HHAND Commission Monthly Meeting July 2025

Is to the agenda.

Second online. Seeing and hearing none, go ahead and approve the agenda. Excellent. Uh, and then we'll move on to the approval of Minutes. Can I get a motion to approve?

Julie motions to approve. Can I get a second? I'll second. All right, uh, take a moment to look over the minutes.

Good job.

Any discussion on the minutes?

Whoever wrote them, right, he did a great job. Thank you so much.

Any changes?

If you're online— no, no changes. No. All right, being in hearing, then we'll go ahead and approve the minutes from our last meeting. Thank you, everybody.

Um, now we move on to action items. Um, number 1, review and potentially approve, or at least discuss a resolution in regard to the municipal safe parking project. So, I drafted this as a starting point for conversation. This isn't necessarily what it needs to be, but someone needs to put pen to paper. So, that's what it is.

So, uh, Sager, thanks so much for taking some time to put some comments on there. What's the— what's the order of business here? Did someone have to say You'll need a motion and second to approve the resolution, and then you'll discuss. And as chair, I can't make that. Yeah, so you'll need someone else to go.

So may I make that motion for us to approve and then discuss? We need a second.

Second. Um, I, I can sort of go— how do commissioners want to do this? I can sort of go through and talk about my receipt, my reasoning behind each whereas. And that I can address some of your comments, Daniel. Um, but, uh, this is just on a quick old paper.

I'm going to sort of read through it and sort of talk about, um, where it came from. Um, so, whereas the Anchorage community has experienced a large number of authorized encampments, including vehicle encampments, in recent years— I think that's evident, we've all seen that— whereas unmanaged encampments often grow large and ultimately become unsafe for the users of these camps, neighborhoods, where they exist, the Anchorage community. And you'd mentioned, had there ever been large unmanaged non-sanctioned camps, um, that were actually being safe? We've never had any sanctioned camps officially. Um, even the ones in the Third Avenue, and then a couple years ago, the one over that one campground during—.

Centennial Campground. Yeah, recollection at that time, the Centennial Campground was not an official homelessness response. Um, what was the language out of the mayor's office at that point? And then the 3rd Avenue encampment was not— like, none of them have been sanctioned. Um, there's been outreach and there's been services provided at some locations just because of the need for people, but none of them have— the municipality has never said you can camp.

So they just kind of like started and grew and then it just Everything else came after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, um, does that address what you were commenting on? Yeah, I was just curious about that. Yeah.

Um, whereas providing safe and well-managed space for people to park and sleep is a piece of providing support to and stability to specific subpopulation of people with concerns for homelessness, and also recognizing that Safe parking is one piece of the puzzle. Shelter, permanent supportive housing, you know, all of the different things, but safe parking is one piece of it, whereas providing clear direction on where people can legally park will reduce unauthorized parking and the associated negative impacts. Tell people where to go, generally they will go there.

Whereas individuals who must sleep in their vehicles still need a place to exist during the day. Where do they exist now? Parking in public spaces, places where you may not be allowed to park. And that sort of speaks to kind of the second B of RESOLVE about asking the municipality to do it 24 hours. You know, if you close it during the day, people don't disappear.

They still need, still need a place to go. Whereas typically designated parking in the lower 48 is something that's offered 24/7 and year-round. You mentioned that you, you, you don't see the relevance there. I'll just say it's been brought up a number of times in conversations around State Park and that it's— as a municipality, we are looking at doing this because this is something that's done and is successful in other locations, um, uh, in, in other places in the lower 48. I, I don't, I don't mind striking that if, if we have— yeah, yeah, no, I see where you're going with it, but it's, it's, you We're holding up other communities saying, look at how well they're doing, or we're adopting something that's being done elsewhere.

But we've also mentioned that where it's being done elsewhere, it's done 24 hours a day. We've said that we don't do it year-round because it's not safe to sleep in your car in the wintertime, which is understandable. But this is my understanding, this is a pilot project that would just be a couple of months. So, um, there was another comment from Daniel that I forgot to include in this packet that I'm just realizing now. You had a question about the budget specifically related to 24 hours.

Um, the comment that the—. Oh, yeah, it was essentially— and we can get to that. Okay. Okay. But yeah, thank you.

Yeah. Um, whereas opening bid name parking each night could incentivize people to line up for a spot, potentially increasing neighborhood impact during the time. When the space is unstaffed. So people need to leave during the day and then come back at a specific time. We've seen this at shelter in the past where if we close during the day, people will come back at a certain time and start getting in line or trying to get— like, just because we open it at, say, 5, people generally start showing up at 3, 3:30, you know, um, and that could contribute to neighborhood impact as people are waiting to get in.

Whereas, as a community, we've learned historic lessons on 3rd Avenue and other locations that 24-hour service create more stability for clients, less negative impact on the neighborhood. That's something, you know, I personally experienced working down on 3rd Ave for a very, very long time. We talked to the Fairview Community Council, you know, about this as well. Providing 24-hour services and a place for people to be definitely reduces the impact. We also recognize that a lot of people that are going to be accessing these services may not work banker's hours.

You know, it's people that are servers or dishwashers or, you know, cleaners, you know, people that might be working overnight. They— their jobs may necessitate them to be there in the evening, overnight, or, you know, something like that. So, They'll need a place to be during the day.

Therefore, be it resolved, the Hand Commission is supportive of safe and well-managed designated parking. So, so, as the commission, we support designated parking as a concept, but further be it resolved that we encourage the municipality to not close designated parking during the day and operate it on a 24-hour basis. That, friends, is what I drafted. Now let's pick it apart.

Very official. We are official commission. I can give some insight on the issue with the concern of people lining the curb. So designated parking is going to be a permanent So if somebody wanted to utilize it, they would turn in essentially an application and all the supporting documents, then they're given the permit, and they have to have that permit visible to go into the space. So we'll just use our parking lot, for example.

If we were going to use the AHE parking lot as a designated space, you would have to have a permit to get into that space. So if somebody didn't have a permit, they wouldn't be able to come in and park there. So somebody wouldn't necessarily lose a spot just because they left during the day. But if I have— thank you, but if I work nights, right, or I don't usually have a place to go during the day and this parking lot here is designated parking, I'm probably just going to park down on the park strip and wait for y'all, potentially, you know, or— and I see that causing some challenges in the neighborhood depending on where it is. Maybe I will be in the target part, uh, you know, don't really know.

They have location set up for where they were talking about using for the parking lots. I know that there was a zoning thing they had like some that they had kind of—. There are specific zones that we can look at, but we don't have a specific location set yet. The RFP was written so it could be just a vendor, a vendor and a location, just a location. So there's a couple of spots that they've looked at as possibilities, but nothing's been decided yet.

Is it— um, this is Holly. I want to clarify, we looked at all municipal right-of-ways as well as PLI and D3 locations. So I, I just want to be really clear that we didn't just have like a, a very exclusive list. We looked at locations all over April, and one of the benefits about our proposal is that a bidder has the ability to bring forward a location as well. Our goal was to make sure that if we had proposals that did not include a location, that we were ready to pivot with already having reviewed what was available across the state.

Farina, you're a little bit garbled there. Did you guys—. What was the third? Sorry, Farina, what was the third category? You said right-of-way, PLI, B3.

B3. B3. Yeah, but no specific locations been identified. But I would imagine, and you probably can't confirm this, but responsive bidders are probably, or at least have the option to say, I have a location. People can bid on just a location.

You bid on a location, services, or a combination of the two.

The bid closed today. Originally, we got 3 questions submitted in writing, so we had to respond and we had to post that. And so supposed to be. We don't get that far to the library.

