

So, you know, we really try and make sure that coordination happens for every abatement, but I think that Davis and Snowdown, just because of the size and because those units have been there so long, so there was a really, um, just a really high level of structures and debris. I think other people had probably been dumping there as well, so there was a lot of trash to deal with. And of course, a sizable number of people that we wanted to make sure had a lot of engagement prior to. So I think that, I guess, to answer your question, that the coordination that it took was bigger in scale But it's, it's the same kind of coordination that we're doing for every one of our abatements. And we have done some pretty significant ones, you know, leading up to David.

So there was a lot of kind of practice during those, those abatements. Thank you. Just for the record, Mr. Rivera and Mr. Gerker— am I saying that correctly this time? Yeah, I was told I said it wrong. Are here.

And I really appreciate that. I just— I'm wanting to— I think you're right. I think so many of us don't know about the planning and coordination that goes on, and the fact that there's a weekly meeting to discuss abatements and coordination and access to shelter and all of that, and that that's part of the—. And that there is a sort of an intentional plan behind all that. So that's helpful to kind of get So that's kind of the behind-the-scenes look at that.

Any other questions for Thea at this point? I don't see any. Okay, would you like to share your part as well, sir? Sure, through the chair. So, so I would just kind of go back, uh, and kind of just what Thea has mentioned.

So I think a lot of the coordination piece does occur within the meeting, but I think there's a strong correlation between the Anchorage Police Department, Parks and Recs, and the and the special assistant. So Thea and Farina and myself, and we do a lot of the initial coordination out of the Parks and Recs to ensure that the basic plan is, is thought out and that we've kind of checked all the boxes that need to be checked before we go forward. So my job for this was to plan, coordinate, and execute the mission of evading the park on ground. I had 10 officers assigned to that for a 2-week period. 2 Sergeants, myself, 1 MIT team, and the whole team.

Significant presence in the, uh, the English Police Department to get this done in an adequate process. We created an operations plan that we executed the day of on the 17th, and the plan started on the 17th and concluded on the 24th. So a 2-week plan that we had put together. So our concept of operation was very clear. We wanted to ensure that we had a clear presence during the abatement process that was strong enough to ensure that people complied and that we were able to support the ongoing cleaning processes.

We also wanted to ensure that we had a presence for the community after we left the abatement work zone into the evening hours that we would call the swing shift hours, and that's up until about 1 o'clock in the afternoon— 1 o'clock at night. So we created two teams. We had a contact team on the ground, so all my officers were there the first day of the debate on the 17th, but then subsequently days after we split them up into two teams so that we had coverage. And the, the Eaton crew, their job was to kind of be in the community, ensure that any, any high level of traffic going in and out of the neighborhoods was identified, and to ensure that there was a public safety presence for that community so that they felt that we really took into consideration some of the transient movement from that area. I think that went pretty well.

We got really good feedback from various folks within the community to do that. The operations process went smoothly. I understand the fires were shocking for some people. That's actually happened to us many times in the past when we've done some of these operations. AFD was on station and we were able to quickly extinguish those fires with with no loss of life.

We were unable to identify a suspect at the time of the incident. We're still working through some of that case so that we can potentially work on, um, on prosecuting that individual if we can locate him and identify him or her. We did take some lessons learned from that process operationally, I did, that I incorporated into our new abatement process that we're doing. So, um, I use it on Russian Jack more. We incorporate some air assets to give us better situational awareness during the actual baiting process to give us a better— so I can talk more clearly to my units on the ground so that, you know, if that's a safety concern for me, when my units are going around and they don't know what they're getting into, it was a game changer for us and for the fire department.

We worked— we really brought in fire this time and set up kind of an incident command center right there on, on scene, and yesterday went pretty, pretty seamless. So I think overall the operations process, as you have mentioned, is complex, and we put a ton of work into it. The Anchorage Police Department, bringing around via Parks and Recs, we partnered with over 12 agencies for this particular operation to include ASP, JBAIR, and these meetings were 2 months out. We were meeting with Jay Baer 2 months prior to the— or, you know, or weeks prior to the actual maintenance process to ensure that we had all our ducks in a row before we went in there and actually executed the operations model. I think that's important to understand that, like, we're not doing this in a vacuum.

We are going out, we're getting the information, we're ensuring we're doing everything right. And then lastly, you know, our legal team. So our city legal team is top-notch. I've been in this game for a very long time on both the federal and the municipality side, and they are some of the best in the business. And they are there with us advising us.

If we have questions, they are always available to us. They— I can call, um, I can call them 24/7 if I need to, and they are ready to provide me with legal guidance. And that's— for a police officer and someone in this position, it's a big deal. So it was an all-effort, all-hands-on-deck movement, and I think we learned a lot from it. Hopefully as we move forward and start continuing some of these civil abatements, this process, as you have pointed out, becomes even smoother.

I think we're going to see that. Yesterday we were only on station for— we were there until about 4 o'clock. We started at 10 o'clock in the morning and we were able to be concluded with operations at 4 o'clock. That means everybody was off the scene except for 4 of my officers to do a little bit of cleanup and we were able to RSS, which is was there with us, and we were able to hand off one camper, a group of campers that were still there, that were actively working on getting a car ready to go and get into housing. So again, RSS, a bunch of different outreach folks working hand in hand with the police department, hand in hand with the Anchorage Fire Department, hand in hand with the city to make this effort as seamless and, you know, is impactful to the folks that, that need to be acted by itself.

I'll take any questions. Yes, Miss Baldwin. Thank you so much, Lieutenant Hughes. When you say we incorporated air support, I'm assuming you mean drones? Drones, sorry, sounds a little bit more dynamic than it is.

It's just a little thing. The funny thing was is that we had almost had an eagle take one of our drones down. That was an interesting moment. I couldn't figure out what was going on. The drone kept shaking.

I was like, there's a giant bird above it. So it's a very interesting day.

Um, I just have a couple questions for you. Were there any, um, were there any arrests related to the abatement at Davis Farms? Yeah, so we had, um, I was like, oh, I'm gonna— we had one—. Can we try it? We had one individual that was going in and out of the camp.

Site, um, and we were able to identify that individual as having an outstanding felony warrant. And we had some resources on scene to deal with some of the criminality that was— that we thought we may incur during that process. And we were able to take that person in custody quickly, swiftly, with no injuries to anyone involved. So one arrest and felony warrant. No arrests made for trespassing, no arrests made for disorderly conduct, and no arrests made inside the actual aid zone.

Ms. Silvers?

Do you think that through the abatement process that more people are getting into housing and services than would otherwise? Yeah, I think that's—. I do. I think that's a direct reflection of the coordination between the city and our partners in that effort on the HOPE team. My team's always out there and works side by side with Kathleen and Emily from RSS, and they're constantly asking.

