Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee

Introductions in the room. We're joined in the room by Parker Trapps. We have— okay, all right, it was a late night. Um, we're gonna get started on homelessness. We'll introduce yourself.

Kimberly Rash, Director of Parks and Recreation. Steve, Diversion Programming Department. Hopefully shortly we will have as well because they have— will be presenting. And this is a Thea special here. We will be going quickly.

Some of this, most of this, uh, some to you. Next slide. So as we know, success looks like we want fewer people sleeping, have a year-round safety net system, want more crisis care continuously, we're looking for funding, continuously adding deaths into our homeless and health strategy that was set by Sarah LaFrance, which is still the same, working towards. Next slide. As we know, there was a point-in-time count earlier that the number of unsheltered We still have them in this area, and we can— so nothing has changed with these.

Okay, so this is where AFD would come into play over this. So they track all of the— so Narcan kits given out or administered. We also distribute in community locations. We have them at libraries, fire departments, and we are always— so in quarter 1 this year, we distributed 696. And AFD reported 153 opioid-related calls per month.

So it's about 8 being in opioid treatment. Next slide. All right. The same document that everyone is— safety net. So on the— this is everything that the municipality— one of the things, of course, that was on the agenda was an update to 16.1.

That will be— or that is next meeting. We are hoping the capacity coming to you for approval. We will be being 56 location individuals. Place the 150 people. Currently, yesterday on Tuesday, we added 40 additional shelter, 56 in 20, adding another 4 28th, which is, which would bring 80 bed number.

So again, we follow the, um, next slide. Team calls for service is a combination of AFD as Anchorage Safe Shelter. This data has changed from the last time you saw. Quarter 1 and quarter 2 Nick Outreach Team, 91 contacts, very small public. I'm super proud proud of the work that they do in the community to— One of the things that in our '06 and '08 fiscal year Health Nursing Grant are required to get out more mobile services and meet individuals.

In addition to this, our 1,556 with 1,008 clients. While we at the Health Contract can't really track— So on last night's agenda was funding for a new EHR. We pushed to the 10/6 meeting. We are in desperate need of a new electronic health or medical record. We just work in archaic times at the Health Department.

Thank you, Director Arash. Actually, real quick, I just interrupt you. At 11:05 and 11:06, we were joined by Member Baldwin-Day, Yara Silvers, and Janice Park, and then Member Baldwin-Day has a question. Yeah, thank you. Director Arash, how many people are on your clinical outreach team?

We have, so they are just our public health nurses, so it's a team of 2 to 3 nurses, 1 MA, And we have one additional person that does all the coordination. Thank you. That's, that's a pretty hefty workload for two cores worth of work for a 5-person team. Yeah. Okay, thank you.

So the next one is, are we reaching people in crisis? And this is a combination of data between the APD department and AFD. And so 50 to 70% of MCT and MIT clients are housed. And so this chart shows that data that has not changed since June. Next slide.

Oh, that's the slide we just went over. Next slide again. Sorry, Travis. So again, are we reaching people in crisis? This is the Safety Center admissions.

So as everyone knows, we have Safety Center admissions. So in June, there were 707 admissions with 446 unique clients. Clients. Again, this contract is overseen by the Anchorage Fire Department.

Next slide. This is voluntary and involuntary data in regards to the, the Safety Center. So as everyone knows, earlier this year they changed, or I guess last year, they changed the criteria of admissions to be voluntary and involuntary. So anyone can come to the Safety Center at any point in their time. It is also used sort of as a hub to get individuals in off the streets and then coordinated to a shelter.

And so the total Anchorage Safety Center admissions in 2026 year to date at that point in time in June was 6,826. Thank you, Director Ash. Just want to note for the record, Member Scout is on the phone sometime between 11:00 and 11:09. And then Member Bolden Day has a question. Yeah, thank you.

Would you remind us please what happened in October and March were those, are those weather-related spikes in admissions at the Safety Center or was there something else going on? So typically what we see right now, September, October, is we try to get individuals inside because there is a higher risk of hypothermia and frostbite. We also know in the past, past, that's when we start to, that's when we started to open up shelter beds. Currently that in 2025 is when we started a little bit of surging, and then we continue to surge in congregate shelter beds. So there was just more people coming in from the outdoors.

And the same thing in March, we typically see an increase in there as well before individuals feel comfortable enough to go back outside. But AFT would have more information on that. Member Park. Thank you, Chair. Director Resch, what constitutes an involuntary admission?

Can you tell me how that might occur? Yeah, so involuntary would be if— so in the past, it would be Title— if they were deemed Title 47, so they were intoxicated to a certain level, the safety patrol would pick up the individual, bring them to the safety center. It's also often called the sleep-off center, where they would stay in that facility for at least 12 hours. And then be released upon sleeping it off or staying at the center. So we have voluntary, which anyone could come in, they don't have to be titled, and involuntary would be that they are deemed titled and picked up.