I would also add as open, whereas I forgot to— because Jessica, you had a point about, um, vehicle operations during the day for people that are already struggling financially. Yeah, so I'm not sure if it's a whereas or if it's part of the resolution itself of not close during the day, operate designated parking. So 2 kind of pieces I wanted to toss in here. The first being that there's a lot of financial barriers to having a vehicle that is insured and registered. And while there could be financial resources to help someone get that, uh, that's really difficult if they're not in the same place every night.

And most people who are car camping right now are moving from location to location because they don't want to get a— take another ticket or whatever. Um, so one encouragement I would have would— was that there would be like a grace period where someone who qualified in all ways except for having insurance and registration, that maybe there could be something in place where they had, you know, 5 business days to get that. And then if there were financial resources, organizations, individuals who wanted to be able to say, I'm able to give funding to help people with that shallow subsidy, flexible funds— Lutheran Social Services does a lot of that— it would give them that opportunity to connect and get that. And become compliant. I think about how the, a lot of the shelters, and this might resonate with Dave, so shelters that accept pregnant women, most shelters that accept pregnant women will accept you and give you a period of time to show like the proof of the pregnancy or how far along you are rather than say you have to go while you are unsheltered or while you're in this unstable place go navigate all of these places to get that paperwork.

You know, like they let them get that sense of stability to be able to make the doctor's appointment, to get the cab voucher to go do it. So similar to that, I think that would be an encouragement I would have. And then just in support of the 24-hour basis, just today, this morning, I had 2 people come to my office and I did a coordinated entry assessment with them. Both of them are sleeping in vehicles right now, moving from place to place. I brought this up I said, if this were open, would this be a resource you'd be interested in?

Both of them work nights, and as soon as I told them it was, it would be closing, you know, it was only open from 6:00 PM to 8:00 AM, they said, oh, well, that wouldn't work for me. They work a shift that is midnight to 8:00 AM. So, just throwing that out there, there are a lot of people who work at nights, and so I don't know if there's a way to have it be maybe shift-based. That there's a certain number during the day, certain number at night. I would really encourage 24-hour operations that people can stay at, but if not, if there's a way to have day and night locations, I think that would be something that would fill the need a little bit better.

So that was interesting. I haven't talked to anyone who was car camping in— well, I've been gone for 2 weeks, but in a while, and had 2 people today, and both of them work night shift. I think this is great. I appreciate your work on this. Where is the one— I think someone else brought it up— whereas people line up, my understanding is you need to get a permit and only permitted individuals can park in those spaces.

And to your point, Jessica, what are those people that, you know, can't get a permit or don't have— you know, I realized talking to Farina that I don't know if it's a funding challenge. We're doing this pilot. I support the pilot. If funding allows, it would be great for this to be 24/7. And if there are places that don't violate municipal laws, it would be great if people didn't have insurance or registration, if they would be given a grace period to get that, and other places could be designated for individuals that just need a little bit more support.

But overall, I think this is fantastic. That's a liability thing, meeting everything. Yeah, we, we can't have— we can't basically condone them not following the code. And that's regardless if it's a pilot or— yeah, there's—. So it's kind of—.

Yeah. And I will, I will say this, like, we go on record with a resolution surrounding this today. It may or may not have an effect on the current designated parking plan that's going out right now. However, it is looked at as a pilot, and there is a hope to potentially do it next summer. So, even if we don't get these recommendations through in what's going to happen, open up this, you know, August or July, or whenever it's going to happen.

It would be good for us to be on record. So when the municipality looks at this again for next summer, some of these recommendations are on record, and then maybe they would have a little bit of time to work out some of those legal tightrope stuff, you know, with that. Or the next RFP is a nighttime and the daytime one. So, so, so, I would just say to the commissioner, like, even if this doesn't have an effect on what's happening right now, there's— it's really future, future focus. And I think a question about that liability I might have then.

So, but if the site were not a municipal site, so let's say a church came forward and bid on this proposal and said, we want to use our parking lot to do this. Would that still come into play? Because now we're talking about private property that I think so. Farina, do you know? I, I want to say yes because it's somebody who be contracting with municipality, but I'm going to have to defer to Farina because it's a municipally sponsored, um, because they take any muni funds.

Hold on, Farina, we can't hear you. I'm here. We can't hear you. Let's try that. Is that any better?

Can you try talking again?

Was that a yes or no? That is better. Okay, so Lila is correct because it's a municipally sponsored contract. We would have to adhere to all of those requirements, even if it were on the church. And I appreciate everyone's feedback on this, and David is spot on with Even if there are elements that you're putting forward in the current resolution that we can't implement now, because we are at the point where we've completed the RFP.

This is a pilot, so it gives us that ability to say, this is what the community would like to see. This is the feedback from our commissioners. So, very grateful for the dialogue. They did just want to close the loop. Even if it's on private property, they would still have to meet those requirements.

And I'm pulling up the original AO right now because I believe some of that is also written in, and I'll just pop it into the chat.

Thank you.

I was in a niche and also with the 24/7 and the idea we had to put out a lot and camp the earth, and then the dad would work at night, but the kids and the mom stayed, and it was problematic because it We weren't set up to do that, but there is also families that buy a week with that to meet for shopping. And just a learning thing with, in our backfiring partners, we had a group, they split paid for us going to get their insurance. Turns out they bought a stolen car, so then that stolen car got stolen back, which was stolen back by someone who— it's a long story. I won't get all into it. Yes.

So it was not a good situation. And I learned that we couldn't have a basement unit because that's what we were working on with case management to get the next steps in that little window. Interesting things. Right, even with not a manager. So yes, so from a procedural standpoint, Jed, if, if, if we wanted to make amendments, we have a motion on the floor to approve, and we could make a— maybe I do subsidiary, subsidiary, subsidiary, or friendly amendment.

How would we say, I want to have this whereas, I want to take this whereas out, I want to— well, so I think it depends on, it depends Depends on who makes that. So, like, the original mover can amend their original, like, move to amend their original motion. If the second agrees, then that becomes the new motion. If someone else wants to amend it, they can just make a new subsidiary motion. So now that we're in discussion, someone could say, I make a motion to add X, Y, and Z.

We vote on that, we go back to the original motion and vote on that as amended, right? But if the original mover just wants to amend something that could change the motion, okay, then that's kind of—. Yeah, so it's really up to the status, but we would have to feed that information to the original. Yeah, so that— and, you know, since you're voting to approve this specific resolution, any amendments you'd make would have to be very specific about what the wording is that you're changing, whether that's the original mover or someone else. You just have to be very clear about exactly what the literal language is changing.

So I'd ask, does anyone want to change words or add words or take words out? I like the thought about the grace period.

But—.

Yeah, I would like to see the grace period. I'm the language I would propose if someone were to make that would be to just add a comma at the end of 24-hour basis and say, and allow for a reasonable grace period to come into compliance for a permit. And then that way, whatever the permit regulations were, You've left it, left it vague enough that it's compliance with whatever the permit requirements are. And reasonable grace period, I think, makes it to where it's not dictating a certain time or date, but allows full grace period to come into compliance. Okay.

With the permit work, permit compliance. Let's see how the other— Or no, it wasn't in the list. It's in her note here.

Okay, so as the mover, that amends the original motion. I think Julie was the second, so do you approve that? Okay, so then now that's the wording. The AO itself doesn't explicitly require valid insurance, driver's license, or vehicle registration. These requirements were operationalized in the permit part.

Oh, so it could be open. Sorry, can I catch the end of that wording again specifically? So it's at the end of a 24-hour basis, allow for a reasonable grace period to come into compliance with the permit. For permitting or with the permit?

That accurate? Yeah, that's what I have written out, to come into compliance with permit.

Yeah. Any other language?