The day prior to the abatement, I sent them out there and they did— they checked with every single person in the camp, you know, request to see if they wanted housing. And then I get a bed count every morning before the abatement saying like, these are the beds available for us, these are the different types of shelter situations we have. So that's translated not only our outreach teams for the city, right? So MCT was on scene as well for AFD, but also my CAP officers, because as my CAP officers are having contact with these folks, they can say, hey, right, it's time to go, do you want housing? So we are literally offering services at the moment of letting people know that they have 20 minutes to leave the area.

Yeah, so thank you.

One other question. Um, uh, my— the times I visited that area, there were a significant number of vehicles. Um, can you talk to us about that, that process? Um, and if they're owned by folks that are there, and what is the process of, of removing and what is done with those vehicles? So we, we remove vehicles under, uh, the nuisance ordinance, which is Title 15 of the the municipal code.

And so the process that we, we utilize is we go out and we make an assessment. And so Healthy Spaces will go out and give us head counts and vehicle counts, generally on a weekend basis. And so what we'll do is prior to the event, about 5 days out, we'll go out and we'll take a look and see what's in the area, whether it's in a parking lot or the campus or in the park itself. Because it's like at Davis Park, we had vehicles that were actually drug into the into the forest, right, where we had to actually extract them from that area. But we'll take a look at that and we'll give the account.

So the fourth—. Usually the third day out or the fifth day, depending on what status we're going to take the vehicle under, because there's two things that we can take it under. We can take it under junk or we can take it under abandoned, just based on this situation. And that's the process that we utilize by tagging the vehicle. So we'll go out, we'll tag the vehicles.

Each individual vehicle gets tagged, and if the owner's there, they're notified of the tag. And why the vehicle is being tagged. And then what we do is that sets up a rotation for tow companies to start coming in to start taking those vehicles on the day of abatement. But what we like to do is we also go back—. Let's pause this for a second.

Can we mute the Arizona phone, please? Is that possible?

Thanks. So we'll go in and, uh, right before— so the day before the abatement, we'll go back and do a check A lot of times, a large percentage of those vehicles will leave once we white tag them, letting them know that, hey, you're up for to be, um, to be not impounded. It's basically safe, kept by the city. And those vehicles will leave. Usually it's between 50 and 60% of the vehicles will actually leave.

But those remaining vehicles, they either can't move, they're not licensed, they're not insured, they're junk vehicles or something like that. We took 31 vehicles from Davis Park, and we didn't have to take any vehicles from Russian Jack. This is a significant cost for the city and for the Anchorage Police Department that comes out of our budget, so we try to do everything we can to help people move along. As far as getting people gas, finding them ways— the HOPE team has done things to try to get people tires. I think yesterday Emily from RSS was getting somebody tires for a vehicle.

I think those are packed 24 bottles per case, right? Yeah. I'm sorry, what's your absolute days? 24 Divided by 14,000. Somebody's doing math.

That's younger. I don't want to hear about it. Yeah, I'm kidding. Um, thank you. Um, on notes, before we move move on to the next part of this, which is really what's next.

Um, Kia or Lieutenant, anything else you'd like to add just in terms of the—. I think we want to do this is just really what happened and what we have learned. Any, any last comments about what we— what happened or what we learned from this process? And I, I think part of it is, is that as we're moving forward, we're trying to shed a lot of light on this process of abatement. Um, the Davis Park was certainly a larger example of that.

Um, but the next part I want to go to is kind of what do we do next in, in terms of, of, uh, these spaces. How do we rehabilitate them and how do we ensure that this doesn't happen again? But I just want to make sure. Yes, I would say that one thing that I'd like to look at, and we learned this, was we expected a little bit of resistance from the Russian Czech part. We had intelligence to at least believe that there could be some resistance incidents.

We were pleasantly surprised that didn't occur. There had been some fires that had been set, there was some accelerants involved, but they were quickly extinguished. But overall, there seemed to have been a good presence from the campers themselves putting pressure on other campers to behave, and so that was super encouraging to hear. And so that is something that we're going to want lean into a little bit through outreach to ensure that that continues to occur so that we can keep these things peaceful as we move forward. Great.

So let's move on to you guys, and I think moving—. Oh, got a question. Yes, David. Um, yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just, uh, was curious, did you make groups? You said, uh, that there was an engagement process, you know, I guess it's probably unique, but, um, Is there something— what do you mean by moving the process? That's what's new about the process now as opposed to before. Yeah, so I don't want to— so nothing new about the process, new about how we're doing the work, right? So some of the planning processes that we're employing, I'm always looking to innovate and be more effective and efficient with my resources that I have because they're very, very slim.

So new processes that I'm trying to implement to make the process even better.

Thank you. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So here we have Pastor Adrian and Pastor Phil. Thank you both for being here. And we wanted to just give you an opportunity from a community person perspective to share your thoughts about what happened, what was your experience in your community. Experience, and what have you learned from the experience?

I wrote some notes because I tend to ramble if I don't. Good morning, my name is Phil Cannon. I'm a pastor in Mountain View at a church called Mountain View Hope. I'm the president of the Mountain View Community Council, and yeah, thank you for letting us come and share a little bit. I agreed to come this morning for Farina, when she first invited me, used the phrase, she said, you've been supportive of the administration, but you've also been willing to be critical.

And so I just want to start with a little bit of, like, not criticism of the administration, but more actually just to say I am generally supportive of what happened in Davis Park and at the soda, but on the heels of last night's meeting, it feels hard to be supportive. This morning. So, um, I've been to a lot of public meetings in the last few months, and there's a story that is consistently being told by people who have, um, maybe not even been in Mountain View, certainly don't live in Mountain View, maybe might not even dare step in Mountain View. Um, and it's incredibly frustrating to hear people who only have, I think, a part of the story, people who I want to give the benefit of the doubt to, um, But they take strong positions, I think rooted in a sense of compassion, but then advocate for something that is essentially, "You should have left things the way that they were. If you didn't have a better answer, you should have left them in Mountain View." There's a— I feel like there's a duplicity in that so-called righteous anger.

And I don't think that that's compassion. The conditions in Davis Park and in the Stonup were very, very bad. They were far from safe. They were far from acceptable by any community's standards.

That certainly the health risks involved, the safety, the predatory behavior of some people that had moved in as the size of the camp increased. Certainly the, the sense of safety and security decreased.

I think that with the increase of the camp size, there was a big neighborhood impact too that goes sometimes like on— like, like if it's just about the city versus the unhoused or something, it's not taking into account as much of what's happening in terms of neighborhood And Mountain View has kind of borne the burden of this camp for so many years at this point that it's almost become normal. People don't call in about certain things anymore because it's become accepted. And it affects the community's sense of self in ways that are really, I think, important. Like, if you're walking home or driving home or whatever from wherever you're, you know, walking, open the bus stop, and you're walking past trap house after trap house, or past vandalism on the side of buildings, or you're walking past people doing illegal substances in public spaces, you kind of go, yeah, I live here, but it doesn't instill any sort of sense of like pride or desire to stay, or a desire to like invest in your community. Um, Mountain View is a community that I think bore this burden for for longer than it needed to and longer than it should have.