Mm-hmm. All right, next slide. So how are we preventing people from becoming homeless? Um, this is some data from '25 and '26. 100 People were helped by AHD's rental assistance that ran through the Community Safety and Development team in Quarter 1 and 261 in Quarter 2.

The same team, the Community Safety and Development team, also assisted 11 mobile home repairs that were completed in Quarter 1, and there were no new completions in Quarter 2. And in addition, 930— 5 people use shelter or transitional housing for the first time in Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 of 2026.

Next.

All right, so how are we connecting with people? So as we all know, the HOPE team coordinates the MDOT, which is the Multidisciplinary Outreach Team meeting, every morning at 9:00 AM. And there are more and more participants, I would say, probably on a bi-monthly basis that are invited to these meetings. As more and more people find out about those meetings, they join in to those either in person or over the phone or via Teams call. Quarter 1 and Quarter 2, the community outreach had 242 contacts and helped 68 individuals enter shelter or housing, and the Good Neighbor Fund project helped 316 people enter shelter or housing.

So kudos to all of that great work. All right, now I can pass it off. For the record, this is Steve Williams, the Director of Diversion Programming for the Anchorage Police Department. On the slide up on the screen is a depiction of data from the department's HOPE team plus information from True North Recovery, who APD contracts with. To go out with the HOPE team and do outreach and try and get people connected to services.

The key, the key elements on this slide really are the bottom right corner, the key findings. We're getting more and more increased referrals per month, and you can see that in June, '85 was a record month for us in terms of referrals. A lot of this has to do with what Director Rash I mentioned earlier, which is the coordination that's happening on a daily basis through the AMDOT 9 o'clock meetings that includes members of the municipality, the various departments, and most importantly, the partners out in the community. Most of the individuals that the HOPE team and True North are encountering are in fact experiencing homelessness. And that's the one major barrier to getting people into treatment.

As you probably know, but having stable housing, knowing where someone is, the individual knowing that they are secure and safe in a place allows for, A, treatment providers to know where someone is to connect and keep track of them and keep them engaged in service. And for the individual, it allows them to focus their needs on recovery or other services. And as Director Rash already mentioned, opioids, other drugs are still very much present out in the community, not just among the homeless population, but in the community at large, as well as statewide. So when we think about Anchorage and we think about Alaska and we think about substance abuse, these are key issues that are underlying a lot of the challenges that we see in the community. The, the efforts of both the HOPE Team and True North Recovery are certainly key to the mayor's overall strategy, particularly the first two goals of that strategy.

All right. The next slide is in regards to the core team through the Anchorage Fire Department. And so that is the community outreach referral education team. And really their biggest function right now is working on the opioid use disorder, so the MAT services, medication-assisted treatment. They are doing Suboxone and working with the Anchorage Health Department to do Sublocade.

So Suboxone is the short-term when they engage with an individual, and so it kind of helps with the withdrawals, and then they refer them to the Health Department for the longer 30-day acting, and then we can connect connect them to services. So it's a great partnership that we have created with the fire department, and it just kind of shows again that collaboration across departments for those individuals seeking services.

Next slide. I have a couple questions, it looks like. Okay. Thank you. I, um, So we're, we're still, we're still thinking about each of these as sort of their own unique datasets, correct?

We don't really have the capacity yet, and won't until we have a new system in place to actually understand how many folks who are engaging with the core team are also engaging with True North, are also engaging in other places. Okay, so, um, so we shouldn't look at this as aggregate data, we should understand this as potentially a very interesting Venn diagram of populations that are all interacting with this system. Yeah. So what we're currently doing is we're working with the— or we are receiving funding from the Rural Health Transformation Program through the state of Alaska. We have about a $3 million award.

One of the initiatives in that is to connect with Healthy Connect, which is the health information exchange. So connecting fire department, police department, and health department onto that exchange. A part of that is that the health department department has to have an updated EMR that can actually connect with modern technology. So there's also funding set aside for that as well. And so once we're able to get that up and going, we should be able to start kind of looking at data a little bit more holistically and seeing if this one person, Person A, has seeked different services throughout the departments.

Yeah, I think it'll be really interesting to, to get a more I hate to use the word coherent, but I think that's the only word I've got right now, a more coherent picture of how folks are utilizing services, and also how many contacts it takes for someone to actually stick in treatment and whatever type of behavioral health service they need. Correct, yes, because most of the data that we have is duplicated. It's not deduplicated. Okay, yeah, thank you, appreciate that. And then I have Member Park for the question and then Member Silvers.