Based on Farina's comments, I mean, do we want another word as the process as far as that's covered, I guess. I think that's covered in that. Yeah.

I guess my only other question is, with this permitting process, do we think there's going to be people lining up that don't have a permit that is wanting a parking spot? Or—. I think human nature dictates that. Yeah. Yeah, I think even if I do have a permit waiting for it to open, yeah, you know, I got off of work at 1.

Okay, where am I going to do go between 1 PM and 6? I'm gonna park somewhere close because I don't want to use a lot of gas. And not to bring up any PTSD, but we've seen that when we had shelters that weren't 24 hours, that there would often be people who just hung out there the entire time it was closed. If they, they walked 1 block away and sat there and came back when it opened. Okay, perfect.

So I think we would see that with vehicles as well, especially if you have limited gas. You would drive a block away. Yeah, surrounding neighborhood really doesn't like that. People go out of the neighborhood and Any other thoughts, changes, or whatever you call—. Call a vote?

Yeah, we do not need further discussion. We can just call for a vote.

Seeing and hearing none, I would say— I would ask for—. I'm asking unanimous consent. Yeah, I ask for unanimous consent to approve, um, and Resolution 2025-01 as amended.

Any opposition?

Done. Great job, guys. We did some business. We have something to put for Amy to report on next year. We just framed the old one with all our notes all over it.

Um, Frank, you have all the language and everything. You'll route it for DocuSign. Um, you have the PDF version. If you send me the Word version, I can add that and then route it for DocuSign. I have a Word version.

Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I will do that.

I guess one question I didn't ask, and maybe I missed it in the turning off of my phone and walking in, uh, who are we addressing this to? Is this to the, like, administration? To the assembly? To assembly? Okay.

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're an advisory, um, commission to both the assembly and administration, so I think a resolution like this would be delivered to both of them. Yeah, excellent. Um, hello, everything's better now. Oh, changed up a little bit on you. Sorry about that.

Uh, welcome, thank you for being here. Wherever you want.

Um, okay, moving on to the next item for viewing approved resolution regarding the municipal 10,000 homes in 10 years. Initiative, do we have a, a resolution to look at? We still waiting on it. I haven't seen it yet. We haven't seen anything yet.

Yeah, I put that on there, um, just in case you had it, and I tried to get a hold of you, or I had communicated that with you, but if you don't have it ready, yeah, put that. Okay, next month.

Okay, so yeah, I think someone will need to move to postpone that for next week. To table this till the next agenda. I second. Any opposition?

Seeing, hearing none, we will punt it to next. Um, after—. For this, done a great job, everybody. Um, informational items, ongoing business update from the special assist the mayor for health and homelessness, is Farina Brown. Well, hello.

All right, I just want to say thank you for passing the resolution for designated parking. I'm super jazzed. Your first resolution was my project, um, and so thank you. All right, so now back to our business. So first, I want to let everyone know that the RFP for designated parking closed today at noon.

We are now waiting for purchasing to review all of the proposals that came in. Fingers crossed that I'm making a true statement when I say all of the proposals, that there were actually proposals that were submitted and are responsive. And so I'm pretty excited about that. I don't anticipate with the holiday actually having that information back until Monday. So I will keep everyone updated on where we are, but the proposals were due today at June, the RFP for construction of the micro unit was open, and we had our pre-proposal conference on June 27th at 10:00 AM.

The proposals are due July 21st by 4:00 PM. So we are really trying to make sure that we are providing as many different outlets and touchpoints for folks that are experiencing homelessness through just a series of different tools. One being designated parking. I think you've heard us talk ad nauseam about designated parking as well as the micro units. So it's just really, it feels good to be able to talk about and see these things moving forward.

Really looking forward to your feedback once we get to a point where we can talk a little bit more in depth about our micro units. We are currently winding down our confidential negotiations for our scatter site. Congregate shelter. I will have more of an update on that next month, but we really are again, just trying to adhere to all of the information that's been available throughout our strategy document. I would love to just point out that yesterday made 1 year for the LaFrance administration.

So being able to be in front of you and talk about the items that have that were born in that August-October period when we developed the strategy document to one year later where we have actually implemented and are moving forward with what we committed to is a real moment of pride and an opportunity to have feedback and engagement from many of you in the multiple hats that you wear from this role as Green Advisors. To what we do, as well as with your professional hats. For many of you that have been service providers that are operating services, and fingers crossed, gentle nudge, many of you that are interested in being service providers for these upcoming services, just feels really good. As of June 30th, one didn't feel so great, but is this company of being budget constrained? We did spin down our warming operation operated by Penny.

So we did lose capacity for 45 individuals to have refuge. I will say warming has really presented itself as something that is important to have in our overall continuum. We found that we had a pretty interesting group of folks that utilized warming that weren't interested in shelter. Warming also provided kind of that first step for some folks to have engagement into the shelter system and other touchpoints with providers. I don't know what our winter season, this upcoming season looks like because in our congregate scatter site model, we really have emphasized and we have a desire to have surge capacity.

So warming is TBD depending on how things move forward with our congregate negotiations. We currently have a total of 300 shelter beds available throughout the remainder of the summer. I highlight that because it is the first time that we've had this number of beds available in what we consider kind of our shoulder season outside of the emergency cold weather period. We continue to maintain 200 shelter beds at East 56th Avenue. And we have 100 shelter beds at the Alex operated by MASH.

Feels much more comfortable to genuinely have a place to direct individuals to through our muni-operated system as well as our partner shelter providers from Brother Francis to Gospel Rescue Mission. I share that with this group that as we move into the summer, there's been lots of conversation and I know this is later on the agenda that we'll talk about about, but the AOs around Lady Bull Camping.

I want everyone to keep in the forefront of your mind that this is one of the few times that the municipality has made this many beds available. And so while we know that more is needed, I don't want us to lose sight of that there are access points for individuals. I believe many of you were likely tracking that we did update at Davis Park and the Snow Dump. If you watched online or read any of the newspapers, there was definitely a bit of dramatic flair with some of the fires that were set as we were abating. Despite what the news coverage may have looked like, I think many of you are fully aware that when you go into an abatement situation, most people are sitting ready, packed, ready to go, high-fiving you when you come in.

That's just typically not the way an abatement goes. It's critically important that we have outreach in advance of an abatement. With Davis and the snow dump, we had just over about 30 days of intensive outreach connecting people to services. On the day of abatement, we had 25 individuals access shelter, which is really good. I know I'm preaching to the choir.

Typically, things don't get real for some folks until you're right there, and we saw that with having 25 individuals accept shelter on the day of abatement. For the Mountain View community, it meant a lot for the administration to listen, hear, and take action on what we heard loud and clear was a community that felt overlooked. And the fact that we were abating throughout the rest of Anchorage, we were tacitly directing people to Mountain View. Since that time, we continue to have outreach engaging. APD continues to have a patrol directing people to shelter.

It was not, um, for much of our community what they would like to see, as many people were very comfortable with having the largest and most longstanding and entrenched encampments in the Mountain View area. But the commitment was made that none of our communities should host their unhoused neighbors for that extended period of time. When an encampment is allowed to exist for so long, it becomes incredibly dangerous. The people that are in the encampments tend to be victimized quite often as well. Will reflect for the overall community.

I know that there are many mixed feelings around abatement. I share this because as a part of the administration's plan, it has always been shelter support, enforcement, and abatement. We are not deviating from that model. That will be ongoing. I believe as you all have conversation about the AO It's understanding that our current abatement protocol and process follows municipal code, where we're able to provide a notice period before individuals are removed from the area.