Um, I think we had an opportunity last fall when, when the administration came to one of our community council meetings and said we are going to abate Davis Park and the center map, like made a commitment. We had an opportunity where we could have asked for that to happen right now, or as quickly or immediately, and we took a different position and said we want you to do that, but we want you to do that slowly and carefully and, and essentially do everything that Thea and Lieutenant Fuchs talked about this morning in terms of planning and coordination and trying to get people help on the front end. I am confident that— I can't say everybody, right, with any sort of certainty, but I'm confident that most everybody was not only offered something but was listened to and worked with and essentially said, "What would it take for us to help?" There was like 45 days of almost daily intentional outreach at Davis Park before the abatement happened. I think that that's really, really important. It's not a part of the story that gets told when it's just like, "How could you dare do this to these people?" And I think it's important that that part of the story gets told.

It was a long overdue and necessary action Yes, some people went to Russian Jack Park, some people went to Muldeen. Very few. If you like— and I think Lieutenant Fuchs can probably confirm this—. Most people are still in Mountain View. The people who didn't take shelter, who didn't take treatment, who didn't take— like, they're still there.

They're—. They—. In fact, what I would say is it's, it's gotten a little bit worse for the neighborhood, but I think it has to get worse in order to get get better. And so we're kind of playing the long game and going like, trust the process. Um, but like right now, people are living in Lions Park, the actual playground now where the kids are supposed to be.

They're living under the pavilions and there's picnic tables. They're hanging out in the other park called— it's called Louise G. Mazzel Park. It's just a very small park a couple blocks away. And, and I've talked to Santa Fe about this. I believe the reason that they're staying where they're staying has everything to to do with the fact that there is a very well-known historic trap house right in between the two parks.

That is, um, that if the supply of what is being distributed at that place is not disrupted, people aren't going to go anywhere anyhow. So I don't believe the narrative that, oh, you raided Davis Park and now they've all come to our part of town. That's just not true, um, because I know these people. I spend a lot of time in this camp. I, I I'm going to Lyons Park, I'm driving people to the hospital, I'm picking up people's prescriptions for them.

I know these people and I serve these people on an almost daily basis, and I care about them deeply. But I'm committed personally to living in this tension between we need to do what's good for the neighborhood and we need to do what's good for these vulnerable people without removing their ability to make a choice. In their own future. One second, I have someone with a question. Yeah, I would also make sure we have time for each person to speak.

So, uh, Mr. Thompson, do you have a question? Do you want to bring it? Yeah, that's not really a question. I just wanted to say thank you to Phil for coming in and providing testimony, because he's not wrong that Mountain View is the scapegoat, is the villain. It's the place that takes all of our kids that we kind of take out of all the rest of town and shove there.

So I just want to say thank you. Thanks. Did anybody else want to share? Okay, thanks. Thanks.

Would you like to share your name for the record? Good morning, I'm Pastor Adrian Reed. Good morning, I'm Pastor Adrian Reed, and our church, Church of God and Saints of Christ, is located at 408 North Hoyt which is approximately 4 blocks from Davis Park and Lions Park. I'm a 49-year resident of this beautiful city, in this beautiful state, and I agree with, uh, Pastor here, Phil, about the Mount View. It has this blight that everyone wants to say about it, but there's community members, and I don't know how many of you have been there or driven through there, but there's a sign coming Mountain View that says, "Welcome to Mountain View, the best little city." We won an award.

Mountain View won an award for being the most diverse city in the country in the '80s. Those families still live there. Okay, I'm going to try not to be too long. I want to thank— I'm not a cheerleader, so I hope you don't think that I'm not a cheerleader for the LaFrance administration, but I'm gonna keep it real. They've done in, um, 367 days versus 1,560 days of the previous administration.

They've done more in these 367 days than the previous two administrations, okay, to help this process. They've been proactive. And one of the turning points is what he said too, is the collaboration. This is what the difference between what other people see and what's news and then what actually happens. They've taken a proactive stance to help this community, not just Mountain View, but the city as a whole with our homeless problem.

A proactive to start all the way from last year and to include and listen to the members that live there. Last week I saw the AO meeting about charging fans, and we actually, for the first time— I'm 40, 49 years here— actually heard from homeless people testifying what this does to them and how they feel and why they're there. So what the, uh, administration has done has been effective, appreciative by the families. We're not just talking about the homeless people and unhoused people. I have 95% of my membership live in Mountain View, uh, 95% of them live two blocks from this park.

I have to come there every day so This is not something that I see on the news and hear from other communities. This is what I live. I live on the South Side, but my church is on— it's in Mountain View. And the effects that it has— I have a son that's 30 years old yesterday, has 5 children. He says, Mom, we can't walk from 2019 up until 2025.

We can't walk the streets because of what's happening in Davis Park and the surrounding areas. But this year, With the active planning of the municipality, my son is able to walk with his twins up and down the street near Davis Park. And the police officers— I wouldn't want to say this because I'm not a fan of the police department, but I have to keep it real— they, they're— the MCT and the MIT and the HOPE has made a difference, has changed the face of what the community feels toward the police department, and I applaud that 110%. And Everything that the administration is doing, I don't agree 100%, but it's something beats nothing and it's active. And the most important thing is they're bringing back humanity into the community.

That's what I appreciate. And the housing solutions— so you have the abatement, but they started a process before and now afterwards. If you can't be a help, don't be a hindrance, okay? And this administration is a help. It might not be perfect, but it's doing something and it's taking the dollars that we're missing from federal government and it's taking the dollars that they have from state funding and municipal funding and putting it together with something that hasn't been done in Anchorage, period.

They're asking for the cooperation and the collaboration of faith-based organizations and nonprofits. We are the face of the people. We help the people. So why not ask us instead of just shoving something down our throat? Why not ask them for some possible solutions?

So they're taking this limited funding and making strategic strides before and after. So when you say that you're just moving from here to there, no, they're moving them strategically and helpfully, and then they're taking the money and the collaboration from these faith-based organizations and moving them. They have strategic planning. She says 10,000 homes in 10 years. I believe that.

As long as she can stand up, I believe that it's going to work. And if it doesn't work, nothing beats a failure but a try. At least she's trying. If you can't help, then don't hurt. And this administration is helping.

I don't agree 100%, but I'm telling you, I live there, I live near the community, and we're helping. And these people— when I say these people, I mean the community members like my son and the unhoused— they're coming together. As far as the trap house You need more policing. They were there, and this is a beautiful thing. I want to illustrate for what he's saying what happened there.