Yes, thank you. What duration is the buprenorphine? What is what? What duration is the buprenorphine? I can't say it.

Buprenorphine? I believe that is— don't quote me. I believe it's— I know it's short-acting, maybe 24 hours. It's very short to just stop the withdrawals. And then the other one's the long-term, which is 30 days.

Okay. Do they use methadone? No. They do not. Okay.

Thank you.

My question is actually a couple slides away, but I figured since we were paused for questions, I would put it out to you. And you can feel free to just answer it when you go through this next slide. What I'm wondering is, what is happening with that Anchorage Center for Treatment? Is that what it was called again? The one that is on Taku?

Yes. So currently Anchorage Recovery Center is operating Willow Commons. And so we have a contract with them to run that facility. They're— all the units are filled. Um, from what I understand, uh, they are not working out of the Taku location.

Um, but what I have, uh, mentioned to Member Baldwin-Day, I can provide a, uh, more in-depth presentation, um, on the Anchorage Recovery Center and, uh, Willow Commons at one of our next meetings, and they can also have them attend as well. I guess what I'm actually curious about is what is happening with the Taku property. Um, that I don't know fully, so I'd have to get back to you on that. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I don't know if I'm asking the same thing as Member Silvers, but there's been repeated news in the paper about unpaid bills and maybe a lack of accountability. For the entity that is running Willow Commons. And I understand that lawsuits are allegations and not proven, but is there any progress in resolution with that?

I wouldn't be able to speak on their behalf on that topic, but I can tell you that in regards to the contract that the Health Department has with Anchorage Recovery Center, there haven't been any violations so far with our contract with them for their services at Willow Commons. Thank you.

Thank you. Please proceed.

Again, Steve Williams with the Anchorage Police Department. This slide is presented maybe a month or so ago talking about the, the department's launch of a pre-arrest deflection program. This is going to be starting next week, the 23rd. It'll be launched in a phased approach. We're starting with using the MIT teams and identify officers to work the program, to make sure that we have the mechanics for officers when they're out on the street to actually be able to use it without a lot of frustration.

So we're gonna work out any kinks that get identified. And then after that, roll it out patrol-wide. This is really a program that's using the leverage of the criminal justice system at the point that they have contact with someone in a major life event. Person with a badge standing in front of them facing charges to offer them an opportunity in the moment to get access to treatment right then and there. These programs, this is not a program that's unique to Anchorage.

Other jurisdictions and cities across the nation are operating deflection programs. And as we were already speaking about in terms of drugs, opioids, and just substance abuse in general, It's an underlying driver for a lot of contacts with law enforcement and patrol officers. So this is a way not only to be able to hopefully get someone connected to treatment if they are in, but also be able to relieve the patrol officer quickly so that they can hand that off, that individual off to the provider, and then get back out on the street patrolling their shift.

All right, for this next, I would like to invite the Anchorage Health Department in the Community Safety and Development Program, and they can provide on some of the HUD-related items that are here.

Hello everyone, again, my name is Frankie Dahl. I am the outreach coordinator for Community Safety and Development. Some of you are with them. I will say our community care map is up and live on our website. It's a great resource for navigating projects that have been funded by our program over the last decade.

It's a great resource. I will say we don't have tons of updates about the property acquisition. I know the facility for True North has been acquired. Outside of that, directly in that project, but if you have questions, get to my team. And our annual action plan has been submitted to HUD.

You guys approved that back in July. If you have any questions about the upcoming projects listed on that slide, I'm happy to answer them. We are in the, the initial public comment period for our 2027 Annual Action Plan as well. That's the action plan or the public comment period that happens before the draft. Do you have any questions about the projects for the '26 action plan?

Surprise, surprise. Everyone is shocked. Member Baldwin-Day has questions. So I'm curious about the status of the Housing Redevelopment Fund launch, when we might expect to see details for that project. I know there are many folks in the community that would like to understand how they can potentially access some of that funding, and so would love to know what the timeline looks like for that.

Through the chair to Member Baldwin-Day, that's a great question. I will say is that we—. That's helpful information. So is this something that's going to be administered from within the health department, or will someone else be sort of managing the program? So what happens with a lot of our projects is that we tend to procure for subrecipients to run the programs directly.

So in a way, we will, we will be managing the work that the subrecipient is doing, at least for the assessor and the contractor who's doing the actual repairs.

But we will be directly handling the application flow in Office. So a little bit of both. Gotcha. Okay. And so it sounds like, I mean, if we're just initiating procurement processes, we're like months out from implementation.

I would say yes. Okay. So this isn't something that we're likely to really have available until next— I mean, if we're thinking about weather, right, probably until next spring, or is this something we're going to try to launch in the winter? I don't know that I could give a very confident answer to that. I haven't been directly involved in conversations around exactly when it will start.