We most often use a 10-day notice of abatement. We have the ability to use 72 hours or 24 hours, which we rarely ever enforce those unless there are exigent circumstances. With the upcoming AO that you discussed, this would make camping illegal and the ability for the police to move people along with immediate trespass. And just understanding that there's a little bit— there's quite a bit of a difference in the runway that the abatement process allows individuals and outreach and other partners to engage versus what happens in that real-time You must move along as you are considering and thinking about the impacts of winter weather.

As we move through summer, you will see a second request for proposal that we'll be looking for an operator. Once we have a contractor set for our micro units, we'll continue to partner with the Health Department as you get a quick update from Jed on the action plan. That is really been a great partnership between the administration and the health department and aligning priorities to make sure that we're really able to bring people with all of our funding and supporting homelessness, housing, and all of our support services through a variety of different pathways in ways that we're able to create some synergy between different funding schemes. As you all, some of you with some of your existing contracts know that you might have pots of money from two different sources. The ability to have these conversations, to have a partnership, and to have a guiding document in how we move forward ensures that we have that continuum of care, that we have partners that are strengthening the system, and that we are able to speak to and utilize funding in a way that's coordinated.

I will pause there. Given that Chad has a lot of information, I hope that was helpful. I'm available for questions. I have a question.

Farina, this is Shané. I have a question. Do you have any idea how many persons were evaded? How many persons were living in Davis? That's a great question.

The number of individuals living in Davis is incredibly hard to ascertain because it is such a fluid nature of the foot traffic versus the actual number of individuals that live in Davis Park. I can tell you what I saw on the day of the vehicle. On the Davis Park side of the house, I counted 30 individuals. That was just Marina in real time, the number of individuals that I could see that were packing up, those that were there that identified they live there and requesting actual outreach. The number of individuals on the Snowdell side, again, hard to say because we have a lot of people that did move along, and so it's hard to have a count.

We've consistently had outreach going out to support the folks, um, in the top of the bands for outreach for probably the last 6 months, if not a little bit longer. And I can follow back up with you, Shinae, as I reach out to our coalition partners to see if they have a hard count. But I know that this is something that We bounced back and forth on— it was based on just the nature of the individuals that would be in Davis Park, but are not necessarily living in Davis Park. And the snow dump. So please know if I say Davis Park, I mean Davis Park as well as the snow dump.

Thank you.

Those 300 beds, how many of those are open or are those all full? Can you please say that again? The 300 beds that you mentioned in the beginning, there was like 100— how many of those are open or are they all spoken for? So on any given day Excuse me, sir. So of the 300 beds, we normally maintain 100% capacity.

That tends to be a misnomer when you go online and you look at our shelter dashboard, it always shows 100%.

But we typically see anywhere from 4 to 6 beds a day between our congregate and non-congregate shelter system that turns over. We've had days where it's been upwards of 13 beds available at our congregate site. And maybe 6 beds at each of our shelter sites. It just depends on what the turnover for the day looks like. But at bed count, which is kind of hard to, to say, which is typically 11 o'clock, we normally have every single bed full.

I can tell you that as of 1 PM, we had 8 out of those 300 available. Okay. Yes, they probably has a more recent number than 1 PM. I could look that up, but I couldn't tell you. But I am sending out the shelter occupancy dashboard to commissioners.

Yeah, and that dashboard is as of 10 PM every night, so it updates. There's a robo call that goes out in each shelter. Types in how many beds they have filled. So that's the opposite side. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, we just have for coordinating outreach, we have a gigantic text chain that I promise you want nothing, no part of. But we get regular updates of how many beds are open at each shelter. So my last update was at 1 PM and it was 8. But yeah, Farina's right, we typically see I would say between 5 and 15 across the two sites on any given day, and remember that the congregate site is open to walk-ups, so it changes often as people come in.

Sure.

Other questions?

None? Great. Thank you, Farina. Um, thorough and informative as always.

Um, welcome.

Let's see, we got one person in the room and then I believe I saw two people online. I believe an AK and a phone number and just want to make sure we have space for public comment at the end. So are you here for public comment? Yeah. Yeah, excellent.

Alan Kemblin, I'm assuming. Of course it's Alan. Hi, Alan. Are you here for public comment?

Hello, I'm here to listen to all the wisdom that's been shared. That's very kind. Um, okay, just want to make sure we have space for you. So no, no comment from— and there was one more comment on one. Um, okay, so moving on to JED Community Safety and Development 2025 Action Plan.

Okay, well, thanks everybody. Yeah, I just asked to be on the agenda for today because we do have our 2025 action plan in progress. It's going for the assembly on July 15th, and typically we do bring this to the HANC Commission at some point in the process of getting it approved so that we get whatever feedback you guys have. So I'm Jed Rolick, Maine Systems Program Manager, Anchorage Health Department. I think most of you know me.

And I just wanna give a brief overview of kind of how the planning process works for our HUD funding, where the action plan fits into that, and kind of where we are in that process right now. We knew 3 documents that we're required to do as a condition of getting our entitlement funding from HUD. That's the 5-year consolidated plan, which is sort of our big picture strategic plan of how we want to use our funding. Then every year we do an annual action plan that lays out the specific projects that we intend to fund with that funding. And then each year we do a consolidated annual performance and evaluation report, or CAPER, which reports back to HUD on how we've done with the funding that we got each year toward addressing the goals.

Identified. We have 3 main programs that are covered by our Con Plan and this planning process, and then one additional that we sometimes have. Um, it's Community Development Block Grant, CDBG. This is our largest and best known program, um, funds a wide variety of, uh, projects and programs throughout the city. We have our Home Investment Partnerships Program.

This is capitalized as if it's an acronym, but it's actually just the word HOME. Um, and, um, that's more focused on housing specifically. We have our Emergency Solutions Grant, ESG, that's focused primarily on immediate relief of homelessness or potential homelessness. And then sometimes we get National Housing Trust Fund funding as a subgrant from the state of Alaska. We haven't done that in the past few years, but we are angling to try to get that.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Convince the state to give us. Funding amounts that we get, this is just the past 5 years, what we've gotten, including the allocation for 2025. You can see we typically get a little less than $2 million in CDBG, about $600,000 or $700,000 in HOME, and about $150,000-$160,000 in ASG. Fluctuates a little bit, but it's been pretty consistent the last few years. So goals, our Con Plan process that we do every 5 years lays out our goals.

We are Thinking that we will probably do an amendment to our Con Plan in the next few months to kind of specify our goals a little more clearly than what we have in the current version, which was adopted in 2023, but really had continued forward what we had done in the past couple of iterations. So those goals were really probably about 10, 15 years old now, probably due for a refresh. Priority needs identified there, pretty straightforward: homeless populations, low-income and housed populations. Public facilities and public services. These are kind of the broad areas where we're trying to address issues within the city with our funding.

And then the goals are a little bit more specific of what the kind of means that we're intending to use to meet those priority needs. Rental housing development, homeowner rehabilitation, mobile home repair, homeowner development programs, new development, and public facilities, public services. And then there's a series of these, and these are the things that I think we might take off the goal list, because these are really more projects than goals. But currently in there, tenant-based rental assistance, the housing development organization operating expense assistance, economic development, homeless prevention. So those are our goals.

It's what we're trying to do is address those priority needs and those goals. Here's just a little bit about the spending and what we've actually done with our funding in the past few years. A little bit hard to see at this level. I'll send out this presentation after the meeting so people can look a little more closely. This is CDBG funding each year of the past 5 years by category.

That gray is affordable housing, yellow is public facilities, blue is public services, and green is admin other. You can see it fluctuates a bit year to year. This is based on our draws from HUD. Our grants are on a reimbursement basis. Basis.