They actually went into the camps ahead of time. He's not just telling you policy, he's telling you real-time happenings. They went into the camps, they talked to the people. There's over 42 nonprofit and faith-based organizations that were there all year long, but they worked with the police. And I didn't think so when I was coming to these meetings before, But the MCT, the MIT, and the whole— they're making a difference in the lives.

Real talk, in the lives. I have a homeless lady at my house right now. And my kids tell me not to do that. But we're here and there, and they're there, taking— giving rides, taking care of medicine. We're a community.

It takes a village. And the France administration is actually subscribing to "It Takes a Village." And for all those people that say nasty things, that you're just pushing these people out and push them into our neighborhood, that's not true. So now they're in my backyard, literally using my backyard at my church and that middle spot. So there's a lot of community members that are still complaining because like he said, this is 100%. They're not moving all over.

They're still in our neighborhoods. They're just hiding in little outposts. So as the city and the police continue to seek those out and to arrest them or whatever they have to do for that kind of part, and the relocation, the services, community, we're getting ready to build transitional housing. She has, and her administration is working with these committees to actually house these people in sustainable homes, not just up from a tent, but sustainable affordable homes. And if you can't help, It don't hurt.

All right, well, thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Um, thank you for your presentations. Really, really appreciate it. Um, I know that, um, Thea wanted to make one more statement before we moved on to our next agenda item.

Thea, do you want to share more?

Do we lose you? You're on mute. Is she on? Dia? She should be unmuted.

Okay, sorry, I unmuted myself. Okay, um, this is Dia Agui-Bandon again. I just wanted to say thank you to Pastor Bill and Pastor Adrian for being here and sharing your perspective. That was really valuable to hear and And thank you so much. I wanted to share a little bit more from Parks and Rec about what's coming up.

So people might be aware that the municipality has ended its relationship with Boys and Girls Club and is now going to be operating, or is currently operating, the Mountain View Center as a recreation center. And so there's a strategic planning process that's happening right now with the community to determine what offerings people would like to see in that recreation center. And so starting, you know, later this summer as that planning process concludes, you'll see that facility really transformed into something that's able to serve a whole community. Specifically at Davis Park, there's some incredible facilities there. There's a really big field that's been used as a rugby field.

I know that there's a cricketing group that loves to use it. There's also a disc golf group that really would love to have a course there. Um, so there's a bond that's available, and again, through that strategic planning process, that will really inform what kind of improvements will take place at Davis Park. There's some really kind of near-term repairs that will be made to the baseball enclosure to make sure that that's usable for everybody. And Lieutenant Hughes mentioned working with Lions, or I guess Pastor Phil mentioned Lions Park.

Just as of this week, like, Lieutenant Hughes and me and the Lions Club president are working together to address what's going on in their park. So I just wanted to bring those things out as things that are coming up and opportunities for us to really continue to work together to revitalize that area and use it for what the community and the whole of Anchorage really wants to see there. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. We're going to move on to the next item on our agenda.

Jessica Marks from the Anchorage Coalition Against Homelessness is going to give us an update on the HMS data, verifying data, and the joint time studies.

Yeah, just for the record, there's been a problem with the live stream and it's not working at this point, but their IT is actively working on it, so apologies. —Can't see us. Cool. Welcome. If you could share your name for the record and you can begin.

Absolutely. Thank you. My name is Jessica Parks. I'm with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, and today I wanted to talk a little bit about data and then very excited to share with you guys some information and the data from the Point-in-Time Count. That happened back in January.

So I will always be open for questions, but want to make sure we get to get through all of this. So if there's any more in-depth questions you want to take to an email or in-person conversation, always know you can do that with me as well. So I'm going to start off by showing you on our website how you get to the data, what we call the data snapshot and the data dashboard. There's a lot of information that's contained in these dashboards. One thing I do want to highlight, this is not ACH data, this is our community's data.

So this data comes to us from what is called participating providers, so providers throughout the community that participate in our Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS. You'll hear me call it that. We have, as a community, we have a contract with the Institute for Community Alliances, and they are our HMIS lead agency. So they're the ones who oversee the database management side of this information. So they receive all of the data that comes into them from different providers and then produce this monthly dashboard that I'm about to show you.

So on our website, up at the top, there's a Uh, dropdown menu for our work, you can go to data management. And then on here you can see all of the different, uh, pieces of data information that are available. Um, we have a data snapshot, you'll see that right there at the top, but I do want to touch on the 3 different types of dashboards, uh, that are out here. Uh, the Build for Zero data, the data snapshot references that, but there's a lot more detailed information in those dashboards. If you want to drill down and look at specific information for subpopulations like transitioning youth, families, veterans, things like that.

The demographics dashboard, this is a statewide dashboard. You can filter it down to just Anchorage, but this looks at demographics information of people who are, have information in our HMIS and are participating in projects within our system. You can look at racial demographics, age demographics, information about disability status, things like that on that dashboard. And then the last one here, uh, should be updated here in the next few days since we now have it, um, our Point-in-Time Count dashboard. And this is also a statewide data dashboard.

You can filter to just Anchorage, and you can look at the point-in-time information by those different subcategories, uh, over time. I believe it goes back to 2021, maybe? Somewhere around there. And then on the HUD website, there's data that takes you all the way back to 2007. So if you wanted to really get into point-in-time data, I can connect you with that.

Going to our data snapshot, up at the top here is a bit of a capture high-level information of homelessness in Anchorage. As of June 30th, 2025, we had 2,935 people actively experiencing homelessness. And you'll see there's an asterisk on that, just to highlight that means literal homelessness, which is defined as being in an emergency shelter. This includes seasonal shelters. So in the wintertime, we have shelters that are just open for that specific period of time.

Transitional housing— so transitional housing, if you don't sign a lease, if you don't have those landlord-tenant protections, that's transitional housing. Transitional housing, according to HUD, is still experiencing homelessness. You have not been permanently housed. Or people who are unsheltered. So across the top there, we break it down into the who.

So we look at that breakdown of those 2,935 2,045 are single adults. When I say single adults, that doesn't exclude people who are in couples. It just means they are not in a household with a minor child. 270 Are unaccompanied youth age 18 to 24. You'll hear that called TAY sometimes, especially if you talk to Covenant House at all.

So when you hear the term TAY, that's what that means. Transition-age youth. And then 620 are people in families, and so this is going to include adults in that household and minor children. Underneath that is probably the most common question we get is, where? Where are people?

Break that down for me. And I wanted to share a lot of this is as good as the information that we have. So this data that is in our system comes from programs that are participating in that. So the unsheltered count is based on some information around reports, what we encounter with our street outreach programs, and what people tell us. Every Monday we hold an outreach team meeting that includes includes people from across the city that go out and do street outreach.