I do think that, um, your assumption about weather is astute. We run into that problem with our Mobile home repair program as well.

We live in Alaska. Construction season is short. If it's interior, it's not necessarily limited to weather, but anything that involves exterior would likely need to happen once things thaw. I would agree that probably Q1, Q2, slow rollout for that. Okay, great.

Yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of interest around this one. So Thank you for the update. Thank you.

All right, so the next 3 slides have not changed since, um, the last meeting, so I'll go through them pretty quickly. This is our public reports. Each dot represents some, uh, different, a unique spot. And so red is a new report within 60 hours, um, blue is a public report Orange is a private property. There's the little car icon in there, which is just, you know, abandoned vehicle that APD handles.

And then if there's yellow, that means Healthy Spaces has engaged in that spot in some manner. You'll also see it kind of overlay. So if you see a red dot with an orange on it, it's just identifying that it's within the 60 hours, but it's private property. Multiple departments use this, but it is live and active real time, and we get a report every, or every day at like between 4 and 5 in the afternoon of new reports that came in. So our team is living in this map every day, multiple times a day.

So next slide.

And this just shows how many tons we've removed. So in 2025, we removed 1,235 tons and Through June, we've only removed 259 tons. Next slide. I guess I don't know why I'm asking if I can ask a question of the chair. Of course I can.

Just if you could just put a finer point on that, uh, that doesn't mean that there's— it means that there's less trash to pick up. Just—. Yeah, so I think this will help. So we last year, we abated 28 camps, which were a lot of the entrenched camps at Davis Park, Russian Jack, Willa Wa. So the snow dump, so that accumulated a lot of the additional trash that we saw in '25.

And then this year we have not abated any camps, and so we're moving people along, which means they're not accumulating as much trash through the time. Exactly. And thank you. And that's what I was trying to make sure we got a fine, finer point on. It's not that we're just like, I'm just leaving the trash out there.

There's less trash to pick up. Yeah. Thank you.

Next slide.

All right, so again, this is the same map here that I've provided overview. We have provided our prelim— or the Health Department, I should say, has provided our prelim budget to the administration. And then the next step is that will be introduced to you all and Conversations can continue as we talk about priorities for 2027. Next slide.

This one is number of people served in a single adult and family shelters in Q1 and Q2 of 2026. And so 2,605 unique clients served in emergency shelters in the first two quarters of the year. Their length of stay averaged between 10 and 74 days. Families between 35 and 95 days. What we are seeing, and this is what Thea has mentioned previously, we are seeing larger families.

Trying to place larger families is becoming more difficult. We're talking about 7, 8, 9-person families. Next slide. Again, this is percent of clients engaged in case management with disability Disabling conditions and exits from shelter. So where do people go after they've been in emergency shelter?

We have 12% going to transitional, so friends, family, hotel. 14% Have gone to permanent housing. 4% To emergency shelter and 4% to institutional care, so foster care, hospital, jail, long-term care, treatment. Unknown or other is— this is data that's tracked out of HMIS. And so that is just how it's, how it's captured at the end of their stay from the shelter.

And 29% are other homeless, meaning that they have transitioned back into an unsheltered status. And then how many shelter clients report disabling conditions? 55%, One or more disabling conditions, with 24%, three or more disabling conditions. What we are continuously working on with the hospitals is discharges and making sure that those discharges are proper for the location in which they are being discharged into. As you heard in the past, we were going through a very rough time in which we were having individuals discharged into shelter that couldn't do their ADLs.

So we—. And the shelter operators later on here can talk a little bit about that if they continue to see that and how they are working through those cases.

Thank you, Director Ash. I have a couple of questions in the queue. Member Baldwin-Day, Member Silvers, and Member Park. Okay. Yeah, I actually had a question on the previous slide, the last bullet.

Inadequate community beds for those who qualify for assisted living care and have general relief as a payment source. I feel like this is just like the perennial refrain.

Do we have any more of a plan for how we are going to address this particular gap in our system? Yeah, that's a great question. So in part of the Rural Health Transformation Program funding that we are receiving, we are looking at how we can sort of fill this gap here and so that we can get individuals into assisted living care. One of the things that was really interesting that the health department undertook was One of our division managers called 101 locations that stated that they were an assisted living center. I would say more than half had stated that they had closed down.

Some of them are not wheelchair accessible. And so really trying to find the right location for the right individual is seemingly to be a little bit difficult, but we are hoping with these new funds that are coming to the municipality that we can start to look at this a little bit deeper. And try to figure out, is it like an assistance payment that we can assist with to get individuals in? We also know that General Relief Funds are, again, not a lot of money. It's a very low return rate on that.