So there can be a lag between when we actually spend money and when we draw the funding and get reimbursed from HUD. That's part of the reason it goes up and down. It also goes up and down— there was a big influx of COVID-related funding in the 2021-2022 period that's mostly over with now. So that also accounts for that spike there. You can see kind of the balance of types of programs we do.

Sometimes a lot of housing, sometimes more on the public facility or public service side. For HOME, this one's even more kind of up and down. Some years we have not drawn any funding at all. Didn't necessarily mean we didn't spend any, we just might not have been reimbursed until the next year. Categories there, that orange is affordable homeownership, yellow is rental housing development, green is tenant-based rental assistance.

These are vouchers similar to Section 8 program, though it's a separate program. That we do sometimes. And then that kind of brownish is the admin for HOME. ESG, this is one where there was a— it's usually a pretty small program, but during COVID there was a big influx of funding. So we did a lot of additional projects that we don't usually do with this funding.

Green there is homeless prevention. Blue is rapid rehousing. Yellow is emergency shelter. And there's a dark green, I think, just on the 2020, that's Homes Out Reach. I think some issues with our closeout in sort of identifying what funding was spent on that particular program.

It's not something we usually do with ESG funding. And then the admin/other is that dark purple. So, talked about this a couple times before, but we're moving toward a process where we allocate most of our funding through competitive requests for grant proposals. We kind of kicked that off this year. It's a more formal, transparent process for selecting projects than what we've often done in the past.

It's not required by HUD, but it is encouraged to do a competitive process for work. Funds. Many cities do this. We have done it in the past. We are kind of moving back toward the future.

Starting in 2025, this is going to be the main way that we do allocation. So we'll be putting out a series of these for the various pots of funding that we have available. Ideally, before we draft the action plan, didn't quite get all of them out before the 2025 action plan. So we do have some TBD that will be doing our GPs for in the coming months for 2025, but generally we're going to— So strategic direction for this is to do fewer but larger projects. We don't have a whole lot of funding relative to the scale of the problems we're working on.

You can see how broad those goals were, and then the pots of money we have, it totals about $3 million or so per year. Not a whole lot in the context of the problems. So we're looking toward kind of leveraging other funds, targeting the biggest community needs, which generally are housing supply and supportive services. Those are the two big things we consistently hear that we need more of. Not the only needs.

There's also sheltering capacity and other things that— facilities. There's other things as well, but housing and services are the main things that we are trying to target, and we've been coordinating very closely with the mayor's office and in recent months on aligning this with their goals, both on the housing side of the 10,000 Homes Initiative, as well as with the strategic plan for homelessness and health. So for 2025, we put out an RFP for a CDBG housing/shelter acquisition, kept this a little general in terms of what types of projects we would consider because this is a new way of allocating funds that we're doing now. We did select a grantee, that's True North Recovery, for a $750,000 project that's acquisition of a hotel for conversion to recovery residences. It's a model that True North Recovery has pioneered in the Valley and expanded into Fairbanks.

They're now looking to expand into Anchorage, and so this is a partnership that we've entered into with them. They applied, went through a scoring process, and they were selected. That's still not recognized grantee for that. So specific project will be included when you do final action plan submission to HUD. And for first time in quite a while, we won't have to amend plan to identify a specific grantee because we've already— in future years, we'll be planning to put out this— our housing acquisition/capital RFP.

We've kind of been framing it as acquisition, although it could also be something like modular construction, like the micro units or the In Our Backyard project that have pioneered lower-cost ways of doing construction.

Generally, you know, we've been thinking this in terms of like either acquiring motels for conversions or doing kind of lower-cost capital projects like that. Putting out an RFP for public services, we haven't gotten to that one yet this year, so that one is still mostly a TBD. Action plan, and then these— and then, you know, other buckets of funding will— that we have may be additional RFGPs depending on what types of projects we decide we want to prioritize. RFGPs will go out before the beginning of the program year, which is for us is a calendar year. So ideally, these would go out actually the fall before the year of the action plan.

Didn't quite make that this year. We had to have in the spring. Still ahead of where we've been in the past. And then the annual action plan process for allocated grant funding. So here's the proposed projects for 2025.

And again, it might be a little hard to see, so you'll see this when we send out this proposed project list. Basically, we have an administrative portion for CDBG, mobile home repair program with Rural CAP that was is a longstanding program that we've done for many years, continuing to fund that at $400,000. The acquisition project cleanup recovery, that's $750,000. There's some activity delivery costs for our cost of managing some of these projects, about $200,000 in public services DBE that we're expecting to go out as a competitive RFP in the fall.

And then there is one public service project that we fund every year, place case management at a certain level, which is kind of a condition of the capital funding that we put into that project when Rural Cap acquired what had been a hotel and converted that to permanent supportive housing a few years back at $700,000 or about $700,000. So for a total of $2.72 million. For HOME, this one's a little more TBD. We're planning on doing rental housing development, some sort of housing development for our community housing development organizations. We currently only have one of these and have had one in the past, but we are doing a push to get applications, get additional CHDOs or CHODOs as we call them.

This is a designation by HUD for a particular type of housing development organization for which we set aside a certain amount of our funds each year. Required to. Typically, we've just done those projects with Habitat for Humanity Anchorage, which is our one SHODO currently, but in the future we'll be— hopefully have more and be able to do an open competitive process among the SHODOs. Also planning to do some sort of tenant-based rental assistance project. We've done these in the past, kind of put a pause on that last year as we looked through the need for tenant-based rental assistance.

I think What we found is that there is a great considerable need for that found with our Treasury Department emergency rental assistance that we've been working on. Many more applications than they can fund. So we'll do some form of family-based rental assistance and then some, some sort of rental housing development. We don't have a whole lot of money for that. So that might get— end up getting wrapped in with one of the other projects instead.

That's a HOME project. And then ESG, smaller grant. We have typically done this through the Homelessness Prevention Program at the Aging and Disability Resource Center, which is a part of the Anchorage Health Department. And they manage a homelessness prevention program where people at risk of eviction can call in and if they qualify for the program, can get coverage of their rental arrears and remain in their housing.

So timeline for the action plan, we'll kind of start, kick that off in winter of 2024, through spring, got the public notice draft out in May, did the public comment period and hearing May through June. It's on the assembly agenda for approval on July 15th. So that's kind of the point we're at right now. And then target submission is before August 16th. Every year, August 16th is our real drop-dead deadline to get this into HUD.

Or we lose out on some of the funds. Past years we've cut it very close. We are now much ahead of it, even though just about a month and a half left. That's well, well ahead of where we typically have been in the past few years. So we're getting ahead of it.

Hopefully in future years we'll be on time, but that's where we're at.

So we are required to do a 30-day period, comment period. This year that was May 21st through June 20th. We did the public hearing at the library on May 29th. Chase gave a version of this presentation that I thought was very good. We have that recorded on our website.

Go see that. Didn't get a lot of public comment from that, but we had one person show up. And, you know, we'll continue to, you know, if other comments come in, we can address them if we have time to revise the draft. But the minimum 30 days is required by HUD so that we can make sure it gets public comment. And then other consultations.

So, HAN Commission, you know, we're at every one of these meetings and, you know, you know, eager to take feedback and ideas. ACH, the Coalition of the Game of Care, we are in frequent contact with to get feedback from them on ideas. Many councils, social service agencies, Housing Finance Corporation, state equivalent for our office, basically. And then any other interested organization. People have ideas about projects that might fit into this sphere, Definitely put them in touch with us.

We're happy to meet with people and kind of get ideas and explain how our process works about applying for grants. So that's all I got. I got my contact info here, and I'll open up if anyone has any questions.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. I have a question. I'm glad. You know, I'm glad that this went out.

This is now starting to go out as a competitive process. Yes, we are. We are glad to see that as well. Appreciate that.