So they don't necessarily receive funding for it, um, but they come and we share information about camps that have been reported, what we've encountered when we've gone into those camps, whether that is a Coalition team, a Covenant House team, or another provider that might be going out there. And so this is Again, an estimate, and I just want to highlight that. Unless we did a point-in-time count every single day, it would be nearly impossible to have an exact count of every single person who is outside on any given day. People couch surf for a bit and then they're back outside. People move around within the community.

People might spend some time outside of the city, come back to the city. So it's all based on those encounters and those conversations. But I think the other important thing to highlight is that other number up there, that our shelter and our transitional housing is nearly 100% utilized every single day. You can go to the Municipal Shelter Occupancy Dashboard and you can see that they track that occupancy day over day. We do see some beds open every day.

You heard a lot of information in the last presentation about how that coordination happens. Lots of conversations back and forth between people who are doing outreach, people who have those shelter beds, sometimes a multiple times per hour update on how many beds are actually available so that the people who are out in the field offering those shelter beds have a real-time count of what's available. The one thing we really don't want to do is tell someone there's a shelter bed for them, then it's not there. So we want to make sure we're giving that accurate information, and when we're making those referrals, they're good referrals.

All right, underneath here, this is actually embedded in our Build for Zero dashboard. So I want to highlight that you can click where it says Return Home and get to see all of those other dashboards that exist. Uh, you can also click right here where it says June of 2025, and you can see that information going back all the way to December 2023 and update this information. But I'm just going to highlight a couple things on here across the top. When we look at people experiencing homelessness, we look at inflow and outflow.

So we always start with How many people were active on the last day of the prior month? How many people came into our system? How many people left our system? And what's our new number at the end of this next month? When we look at inflow, there's 3 different ways people can come into our homeless prevention and response system.

They can be new to our system. This is someone who has not experienced homelessness in the past 2 years, so they are considered new, newly homeless. We have people who return from housing, so people who may have exited in a prior month to a housing destination and now they are returning to homelessness. We want to see that number really low. We want to see all of our inflow numbers really low, but we really want to look at that returns from housing.

And then returns from inactive. Our community has a policy with our data that if someone does not have an interaction with a program that is participating in HMIS. And that could be street outreach, that could be the Third Avenue Navigation Center, that could be our— all of our shelters that exist, that could be a transitional housing or a permanent housing situation. But if they don't have any contact for 90 days, they get exited due to inactivity. It doesn't mean that their information goes away, still in the database.

And if they do come back from being inactive, it picks right back up, and that's where you see that return from inactive number. When we look at the outflow, there's two different ways people leave the Homeless Prevention and Response System. They're housed, so that means they're permanently housed, they are exiting, or they go inactive. So again, that kind of 90-day, um, number there. So when we look at inflow and outflow, in an ideal situation, we're seeing outflow outflow higher than inflow.

And you can see for June, the outflow was pretty significantly higher than inflow. It's been a while since we saw that. I think that is a direct correlation to the ERA funds that were pushed out there. We saw a lot of people housed, and that is amazing. That is great news.

We also saw a lot of people retain their housing. We saw a lot of people who were right there on the edge, had that eviction notice because they sometimes have that court date already scheduled, and we were able to come in— and I say we, the entire community— we were able to come in with those funds that the municipality made available, that you all approved, and prevent some of that, prevent some people from entering homelessness. So that's really great news to be able to share about June. Underneath those numbers, you can see a little bit of breakdown on some demographics. So one thing that we look at is race and ethnicity, and we look at the over or underrepresentation that we see in our system.

And so these graphs here are just a comparison of the breakdown of race and ethnicity of people who are active in our homeless prevention and response system as compared to census data. So you can see that over and underrepresentation that might exist. And then right underneath there, we break down that same, um, that same information, but on the inflow new to system. So that little number of 188, what, what was that breakdown? So that we can see, are we seeing that overrepresentation at the time of entry into the system?

And what does it look like as people interact with our system and interact with those different programs. And then the other box down there is the outflow to housing. This is just a breakdown of what that housing looked like. So you can see for the month of June, over 50% of the people who exited the housing exited to a rental or an ownership situation with a subsidy. So that just means something is helping them pay that rent or pay that security deposit.

Uh, 18% exited to a permanent housing program. So that would be a program like Carlette Manor or a NeighborWorks program where it's also participating in HMIS and provides those supports around it. We had 11% exit to a family or friend destination that was indicated to be permanent. If somebody says, I'm leaving but I'm just going to go couch surf with my friend, I'm not going to be their roommate, it's just a place that's inside, that's not considered a permanent destination. Needs to, you know, be ongoing in that support.

And then 17% exited to a rental or ownership situation without any ongoing subsidy. So that's someone who does not have that additional support going forward. They have sufficient income or resources to maintain that housing on their own. I will pause there before I move to the final time round. I don't see any questions.

Thank you.

So, Point-in-Time Count. A little bit of history on what the Point-in-Time Count is. Uh, the Point-in-Time Count is an unfunded HUD mandate. So HUD the Department of Housing and Urban Development, dictates that every Continuum of Care community, which Anchorage is one of them, perform a Point-in-Time Count once per year. They give you a timeframe, they say do it within this window.

That window is typically the last 10 days of January. Great time in Alaska to do a Point-in-Time Count. And every community performs that count. That count is everyone who is experiencing homelessness in your community. So people who are unsheltered, people who are in shelters, and people who are in transitional housing programs.

This year, that Point-in-Time Count happened on January 27th, uh, 2025. It was done over the course of 3 days. So if you were going out on that very first day, you would be asking people, where did you spend the night last night? Last night. Uh, over the next 2 days, he would be asking people to think back, think back to Monday and where did you spend Monday.

And it takes those 3 days because it does take some time, even for large teams, to cover the entire city. The way we did that this year was with a lot of partners. We divide up by zip code. We start with where the camps have been reported, so we look at that GIS map and say, here's some places places where the public has said that there are encampments to visit. We then overlay that with the experience of street outreach teams where they say, and these places are places where we have either encountered camps recently or we've encountered them in the past.

And then from there we do what I kind of call cleanup, where we come back through and the places where we didn't go, we go through them and make sure that we're capturing everyone. We then take all of those surveys and we deduplicate them. So we make sure that if we ask someone on Tuesday and on Wednesday and they answered us the same, or they answered the survey both days, that we deduplicate them. Or if they stayed in a shelter on the night of the point-in-time count and then we encountered them unsheltered in a future date, that they only get counted where they were that Monday. All right, so this looks at our 2025 Point-in-Time Count numbers and compares them to 2024.

So our unsheltered count, uh, when we held that January 27th, um, came back with 402 people encountered and surveyed on that night. Last year in 2024, that number was 346. So we did see an increase in the people who we counted unsheltered on the point-in-time count night. It was an increase of 16%. Then I broke down the emergency shelter between year-round and seasonal because I did want to highlight where we had shelters that had been open and at that time were intended to be seasonal.