So it's something that we're continuously working on. So I guess I'm curious, do we have this type of care available? In the community at the scale that we need it? No. Okay.

What's— if you had to estimate what the gap looks like, what are we talking about in terms of capacity that we would need? That's a great question. I wouldn't know per se a number. I just know that one of the biggest barriers to at least doing the home assisted living centers in a home is the upgrades that need to be completed. Within a home in order to get it to the ability to be properly licensed.

Do we have any idea how many folks are sort of frequent flyers in our shelter system that would qualify for this type of care if it were available? I don't, but I believe that RRS and/or the shelter operators may be able to answer the question. Thank you.

Member Silvers.

I wanted to talk a little more about the disabling conditions. Do you—. Is there a definition for disabling conditions or a list or something that's provided to clients for when they're answering that question? I believe that is in HMIS. I wouldn't know the exact question that is asked in that, but I can figure that out for you.

Okay. And then also from From that, the other question I have about it is, is substance misuse a part of that definition or list if it exists, or a part of the question?

I can figure that out for you. Okay, thank you. Oh, one other follow-up thing on the Taku property. I just would like to request that we make sure that it's properly secured. If it is empty, and that it doesn't become a magnet for crime and other activity in the neighborhood.

Noted. I will work with, or I'll get with, the fire department and the planning department. Thank you, sir. Member Park. Thank you, Director Rash.

On where people go from emergency shelters, is that, uh, are these numbers self-reported, or do they typically have a discharge plan where you've made arrangements and you know where they're going? This data comes from the interaction that the shelter operators have with the individual upon them leaving the shelter. And so I would say, and they can answer it probably more thoroughly than I can, some probably have good robust plans. Some just leave and they don't want to report where they're going, so it is self-reported to them where they're going. Okay, and my other question is similar to, um, to Member Silvers.

I'm wondering about what are the disabling conditions, but also what proportion of them are substance use disorders. Do we, do we know I can find that information out. Okay, and are most of those people who have a disabling condition eligible for Medicaid? Yes. Thank you.

All right, next slide. Do we do this one? Yep, next slide. This is also a diagram that you've also already seen, this was created by our epidemiologist at the Anchorage Health Department. She put together cold-related injuries and the levels, and so this has been critical in helping us plan our 2027 budget.

And so we are looking at level 3 and level 2 when we need to really increase our surge capacity so that we are not seeing outdoor deaths or Frozen limbs is what we often see as well. The Health Department, when we do outreaches, sometimes comes across an individual and we work with them to get them to the hospital. And so really, again, this is just a diagram that we've used for budgeting for 2027 that we had previously not had. So it's really exciting that our epidemiologist was able to provide us some of this data. Thank you, Director Rashford.

I'm going to jump in again. Member Silver says a question. I have a follow-up to Member Park's question.

What percent of people that are eligible for Medicaid do you think are actually receiving it? That are what, sorry? That are eligible for Medicaid are actually receiving it?

I don't know. I don't know that answer. I would say, I mean, I would think that there are individuals that have fallen off that have not re-enrolled, that don't know their enrollment status. I would say there's probably quite a few. From the Health Department standpoint, at least I could provide some perspective there.

When we go out and engage with the population and we're doing these outreaches, we try to talk about Medicaid. We talk about, you know, are you enrolled? What does that look like? There is a lot of, I don't know, I don't know what happened. One of the sad things that we've seen is United Way used to have individuals that helped that used to actually staff at the Health Department to get people on Medicaid.

And they were unfortunately not funded by the state. And so we lost that individual at the Health Department, I want to say at the end of '24. And so that's been sort of a big blow. And so the Health Department is trying to figure out when we hire our community health worker, how can we kind of fill that gap and help them get them enrolled and then figure out their enrollment status. Yeah, because I mean, I hear that we don't have enough of certain types of services.

To mine, well, how do we pay for that if we want to improve our services? And so I think making sure that we are getting as many people that are eligible for Medicaid onto Medicaid and then really also finding out what are the barriers, like if people are eligible but they're not on it, what are the barriers and what can we do to, you know, so that we can help pay for some of these services. Go ahead. This is Steve Williams, APD again. Just to add a little bit to the conversation as we're talking about Medicaid and eligibility and what happens to individuals.

As Director Rasch pointed out, people can be enrolled in Medicaid and then be suspended and then get back on. Some of the changes that are happening nationally come January 1st is that re-enrollment process, what is currently now 1 year, is now being looked at every 6 months. So what could happen at a state level is the state's going to have to keep track and keep up with re-enrollment and recertification on a 6-month basis as opposed to a yearly basis. So that could have an impact on people falling off and staying off of Medicaid.