Mr. Kaplan, I see you have a question. I do have a question, and the question is the process for getting included into the Consolidated Plan language supporting allocation of HUD funds to CDBG for corridor revitalization. So we're actively now engaged in an effort to look at the Gamble-Ingle corridor, and I think it's important for the Consolidated Plan to acknowledge the work that's being done and to craft the guidance HUD documents such that if there's an opportunity that presents itself for the 2026 action plan, that we can do that. Is that possible? Can we?

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Alan. Yes, I think the best way to do that would be to email the address that's up there, [email protected], and put that in as a comment. We are past the official comment period, but we do still have time to incorporate comments, and those will be included in the final draft that goes to HUD.

And then that'll be kind of on record, and we can have continuing discussions as we begin to formulate the 2026 plan.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Okay, moving on to new business. Discussion of the Prohibited Camping Ordinance, AO 2025-54. That's one. We'll see, um, the packets Frankie so kindly puts together for us, and we always forget to pick up together. Um, there, I believe there's two versions.

Um, technically there are three. There was the original one that, um, before Mike put forward, and then, um, Christopher Constant. Yeah, um, put one forward as a revised version? No, um, no, I didn't include that one. I did not include that one because I'm relatively sure it was withdrawn.

But if you would like me to send it to you, I can. It's, um, included in the agenda packet for the regular assembly agenda meeting. Um, if you have interest in that, I can put that another time. But what is here is the original one and then the S version that was forth by the administration. And then what's this AM 487 in 2025?

Whenever you have an AO or an AR, so whenever you have a memorandum or a resolution, uh, or sorry, whenever you have an ordinance or a resolution, an AM accompanies it. So it's just like context. Yeah, I call them the COVID letters a lot. It's the COVID letter. I know, which is weird.

We don't have any action on this, but just this is, this is a, um, conversation around housing and neighborhood development. This is likely going to be in front of the assembly at some point, um, soon. So I thought it'd be good for us as commissioners to have a conversation about it. Um, that is my whole preamble. I'm going to open it up for for discussions.

I'll just say, I think one challenge I really have with this, well, two, but one challenge I really have is that there isn't anywhere for people to go. The shelters are full, and when we talk about there being 8 beds open, I can't say for certain, but I am fairly positive those 8 beds are open because somebody left the shelter and they're outside side again. It is, it, our, our percentage of exits to housing or a permanent destination are fairly small from our shelters. And it's not to say they're, they're not, they're zero, they're not zero. But they're not as high as we would like them to be.

So all this does, in my opinion, is create more barriers to housing for people. Especially when we're talking about things that may take a while to actually prosecute. The only thing worse than a charge on your court view is an open charge on your court view. And so if these are things that sit open for a period of time, that is a, a huge red flag to a landlord regardless of what the charge is. The other thing that it can do is it can kind of out people as experiencing homelessness if they have this particular charge on their record.

And that might be something that creates a bias with a landlord as well or an employer. So those are some challenges I have. I don't think there's other options. It would be, I wouldn't, I still wouldn't support it as a person, but if there were sufficient shelter resources I could see having a conversation about some type of measure, penalty measure being in place for people who are unsheltered. But I think without shelter capacity, this is a really hard conversation to be having because what you're doing is essentially asking people, if you look at these maps, you're asking people to go to the little teeny tiny green blotches that exist on here that aren't part of all of these buffer zones.

So the very northeast corner of Russian Jack Park, which is an off-leash dog park, but it's, it's still green on here. Sections of like Campbell Creek Park where you get just far enough away from the creek that you've got a little sliver of green area. Or we're pushing people to a posture of what's called rough sleeping, where you put your stuff in your backpack and you walk until you can't walk anymore, and then you lay down and sleep until somebody kicks you and says, get up, and then you get up and you walk some more until you can't walk anymore.

Those are, those are two challenges that I have with this. I think we're not considering the complex care needs. Not even in the slightest thinking about some of that. Think about this, the whole population. Well, I mean, I also think about the, like, the financial implications of this, the, like, increased workload on, um, the people trying to move, uh, others.

And then, like, the— like, if you do end up with a fine, like, you already don't have that money, right? Like, this is another financial barrier that adds on to that. On top of all the things you just said. So I like, I, I understand the, the heart and intent of this. And then I also know the reality of like, there, there's no other place for these persons to go.

Yeah, I would add that, um, you know, you see ordinances like this are, um, not uncommon down in Rule 48. Um, Anchorage, Alaska, it's a little bit more unique that we're an island. I mean, it's sometimes the intention in some communities, but this is— it can make it very uncomfortable to camp in this community, and so it drives people to go to a different community, you know. And if I can't camp in this community, I'm on a bus, I'm going to travel, and I'm going to go to somewhere, you know, that, that will be a little bit more receptive to that, but may not have this type of thing in it. We're in Anchorage, that's not an option for people.

Um, you know, people have heard me talk about this before, you know, if you want to leave Anchorage, you know, it's $800 to get to Seattle, then, then what do you do, right? So, you know, I think there are some communities that are held up that that we don't see camping in this community because of this ordinance. But if you sometimes look at communities around that, you know, it sort of pushes the problem out onto, um, um, bases around there or into different communities. It doesn't necessarily solve issues. Well, it may solve camping issue, but that's what we need to consider.

It's no longer allowed in the community, but it doesn't solve the issue of giving that person connected services and an anchorage. Like, I—. My— the thing I hear is that this is a very expensive and dramatic game of, of being, um, you know, just moving people around. Yeah, I understand. But, uh, that's, that's essentially what— and it's a lot of APD resources, a lot of court resources, and doesn't Yeah, it doesn't drive people.

I mean, it may drive some people for services, but it's, it's, um, uh, you know, I think, I think I like the S version better than the original version because it's, it's, um, a little bit more nuanced. There's a, um, there's a provision in there for allowing these to be remediated in therapeutic courts. I think I saw that. So I like the recognition that it's, it's a more nuanced issue, but it's tough to do something like this when the peer review is essentially an ILC review.

Other conversation. So if they don't pass that, then they would just continue to do what they've been doing, which is also equitable. That's a good point. Yeah. I have a very strange question, so bear with me.

When we talk about camping, how are we defining that? And the reason I ask is I had a conversation with a friend the other day. Who had gotten off of work, had a stressful day, drove to a park, opened her car windows, and went to sleep listening to the birds. And she was asking, like, if this goes forward, would I be ticketed for that? And so where do we—.

Where is that line drawn? And is there a definition for camping? I didn't know. There's some language in here about, like, hard-sided, hard— anyway, there's, like, framing, which I found interesting in the S version. Building the structure, building out identity, permanent structure, but also correcting intent.

And I think my short answer would be yes, and it's also illegal right now.

And I think that's the other thing that's important to remember is that all this is doing is taking the existing code. Well, there's some other things in the Mayor's Ask version, but it takes the existing codes which criminalizes camp or which prohibits camping and just puts a criminal element to it that it's a criminal charge, not a civil, like a citation type. Type charge, and I'm not sure that it's the deterrent people think it is. If you don't have anywhere to go and you don't have the money to pay the fine, you don't quite care. You may not even know that there's a fine, right?

Like, there's the awareness factor of it all too. Yeah, I do have questions about enforcement, and I hope that at the assembly meeting we get some answers on enforcement, like how that might work. Is there some kind, you know, would there be some kind of grace period where, is it that you walk up on someone and say, "Eh, we're within 100 feet of this school, go directly to jail," type of thing? Or is it an educational aspect like, "Hey, you may not have realized this, but your encampment is within 100 feet of this school and it's not allowed to be right here or it's a criminal charge." Can we move it?