Now included in that seasonal count back in January the, uh, what I call the building B of the Alex Hotel, um, was a seasonal shelter. It has since then turned into a year-round shelter. So next year you will see that number included up in year-round. The other one that I would want to highlight there is that last year 56th Avenue was an emergency shelter at the time when we were doing the point-in-time count. Due to the great work that you all in the administration did, we were able to secure that funding.

And as you all know, that shelter is now a year-round shelter. So when you look at 2024, you have to take some of that into account. Um, across the shelters, we had at the point in time count night 748 people in a year-round shelter and 365 in a seasonal or cold weather shelter and 233 people in a transitional housing program. When we compare the numbers overall, you can see that we had a 2% increase over 2020 for 39 people.

This is a breakdown between the inventory, so this is how many beds or units were available on that night and how many people were counted in those particular units or beds. So you can see that emergency shelter that is year-round. We had an inventory of 869 beds on that night, and we had 748 people in those beds. The seasonal shelter had a capacity of 385, and we had 365, uh, people in those shelters. Uh, transitional housing, 265, with 233 in those, um, beds or units.

Rapid rehousing and, and other permanent housing— I'm going to highlight those and pull them together. You'll see that those are both 100% utilization. That's because those programs, that's how, that's how those operate. They're, they're at capacity. Either the space exists or the space doesn't.

And then permanent supportive housing, we had an inventory of 818 permanent supportive housing beds or units. And at the time of the point-in-time count, we had 771 of those occupied. So overall, we had a utilization rate of 92% on the night of the point-in-time count, and that's, that's really good. That's not 100%, but it is, uh, pretty full. And if you think about how some of these programs work, oftentimes an empty unit or an empty bed is in the process of also being made ready for the next person.

Uh, we have not operated in this community for a very long time without having a waitlist or a pool of people who are interested in the resource. It's just waiting for it to be ready for that person.

One thing we're able to do with our Point-in-Time Count is we add additional questions to the survey.

Holding this count and performing this survey in late January in Alaska, we try to keep it as short as we can. Somebody does not want to stand there and talk to us for 20 minutes when we are doing this survey. Plus, we are trying to get out the entire community. So we added a question this year— should put the question on the slide— but we added a question this year where we asked people If you weren't in a shelter, so we asked people who were outside, why aren't you in a shelter bed? Why are you outside?

You know, what was kind of that, um, that leading decision, uh, for why you, uh, were outside on this particular night? And on the right-hand side, those are going in order starting with the highest to the lowest. So the first one is that 27% number, and then Goes around the circle. So 27% of people responded lack of available beds, or they are on a waitlist already waiting to get into a shelter or transitional housing program. 14% Reported that they had safety concerns for— at shelters.

13% Reported that it was their personal preference to stay outdoors or in another location. 12% Reported a negative past experience in shelters. 9% Reported a lack of transportation to get to that shelter. 7% Reported a need for privacy or personal space. 6% Reported a health or disability-related challenge.

Sometimes that's mobility, sometimes that's the inability to perform their activities of daily daily living. You've heard some of those stories from people before, that that's something that our current shelter system can't accommodate. Um, 5% reported they don't know how to access the shelters. Uh, that was— I'm glad that that number was so small. I'm sad that it existed at all, and I hope that if we were to ask this question again, that number would go down because we have spent a lot of time trying to communicate that to people.

Another 5% had other reasons. Those other reasons vary from their community, they didn't want to go to shelter unless they could go with another person or another group of people. Some people reported instances where they didn't want to abandoned belongings that they couldn't take to shelters. There were a lot of different reasons that kind of grouped into that other. And then 2% reported that the reason they didn't go to shelter was because their pets or animals were not allowed.

We do have one shelter at 56th Avenue that does allow people to bring their pets, so I think that we've seen that number go down some with that resource available to people.

And then last, I just have some key data points. So these are some things that to highlight demographically about the people who were counted on the night of the Point in Time Count. Uh, 311 adults reported having a serious mental illness. There were 67 veteran households counted on that night. 184 People were adult survivors of domestic violence.

We had 638 that met the definition of chronically homeless. So HUD has a definition of someone being chronically homeless, which means they've been homeless for more than 12 months or had more than 4 instances of homelessness in the past 3 years. Uh, 337 of them were over the age of 55, and 169 were between the ages of 18 and 24. And then 92 families with minor children. So that's the family unit, not people in the families.

That's a little bit different from the dashboard where we're reporting the people that are part of that family unit.

Happy to answer any questions, and again, also happy to answer any questions anytime people might have on any of this information. Mr. Chair, um, Thank you, Ms. Parker. Just a couple quick questions about the data that's being presented here.

It seems kind of like we're getting an apples and oranges, uh, look at this based off the dashboard and then based off the point in time. So based off the point in time, there are some 1,700 people engaged in either unsheltered or in shelter services. Based on this dashboard, we're looking at close to 3,000. Has there been that dramatic of an increase, or what I don't understand. I can explain that piece more.

Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, the primary driver of that difference is that inactivity policy. So if somebody— I've used this example before— if somebody is at a shelter and they leave that shelter and they don't tell someone at that shelter where they're going, um, if they are going outside, they might get picked up by a street— picked up is the wrong term— they might be encountered by a street outreach team and then be captured in that. They may go stay with a friend, so we don't really know where they went. And our inactive policy is that we don't drop them from that number until it has been 90 days that we didn't know where they went, and then we move them to inactive and they get dropped out of that number.

So that's the primary driver behind the differences in the number. The Point-in-Time Count is This is a literal, we put eyes on you and counted you on this one night. Okay, so the point-in-time count is really not a good data point for us then? Is that how I'm— It's a difficult data point for us. It's good on the night that it happens.

It is our experience of that one night, but it doesn't truly capture some of that in and out that happens. As people may have been couch surfing that one night, and that doesn't mean that the other 29 days of that month they didn't have some kind of interaction with the homeless prevention response system or that they weren't experiencing homelessness that entire time. It just means on that one night they weren't in a shelter and they weren't outside. So is it, is it fair to say that the time count here is maybe what people see out on the streets more so than what's actually going on behind that. I'm the first.

Yeah, I just want to add, and then I have another question for you, that in the— so in the point in time you have unsheltered being 402, the point in time in here unsheltered 600. So it's a little closer to that in terms of the numbers. Those would be relatively similar if, if there would be an unsheltered— if we the data dashboard would have happened on this month, it would have likely been very close to this. Pretty close, yeah, much closer. I think, um, the other thing with the unsheltered is, again, you know, trying to capture that in and out.