I do see we have another question from Member Park. I just want to remind folks we do have presentations from providers after this, and we want to make sure we leave enough time for conversation with that as well. So I do ask if you have more questions, please ask it with alacrity. Thank you. Thank you.

My question is a follow-up on Member Silver's follow-up of my question. Around Medicaid, but I'm wondering what proportion of reimbursable services provide an offset to the city for what we spend.

And is it significant? Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things that we are trying to look at is when one of our initiatives here is to bill for more services that the municipality provides. Right now we don't bill for a lot of services that we provide. And so what we're trying to do is build in the health information exchange, build in functional EHRs, have billing and coding clerks.

AFD uses an outsource. The health department has a— has one FTE. That position has been hard to fill historically. And so currently it's vacant right now. We're looking to fill that position.

But for specifically the health department, our EHR is so outdated that it is a manual process to bill and to code. And so it takes a lot of manual labor. It's writing down addresses on paper and have— because the system can't spit out automatic information. And so that's one of our biggest struggles at the health department right now. And that's why we're really pushing to get a functional EHR so that it can be at least a smoother process.

For the individual that gets hired. How old is that system? I would say it is at least probably 17 years old. It's a system that when we say to community partners, hospitals, they've not heard of it. And so it's not web-based at all.

Thank you. Mm-hmm. All right. So I, you know what I will do is I'll just talk about this last slide and then everyone can read the 2026 priorities. Authorities, if that works.

So this last one is just a talking about the Good Neighbor Fund. Again, our S&H team are able to use that account. They're always looking for more donors. There is a steering committee of community members, and the fire department, police department, and myself are ex officio members. And so a lot of work goes into keeping that fund alive.

A lot of great successes that they've seen with the utilization of this fund. So it's pretty exciting that our community has been able to launch this, quite frankly. So, okay, very exciting. And that's all I have. And if there are any questions afterwards, please let me know and/or let Thea know as well.

Okay, thank you, Director Ash. Thank you for all the hard work you're doing. Much appreciated. Moving down the agenda, we're gonna do a fall shelter update. Is— are all of you guys presenting together or one at a time?

One at a time. All right, we'll start with the RRS. If you'll come up, introduce yourself for the record, and start whenever you're ready.

Thank you. My name is Kathleen McLaughlin with Restorative and Reentry Services. Um, the report that we have, I think, was printed out And so I'll just briefly go through a few things that happened this week and over the last couple weeks. One update that I wanted to give, give you is we had a conversation last month about a woman with a child, and the update is she ultimately entered detox this last week with her child. The reason I bring this up is the way that we need to continue to tackle homelessness and shelter services is one person at a time and to be relentless about trying to give options to people.

There was a question earlier about how many times does it take to touch somebody before something happens. Anecdotally, we were told by a professional provider that it's about 7 times of in and out of detox or substance abuse. And it's about 20 to 25 touchpoints in order to get someone willing to trust you enough in order to provide paths.

With regard to the last couple of weeks, yesterday was a big day. We got 40 additional beds. We did an outreach starting yesterday morning at 8:15. We were able to partner with Every provider in this room on top of MCT, Salvation Army, True North, APD. Bottom line is we filled all 40 beds.

We did it with a lot of conversations with people primarily in Midtown. We also took 7 people from the Anchorage Safety Center who were high users of the non Title beds. So the good news is we know we're learning how to fill. It wasn't strategically planned, it was let's show up, let's just go figure out who's living hard on the streets and how can we provide something. So several things we learned that I think is informative to the Assembly.

Of those 40, 35 stayed the night. 15 Did not. And I'm sorry, 25 stayed the night, 15 did not. And anecdotally, I think we need to look at what is it about our shelter system when people are willing to go in, in an outreach capacity, but do not want to stay. What are the reasons for that?

Anecdotally, what we were told is that when people entered the shelters, some were very uncomfortable staying because of the curfew, because that was not something that they wanted to have to tackle based on personal choices. So we have a curfew at 8 o'clock at the low barrier shelters. We have a 10 o'clock curfew at Alex, and I think that that is a number that we're going to have to really rethink about because 8 o'clock is It works in the winter, but it may not work in the shoulder seasons or in the summer. But I think that that's something we have to have a conversation about in one of our shelter meetings.

One of the things we discovered when we were out in the field yesterday is the level of addiction is extraordinarily high, and people will say anything in order to appease you, sometimes in order to leave them alone. And so we had about 10 to 12 people agree to detox or treatment, and we only had 1 or 2 that actually accepted who were transferred to detox programs and entered.

With respect to the Safety Center, we are seeing an uptick in the non-voluntary or the voluntary admits where people are coming there as a normalized place to get into the shelter or to just get inside to get warm.