Does it make any changes to the amount of time that is needed to notice for abatement? This allows for immediate abatement in these spaces. If I remember correctly, it would be misdemeanors. I don't think it's setting the person in jail. I don't know.

It sounds Where was it?

At one place it mentioned, um, up to 6 months in jail, but I didn't see— there's a work session when? Next week on the specialist I, I, I do also see a community need to prevent very large encampments from, uh, sprouting. So they— I think we've discussed with this committee, like, when, when they get very large, that's when they tend to become more dangerous. So, uh, you know, I do, I do, I do want to recognize sort of the neighborhood and community need to have some tools to prevent 200 people from all camping in the same spot. And I think having some tools to allow the municipality to abate more rapidly, um, might be necessary, but I, I don't know that they need to be.

And I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure, but how they're connected, but I don't know that they need to be connected to criminal charges. And the current abatement code— so last year, I say we, but the municipality did amend the abatement code and added some levels of prioritization to abatement. And one of those is encampments that are more than 25— I believe they settled on structures, not people, but I can't remember— either 25 people or 25 structures. Are a higher prioritization for abatement in addition to the things that are highlighted in here within the buffer zone of a shelter, the buffer zone of a school, a childcare center, a protected waterway, and a paved trail. So those are all right now in our current abatement code able to be prioritized above other abatements.

It's still a 10-day notice. Yeah, and it— if the changes last year simplifies— simplified the notices. There used to be— so Farina mentioned there's 3 different kinds of notices right now. There's a 24-hour, a 72, and a 10-day. There used to be a 4th one that was a 14-day, but the 10-day and the 14-day were— it was so nuanced in the differences between them, so they smushed them together and said it's all a 10-day.

How, how would commissioners feel if about this particular, uh, ordinance from administration if there was a place for people, like if there was a place for people to go? Oh, I'd say do we have shelter capacity? And, and if we— because where, where, where I come from is we're saying no, you can't be here with Black, can't— we need to be safe, but we can be here with a number. I agree. And if we had shelter capacity, we had a place for people to go, then this is a much different conversation, right?

I agree. I think that the issue, in my opinion, is unfortunately all of those individuals do get grouped into one big group because there's a lot of them that are consistently, constantly breaking the law and really putting a lot of pressure on a lot of other people that are not doing that. So if there were a place to send these people, whatever that might look like, then it sounds like it wouldn't really be that controversial. Yeah, I think, I think I would want to encourage and look at the nuance of what is available because right now there are 20 places. If we think about all of the beds that exist, there are 20 of them where you can have a pet with you.

Like, that's That's a real limiting factor for people who are unsheltered and have pets. There are only 100 of those spaces where you can be with your significant other in the same, like, the same place. So some of those, I would say we would want to make sure that our shelter capacity could meet all of those needs. The last one, which is something Darcy mentioned, there are a number of people who are unsheltered right now who can't perform their activities of daily living, which means they can't go to a shelter unless there is somebody who is providing that care for them. And even then it gets kind of iffy.

Boy howdy, doesn't it? Yeah. So, so there are people who are medically vulnerable outside who don't have— they don't— a shelter doesn't exist for them to go to. It's such a paradox. It's pretty wild.

So I would want to make sure that we were like, if this, if that existed, that we were making sure we were talking about a place for everyone. Sure. Yeah. So the numbers are roughly living outside, roughly 300 to 400, 500, somewhere in there. Over 500.

It's over 500. I've been gone for 2 weeks. What would you say the, in a perfect world, HUD-wise, when would we be able to have facilities realistically for that many people? Uh, yeah, like, I mean, if you're— boy, I don't know, like, um, shelter capacity is expensive and housing is also expensive. Um, if we're relying on our HUD funds alone, you're talking about like hundreds of years.

Hundreds of years? Yeah, I mean, you'd really have to bring in a lot of other resources to build up the system to a level where we're at that place where you have sufficient capacity. And I mean, a lot of people are working on doing that both in and outside the municipal government. But yeah, I mean, it's a really steep challenge. Basically, there's not a lot of resources available and the scale of the problem is really huge.

It is kind of the only answer is to build up that capacity. [Speaker:JOHN] Yeah. But it, it's just a big lift. It makes sense to me, again, and I've, I've talked with Thea and Farina about this, uh, it makes sense to me for the municipality to have sanctioned camp areas. And like, you guys can be here, there's going to be services, people connect you with these things, um, it's going to have patrols, it's going to be safe.

We'll have, you know, 2 or 3 spread out around the municipality But you have to be there. Like, that is where you have to go, because otherwise we're going to have hundreds of years of this same exact situation where people are really getting to the end of the rope with their compassion. At this point, it's been pretty obvious to witness here lately with the things that are happening in the city and on the trails, the parks, and around the schools. So, and I think And I think one, one shot. So I listened to some of the testimony at the last assembly meeting too.

I was 11 hours different, so it was kind of weird. It was over my coffee. I was actually in Greece during that time, but in any case, listening to it, I was listening to a lot of the issues people had, and I think Something I've realized, but didn't really come to the forefront until I heard that a lot of the complaints about things like theft and drug dealing and drug use, like, those are crimes. Those are things that are criminally chargeable. So it's an— so that issue is an enforcement of the existing criminal laws on our books.

And not, we're not gonna solve that by creating more criminal laws that, as Alan mentions, are likely to not be enforced. Like, so I think the bigger challenge and the bigger conversation is how do we enforce the laws that are already on the books for some of those activities that are endangering everybody? They're endangering the people in the camps, they're endangering the neighborhoods. Like those, that just creates the unsafe space. So it's more about enforcement of our existing laws on the books and not creating more laws that probably won't address that issue.

Yeah, which seems like it'd be easier to enforce if you were able to put everybody in camping areas that were ran by the municipality and policed. And I'm doing—. I want to do a quick time check. It is 5:28. And reminder, I do need to leave at 5:30.

30, So if you want to hand the proverbial gavel to our Vice Chair, um, over here, as we have more items on the agenda, I would, um, I know there's like a lot of discussion that we can have on this. I would like to keep this on the agenda for next month. I would invite any commissioners that feel strongly about the Hand Commission taking a stance to put pen to paper, um, and, um, bring a resolution that we can discuss, um, and potentially vote on and, and, and go on record about this issue here. So, um, with that, I would entertain a motion to extend the meeting, knowing that I'm We have more items on the agenda. I would move to extend for 15 minutes.

Second. Second. Okay, any opposition? None. All right, uh, and then I, I gotta go.

Yeah, congratulations, Jessica, and thank you so much. Um, sorry, I'm not here to— what's your name? Heather Power. Yes. Okay, great.

Thank you, everybody. Um, every—. Uh, agenda item municipal micro units project. Is that a presentation? I have a question for you.

So are we in agreement that we're going to pick up the discussion of this item at the next meeting? I think so. And knowing that there's an assembly meeting happening in the middle where this may or may not get voted on, it could also be postponed again. Um, but what's the micro—. Micro units?

Yeah, I mean, Theo's kind of the lead on this. Um, I don't know, Farina, if you want to talk about, or I can talk about. Chad, you can go ahead and talk about it, but I think we would just want to postpone this until until next month when Thea is here to do the presentation, because we'll have more information on where we are with the RFP. Okay, yeah, we can just postpone that then. Okay, so do we need to make a motion?

I make a motion to table. Yeah, make a motion to table to next month. I'll second. Any opposition?

All right, general public comments.

If it's table to next month, do I still need to talk? Oh yeah, you can talk about it now. You can come back next month. Okay, how long do I have? 3 Minutes.

3 Minutes. 3 Minutes each.

So there's a few different things. I have a handout to give. Actually, I have 2. And then I have a little speech. It doesn't go over everything, so I'm going to kind of make it up as I go.