Um, this is a— the point in time is a, a real snapshot of that one night versus what our street outreach teams might be experiencing, which is that there are people who are unsheltered at various times throughout the month and maybe just worked on that one day. Yeah, thank you. I have a question from, um, uh, Miss Bibbit.

Thank you. Sure, I just wanted to clarify, um, member versus question. Were you asking between the— and I'm sorry, I can't see Jessica's, um, presentation, so I'm just looking on the website, but please correct me if I'm I'm quoting the wrong numbers, but in the PIS summary for 2025, we have 2,655 people total. And then when we look at the data snapshot for the month, we see 2,935 people. Were you asking why those two numbers are different?

No, I was looking at the, uh, the 2025 number of unsheltered and sheltered Counting the time and place snap, or point-in-time count, that shows that 1,748. And then comparing that to the dashboard which, uh, we were just presented with, that shows 2,935 people experiencing homelessness. So I was talking about the discrepancy in there, or, you know, difference, maybe not discrepancy. This mean the numbers that are in shelter? No, between— so on the point in time, there's unsheltered people and then people in shelter, which adds up to about 1,700 folks.

And then the dashboard shows almost 3,000 people who are experiencing homelessness, uh, with around 600 of those are actively unsheltered. So I was asking for, you know, kind of a breakdown and understand exactly why those numbers are as different as they are, because 3,000 to 1,700 is a pretty significant difference.

Okay, so on the website, the total number of individuals in the fucking time count is 2,655. Okay, well, it's being presented right now in this moment. Is it the old one? Maybe. I would have to see what it is.

Yeah, well, on the presentation we have Um, on page 3, it lists out unsheltered, emergency shelter, emergency shelter seasonal, transitional housing, and the totals at the bottom of 1748. Yes, that's right. Yeah, I can follow up with—. I was just gonna offer that, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, that number of people actively experiencing Homelessness also includes folks who might not be in a literal shelter or transitional housing program. They might be, they might be doubled up with another family or apartment, or a family that does not actually have permanent housing.

They have found a strategy for keeping themselves out of shelter or a transitional housing program, but they do not have a home, and so they would be considered considered homeless, having had contact with this system in the past, they would still be counted in this like 2,935 number. That's my understanding, but I'm happy to be corrected on that. It's a, a little bit different. It could be— so what it really is, is when someone leaves one of our programs, when they have an exit from one of our programs, if they didn't indicate where they were going. If the exit destination that is reported is unknown, there's an unknown option, they hang out and they may have exited to a destination where they are couch surfing or they have, you know, figured something out.

Maybe they are going to pay for a 5-month hotel, but if they don't have any interactions with the system, it will take 90 days for before we drop them from that number because we just don't know where they went. If that person says as they are walking out of that particular program, I am going to go live with a family member, we will exit them to that destination and then they exit. So does that mean that they are removed from that People Actively Experiencing Homelessness number, or— Yes. Okay, thank you. Again, just a clarification, that is true on the website.

It says It says 2,237. So, um, yeah, if you go to the website, the website automatically shows the entire state of Alaska. So you have to— which, there are two CoCs in Alaska. There's Anchorage and there's the balance of state. If you just look at Anchorage, the numbers match.

Thank you. And I think next is a clarification for Gene.

Any other questions at this point?

Thank you so much for your presentation, that was very helpful. How many people do we have in the audience who would like to testify? I've got one. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.

Oh, sorry. I do have one question. I'm sorry, yes, Mr. Constant, go ahead. Yeah, thanks.

So Jessica, are you there? Yes. Can you give us a report on your shower trailer? I can. I'm really excited.

I— we picked a color for the outside cladding of it. It will be on a barge in the next 2 weeks coming up to Anchorage, and I'm really excited to deploy that. And you will probably see all sorts of fun things that was funded partially by a grant from the municipality, so you will have all of the kudos on that and the displaying of the information. But one really exciting thing is that we were able to get a trailer that does have an accessible shower, so it will have a retractable ramp and roll-in shower, grab bars, all of the things so that we'll be able to accommodate people with mobility challenges out in the field of getting a shower. Thank you.

Thanks for asking that question. Okay, if we can set up a microphone—. Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a question? We'll figure it out. We could set up a microphone and a chair at the end there.

That would be great. You can put it over here at the side, I think.

Okay, you have a yes, come on forward. I did not really say no, no, no, okay, but sorry, it's okay. I'm really ratcheting Chris's department. Sorry about that. No, you're fine.

I have a quick update. Um, next assembly meeting you will be seeing two contracts come to the body. Uh, those contracts are for congregate sheltering. Um, those contracts will start on August 30th and will go until December 31st. They will have an option to extend, like our non-congregate contract.

They'll have two option periods, 2026 and 2027. There will be a total of 200 congregate beds, so we have two locations with the two contracts, um, and so there will be 100 at each of those locations. The Health Department will— is continuing to pay the lease, the utilities, and damages, uh, damage costs at East 56th Avenue. That is the Solway Services that we currently have 200 individuals at, um, which is according to our lease agreement that we have with them. Um, yeah, and then I skipped it out.

Uh, I'm guessing there's lots of questions, uh, and I see we have 5 minutes left in our meeting. Um, a question that I have for, um, the chairs on the phone, um, is it possible for us to schedule a work session to discuss this prior to the meeting?

I'm sorry, which item? Uh, the 2 new contracts for congregant shelter.

What are the dates? Excuse me, what, what are you— when is it supposed to be on the agenda? Uh, we were hoping for the end of July, um, for the seed release.

I, I, it's breaking up. I said, is it the last meeting in July you're looking for? Yes.

Um, I can work with you offline on that. I think that would probably be the most responsible thing to do is to have a work session. So why don't I, I commit to working with the chair on that. It does, it does look like there's time to have a work session on Friday the 25th. But that'll be up to Vice Chair Brawley.

Okay, great. I will, uh, I'll work with you on that. Mr. Rivera. Thanks.

Yeah, there's just one question that has to be answered here, and then we can sort the rest out in the work session. Can you tell us the locations for those two shelters?

Okay. Yes. Um, can I ask for a— is there going to be extended meeting for for an additional 15 minutes in objection to that. Okay, our next 10 minutes.

So the one location is going to be the continuation of East 56th Avenue, which is again our solid waste services, and the other one I believe is at 1911 East Fifth Avenue. Great. Miss—.

Is the capacity at, uh, SWS dropping from 200 to 100?

Uh, so we are trying to scatter site, uh, the location, so we are trying to make those smaller locations throughout the community, which is why we have dropped the capacity from 200 to 100 at that location. Do we have enough capacity to do that? Do we have empty shelter beds, especially seeing as the ordinance that was passed last night? I would really like to see that totally pumped back up. Yeah, so I think, um, we have the 100 beds with the non-congregate concrete.