So we are seeing a higher volume. RS has recommended night-only beds in order to address that. What's interesting, and Outreach showed this yesterday, we probably met about 80 people, 60 to 80 people, and we accepted 40 into the shelter. Many of the individuals that we spoke with, they had a place to go. It wasn't a shelter issue.

It was a community issue. Where do I hang with my friends? And I think we need to look at this a little bit more universally as it's not all shelter. We can have all the shelter beds in the world. But if we are not tackling the issues that are causing people not to use those shelter beds, or to not be ready to be in shelter because of addiction, we are not serving that population as robustly as we need to, and I don't have a magic idea about that, but I think we need to say it loud that that is something that we are not fully addressing.

With respect to the assisted living and the hospitalizations, hospital discharges have been a lot smoother in the last, since the last reporting period. We only get about 1 to 2 hospital discharge calls a day now versus about 5 to 10. Our goal is to make sure that people are going directly into shelter, over to the Anchorage Safety Center, or to another appropriate place. Our coordination on this is not always— it's, it's a little slapdash-y. It's not as systematized as it needs to be, but I think we're getting closer to having a better system.

There was a question earlier about assisted living. Michelle from Henning is our gold star standard person. She gets more people into assisted living and on general relief than I think anybody in our community. One of the challenges we see over and over and over again is that some shelter clients do not wanna be in assisted living because they do not wanna pay their benefits to an assisted living. They just don't.

Shelter is free. Assisted living takes money out of their pocket. For people that have $600 to $800 to $1,000, they do not want to give that up. That's more of a dollar importance sometimes. And so what we see is very, very sick individuals who cannot do their ADLs, who are using Anchorage Safety Center and trying to use shelters as their home.

We have— we are more proactive about it. As a system, but there also is choice involved and everyone has agency to say yes or no. And that is, that does cause some limitations on the number of people going into assisted living. With respect to client outcomes, in the last 2 weeks of this reporting period, we had 13 shelter clients go into housing. 3 From Linda's Place, 2 from 56, and 8 from Alex Shelter.

Good Neighbor Funds were used for 6 of those 13 in order to get individuals into permanent housing. The coolest part about that is because we don't have a ton of money in Good Neighbor Fund, we try to partner with the individuals, so we do expect they pay a portion and Good Neighbor Fund pays a portion. Each one of these 6 that were paid over that last 2-period, it was an average about $250. So it wasn't a ton of money, but it was enough to get people over that hump of being able to get into housing. One of the ones that has been most successful recently for our medically vulnerable has been Providence House, and they have absolutely stepped up to taking the clients that we are seeing in the shelter.

I think everything else is self-explanatory in our report. RS is really focused primarily on getting systems in place and also collaborative communication and decision-making in real time. Our goal is to try to continue to beef that up. I think that in general we keep making those steps, and I think we are more aligned and integrated than we have been before, but we definitely need to continue working on that. And after that, I am free for questions.

I know that Member Silvers has a question and then—. Yeah. I want to dive in a little bit more to where you said that there is a choice involved on people choosing not to go into assisted care because it would cost them money. How does that choice affect the broader community? So for example, who is paying for them to go into shelter?

And are there people that don't have resources that are being turned away from shelter because people with resources that don't want to spend those resources are taking those beds? And so I honestly, I have a kind of a real problem with that.

Yeah, through the chair, I don't disagree with you. We have had instances where, and I'll just give an example to see what the challenge is for shelter operators. We had an individual who was at 56th for probably 180 days. He refused to go back to an assisted living. We ultimately had to get APD involved, MCT involved.

Henning was very proactive. We all knew he needed to go to an assisted living, but it took about 3 weeks to coordinate that. And the way we did it was we had him go to the hospital and said he can't come back. So then the burden was on the hospital, but we helped through helped with that process. Another example, again, at 56, the woman did not want to go.

We had to find a way to get her in the hospital and said, we don't feel we can take care of this individual, so she's not going to be able to come back. She ultimately, because of the Health Department's clinical team, was able to work with the hospital and get her into assisted living. So it's not impossible. But it is not easy. But you are absolutely right.

My view is people should be in shelter that need it, not people that simply want it because it's convenient for them. Because a shelter, especially low barrier shelter, should never be a forever home. And if we normalize that kind of an atmosphere and make it a forever home, sometimes they're not willing to put effort into what the next step is. Thank you. I guess just, yeah, any, any way that that process could maybe be expedited.

Thanks. I would, I would love to be able to come here and report that we figured that out. No, I think it's a really great question. I think that's the start of maybe a really important conversation we need to have. And I know that we have shelter providers here, maybe that's conversations we can have here in a minute.

Unless there's any other questions, appreciate Appreciate the report. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next up we have Henning. Come on up, Miss Johnson.

I'm sure you're familiar with the drill, but introduce yourself and, uh, and you're free to start whenever you're ready. I'm new here, guys.