Uh, thank you for the warm welcome today. Um, my name is Heather Tomacoff. I was at the public comment. Um, anyways, let's, let's start with this. It's, uh, I'm here to propose a focus next step that helps Anchorage build on the outreach efforts of already established by formally organizing them into a coordinated mobile outreach system.

This is something that is already happening informally across our community. But right now, what we're missing is structure, structured shared data, and long-term stability. The key pieces that make these efforts more efficient, more humane, and more effective. What I'm asking— well, it explains it all in this handout. What I'm asking is for you guys to also consider The winter, winter coming, people don't have any access to anything.

How many years are we going to continue having 50+ people die on the streets?

We need to end it. We need to come together to find out something.

People are dying.

We have the— this is not a crazy idea because if it's The ordinance wants to pass a $15 million tax that has no end cap date. This idea is not crazy. I really want you to consider something.

There's no end cap date, and only people in Anchorage would pay that tax. Think about all the commuters that come into Anchorage. They wouldn't pay anything. So this is not only for the homeless, but it's for our community to come back together. It's an opportunity What we need to do is, is figure out some way to mobilize teams, and it can be specialized by age groups.

Um, they can be coordinated through this— it can be an age and needs-specific mobile outreach team. Um, and that's kind of what you guys were discussing already. So just coming together and really thinking about it, coordinating it piece by piece. It is overwhelming to think about how many people are on the streets, but like somebody had said earlier, we're not the lower 48. There's only X amount of people here on these streets and it's the same people, same offenders, same crimes that aren't being criminalized.

They aren't being charged, but we wanna criminalize people sleeping on the street because they have nowhere to go, but there's nothing available to them. Where's all these millions of dollars going with the taxes? Why isn't anything being produced in a civil way? There's no way we can propose this ordinance out of everything and spend all of our time opposing it when we could be focusing on something better.

Two handouts.

Sorry, I get really shaky. So this is the proposal that I had, um, I had presented at the public comment. This started as a crazy idea to propose a heart tower out of the old BP building. It's there, it's ready to use. Use it.

We can change it from an oil empty building to something that the community can really just be proud of.

So, the Hart Tower outlines everything, but it also outlines the negatives of the tax levy. And this one shows the winter mobile outreach protection. So, she can give those to me and she'll make sure we all get copies. Thank you for being here today.

Did Alan say he wanted—. No, he was just sitting there. Okay. Oh, nope, hands up. Yeah, hello.

Yeah, a public comment, and I would just like you to encourage the commission members to keep in mind that, um, you know, the community development, neighborhood, you know, development is an important component of the commission's work, and that I encourage people to come over to Fairview, East Fairview particularly, check out our— so we just finished off a new community garden that we just built at 13th and Carluck, northwest corner, and kind of see something that's a positive grassroots type of initiative that we're moving forward with. And then, so that's a summertime thing. And then, you know, we just recently, back in this past winter, we did the Fairview Snow Fighters, you know, pilot project with some ARP grant funds. It was very successful and is a way for to engage, you know, neighborhood residents and to maintain the sidewalks. You know, just people who walk have to have clean sidewalks during the winter.

Right, and it's critically important. And anyway, I just want to keep in mind it's a summer and winter. We're a unique subarctic metropolitan area with summer and, you know, winter issues and challenges, but we're doing some fun things over in Fairview, and come and see what we're up to. Thanks. Thank you, Alan.

I'm excited about gardening. I love community gardens.

Any commissioner comments?

I just want to— he's not here to hear it, but thank David for his work putting together that resolution and everyone else for all of your input on making it the best document it could be. I'm excited that we did it and that it's It's going to go as advice, and maybe we will argue our point yet that we're a valuable commission that should exist. Oh, my goodness. And I don't think we had any reports. I don't think we have any.

So, all right, technically have 8 minutes left if anyone has anything they want to say. Otherwise, Entertain a motion to adjourn.

I will entertain that motion. All right, second. Okay, assuming no opposition, 5:38. Thank you guys. Before commissioners go anywhere, I just have a couple of like small things that I want to— time, um, what works for you?

I just want to confirm that Everybody's okay with the September training for Robert's Rules? And then September meeting. What was that date? Um, it would be— oh, it's just at the regular one. That's the first Wednesday.

I don't remember the—. But just, um, and then who all is interested— the third. Thank you. Um, who all is interested in going to the Parks Commission on August 14th to talk about what we do in Hampton A? Uh, no, no, no.

I'm asking the first question. Oh yeah, I won't be here. Okay, on the 3rd. Okay, that's my birthday. Awesome.

Not be here. Would we want to try October instead of September and just to make sure all commissioners are present, or do we want to go there? We're talking about August or September? We're talking about the original one was September. We could do October instead to make sure everybody's here.

And I'm okay missing. I know Robert rules, so I'm listening. Me too. Um, okay, so we can keep it in September then. Um, and then who's interested in going to the Parks Commission in August?

That's good. Anybody else? Okay. And that was just going as in just to witness how they do things? Witness how they do things, talk a little bit about what Hand Commission does.

Um, I met with their staffer and they had some curiosity about what we talk about here, particularly because the parks are impacted by stuff that we discuss. Um, yeah. What time is that again? It's from 6 to 8 at the Spinnard Community Center. I think I'm flying out of town then.

Okay, so I can't be there. That's okay. Uh, all right, and then, uh, I think that was it. Shané, I have the thing that I want to talk to you about. Okay, and I would be interested in going, but I don't know that I can add any input being such a new member on the field, but I will be here next week.

Okay. But I need to—. I need the location, date, time. I'll send that out. Okay.

Yeah. Okay, thank you. It was good. It was very hot, very hot. Like, they are going through, and so it was 50 degrees, 55 humidity.

Like, so fun for your daughter, right? Yeah. She did enjoy it by the end of the trip. I will say spending 14 days with your 18-year-old daughter is not the joy that you think it might be. So yeah, our last— we went to Paris, Italy, and Greece.

And by the time we were in Italy, so halfway through the trip, we had to get an Airbnb. And we were shutting doors and we were— it was very much like, we need to deal with this work together. But it was, it was great. Um, he is really good at that. And so Phil was like, it's rad, like, it's great.

He was like making the acrobatics and walking through the rooms. And I'm like, yep, old rock. Yep, another old rock. And she's like, Mom, that's like the Temple of Athena. And I was like, yep.

Rock. Really old rock. Um, lots of museums, random museums, fancy museums. Like, but, but it was good. Had some really good food.

So I'm always like, where are we eating? Where are we doing? Yeah, I feel like every time I travel, I just like, where are we eating next? Yeah, and I, I love like street food and So I was always like, where are we going to find— like, where's my food truck? What are we doing?

So I have a question for you. Is the number of families that we're seeing under the floor still on the rise? It is. Right now I'm aware of—. Okay, so either 11 or 12 unsheltered families in the last month.

So that's what somebody—. Yes. Okay. And it's really similar to what Barbara said. Project that's supposed to—.

The data a year ago that it was in the mayor's office nationally, and then they waved it out again. So we just resubmitted it. They're unable to get a— and then one of them is family.

I'm like, for— I crossed my finger. Yeah, well, that would be amazing. I really need it. It only be 2 because of Sky Stone. Excuse them since you—.

That's what I—. Yeah, I'm thinking about a third. Oh, I know I'm gonna be here. You gonna do some special favorite? I usually try to.

I love that. Every year. That's awesome. So, um, I'm gonna take a couple. Yeah, go for it.

I usually just end up recycling the extra copies. Oh, okay. However many you would like to take, you are welcome to. The other thing I, I was gonna ask Chad— he's gone. You work with his office, right?

Yep, I am the.