And I know that in the mayor's plan that we have on health and homelessness, that commitment was for 50 beds of non-concrete. We increased that to 100 year-round, so we have those additional 50 beds there. And then using the current capacity that we have right now, which is 200 concrete beds, just splitting that up into two different locations.

Yes. Well, will we have an opportunity to debrief on the entirety of the plan for the winter, either concurrent with or, well, preferably concurrently with, um, these two compacts coming forward? Yes. And I will confess, I did not know that this was coming today. So I, I, um, will commit to working with the chair and make sure that there's time to fully, fully explore this prior to it being adopted.

So thanks. Thank you very much for being here. Okay, um, I want to make sure we have time for public comments. Um, we have a microphone set up here. As usual, you'll have 3 minutes and we have a timer up.

Share your name for the record and we'll give you the answer.

My name is Ron Leva, owner of Grubsick Auction next to the Brother Francis Shelter, and I'm appearing here for myself. I requested at last meeting that the next homeless meeting I would be able to present My plans for my auction, which is 3 acres, is Bimbo State Park. By the end of the week, I'll have a 20-unit man camp on the property. I have a proposal that's mirroring Habitat for Humanity that will offer jobs, training, and an area for counseling. In addition, uh, council have a building, uh, a brother— not the Brother Francis, I'll talk to the Bishop's ad— and takes a profit of $500,000 a year from Fairview.

Goodwill, Value Village, and Habitat is not doing well, but the other two are booming. And so this is going to be a recycling center that will use recycled materials to build tiny homes. The first 20 are basically— they're in a man camp with a kitchen, with showers. And mentioning the showers, I don't mean to embarrass you, but you took showers, toilets, and lavatories from the tent valued at $374,000 You auctioned them off, not using my services, and netted $22. And now you're ordering a, a short trip.

I mean, a little confusing on economics, getting the best use out of your dollar. So in recycling, whether the mission in Fairbanks does cans, uh, You can sort cans from plastic, chip up the plastic, and they have a portable extrusion machine that pumps out lumber. So you have the building material, and every contractor has surplus. They can donate it, which I can handle in the yard. We can sell it, and this will be a self-sustaining Homeless, tiny homes, training for jobs including bicycle repair, cottage industries.

And I truly invite you to read your emails, try to answer them, and then also come down for a tour and take a look at this because it's the closest fee-simple property next to the Resource Navigation Center, and it's a win-win for the city. So you're all invited down. I request again, as always, to be on the next agenda and I can propose this to the public. Thank you, Chris. Very appreciated.

Okay, okay, I'm not done. You're done. Okay, and we need to probably turn on the volume for the, for the dating mode. It is. Who would like to speak next?

Okay, my name is—. Sure, lots to cover. I'll try to get what I can. So anyways, uh, Chingalupa Sea Sanctuary, formerly Coalition for Army Homeless. So, uh, I have a commemorative, uh, fire extinguisher here, the one that was supposed to put out all the blazes at, uh, Russian Jack yesterday that never got used.

And So I would just like to commemorate this to you, sir, for voting to pass, you know, this thing. Obviously the Reichstag fire was not much of a fire, but you still got it past the finish line, so kudos to you. Uh, you've declared war on all the homeless in town, and not just the homeless. Uh, it's not the people that are tired and destitute right now, it's those that have been previously destitute in the past, the families of those members, as as well. And then any other person that obviously realizes you're committing war on people based on socioeconomic status, it is not a war you could win, uh, even if you want to go after all of these disruptibles that you think that you're going to be able to target as a result of this.

As history has shown throughout decades, if not longer, um, things never go the way that you want, and there will be casualties along along the way. I cannot control people, but what I can say is I have a spirit of history. I read it and I look at it, and this has not happened— well, this has happened before, it will happen again. What you can do is minimize impact by making good solutions and good decisions, and you've made none. People here that voted for this, you should be ashamed of yourselves, and history will not look kindly on you.

So if you want to actually fix the problem, I have ideas on how to work it, but it means having discussions, working towards solutions. Safety camps is part of that. That is how you work the game. But what you passed essentially was meaning that there is no place left to go. You marked all the territory off the map for essentially public land with this proposal.

So I thought schools, playgrounds, licensed childcare facilities. You passed AB 202455 last year, and that essentially said you cannot camp within 100 feet of a school, licensed childcare facility, playground, or paved trail. And they've been using that over the past year to do 20 evictions, to displace people endlessly, where then now they put up prohibited camping signs so they can just push them and push them and push them again. And so essentially, the people that were snowed up in Davis Park are roaming the streets of Mountain View. Uh, Phil Cannon knows this, he's been visiting.

So just to talk about the Polish numbers quickly, so this was data as of May 31st. If you look at this right here, that 556 number are in shelter counted under 30 days. People that touch provider within the system within the past 30 days get counted there. People that are between 30 and 90 days, 734, set to go inactive. They have no idea where they've gone.

They've essentially not touched a provider within 30 to 90 days. 5 To 10% may be self-resolved. The rest do not. They're outside. Adult aid at night, 333, said to go inactive.

They stopped counting. Beyond that, there's shadow population of people far past 90 days. There are also people going into homelessness every single day. There are people— sir, I'm just letting them— there are people getting out of jail. Okay, so this number right here, we just made 1,600+ people criminals, and, uh, that's not going to end the way you think.

And that is for you, sir. You can gift wrap it for whoever. And would anybody else like to say something? Can you share your name for the record and where you're just calling in off your screen, please? Hello, my name is Mike Hondell.

I'm a resident of the North Star Community Council of the New York Valley Loom Park by Chester Creek. Creek. I have, in our neighborhood, been affected by multiple camps over the past 10 years or so. I live within about half a mile of two camps that were evicted this year. Pre-COVID, I attended these meetings.

I was trying to learn as much as I could about the issue. So just— this is just a little history of my perspective, and I just— I wanted to, uh, to second and back up Pastor Mr. Wilson's point about the current demonstration. I am feeling more hopeful now than I have in the past 10 years. I feel like too often over the past 10 years, the discussion was focused on homeless as a single group, and it was, it was a, it was law enforcement versus social services. And I feel we are at a point where we are, this administration is now speaking both, and we are instead of saying we need to do this one thing here versus this one thing over here, we're kind of now pushing— maybe pushing is the right word— we're moving the problem more to the center and working with the fringes.

And I just feel like overall, in the long term, this is a really good solution. Like I said, I'm very hopeful. So thanks for your time. Appreciate your efforts. Thank you for testimony.

Would anybody else like to speak at this time? Is there anybody on the phone you can see? Yes, there's Okay, um, we'll just try to do one at a time. If you're on the phone and you type star— is it star 69? Um, unmute.

Are you there? So if you'd like to speak, star 69, unmute, and you can share your name for the record.

All right, uh, it looks like that's all of our public testimony today. Thank you for being here, everyone. This meeting is adjourned.