That's right. Hi everyone, Alexis Johnson. I'm the Director of Strategy at Henning, and I'm joined today by Michelle. I'm the housing specialist at 56th. Perfect.

So just to give you guys an overview, we run the East 56th Avenue shelter. We currently have 120 clients in our shelter beds. We will be adding another 20 of surge capacity on the 28th of this month. We just added the additional 20 yesterday. We serve roughly 80 men and 40 women.

We're fortunate enough to be really flexible in that. So if we have an open male bed and we have a female, we just drag, drag a bed over to the other side of the room and we get to be flexible in that. So next slide, please. So as of about a week ago, we have housed 188 people in the last 365 days. That's one person every other day.

I'll just take a moment to say thank you to Ms. Michelle. Me. She is housing extraordinaire. If there is a housing unit available, we will get a client into it. Over the last year, we had 20 people who chose treatment, and I know that seems like a low number, but that's one person every 3 weeks.

That's an important choice that people have to make themselves. We cannot force people into detox or into treatment, and we have treatment beds available when the person is ready to make that choice. The cost to shelter someone at our shelter every single day is $86.57. That includes, you know, the shelter bed, 2 meals, snacks, access to onsite EMT. We do have an EMT that is there 40 hours a week.

We have a psychiatric nurse practitioner that is there to do behavioral health onsite. They're entitled to a case manager and a housing navigator. So all these people are working towards them exiting our shelter. And through our shelter system, we have had many small victories, stuff that we celebrate. We have facilitated parents gaining custody of their children back, milestones, and have partnered with us.

It's really a great feeling. I say that there's no better high than getting someone into housing and getting their babies back. So there is shelter. Next slide.

So to start off, there are areas that we can improve upon. Obviously, we need more beds in the shelter system as a whole. We do have roughly 20 to 25 turnaways any given day, and those people often go to ASP, or we try and call over to other shelters, uh, into placement. Uh, one of the things that we would like to see improvement on is the memorandums of understanding. Um, people have to have an agreement before they can enter our shelter at all, um, or step foot in our building.

So for instance, if we have an assisted living facility that wants to interview one of our clients, We have to have an offsite meeting. They are not allowed in our shelter to come meet with clients to interview them. We think that's a significant drawback. In order to have a memorandum of understanding, there has to be a level of insurance that the person is submitted to the city in order to come into our shelter. We would like to see improvement on that.

As I mentioned before, we do have an EMT onsite. EMTs can only provide X amount of services amount of care before 911 has to be called. The threshold for that level of care— we see a lot of 911 calls coming out of our facility. If we had a magic wand and we could, we'd love to see a PCA. As R.S.

Mentioned before, we have a lot of people who are in our shelter that cannot care for themselves in activities of daily living, and we believe a PCA would be more affordable to the municipality as well as more helpful to our clients. Transportation. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this. We have had issues with transportation in the past. I know that there has been some funding allocated to this, but a more robust transportation system throughout our shelter.

When we have turn-away clients, they can go to ASP. Who pays for them to go to ASP? They're not our client. We're not contractually obligated to pay for them for their transportation. It's not in our budgeted system, but we can't just leave them outside, especially when it's negative degrees outside, and so the question becomes, who's picking them up and how are they getting places?

So those are areas that we believe we can improve upon. Next slide, please.

So now that we talked about the bad, we're gonna talk about how great things are. We have real-time communication without— throughout the whole shelter system. It's incredible. We communicate with other providers throughout the system in real time on a Teams chat. Hey, do you have these beds available?

Let's move so-and-so. It's really great. We have real-time communication. RRS picks up their phone 99.9% of the time. We have wonderful communication with shelter providers.

We also have really great partnerships with HOPE Team, MCT, AFD, APD, and RRS. These are partners that advocate for us loudly. I can't tell you how many times I call Kathleen and I'm like, "Hey, Providence has just randomly dropped off somebody. We don't have a space for them. What do I do?" She calls Providence and advocates on our behalf.

So we have an 8:00 PM curfew. We thoroughly enjoy this. It used to be 10:00 PM. By the time we got count done, it would be midnight. That's just a really late time, especially for our daytime leadership.

If there's any problems that arise, we really love an 8:00 PM curfew. It gets people in the door, gets them fed for dinner, and then it's kind of quiet time. We have TVs in the shelter, people can hang out, and we get to do our work at night. And it's just early enough in the day where Crystal, Sarah, and I are not getting calls at midnight being like, hey, you know, a problem has arose. ASP Non-Title is really great for us.

We have a facility that we can always take someone to. They don't have to rack in, they don't have to meet a certain threshold. We just have an available space 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So we love having a place for turnaways. And one thing that we really, really, really appreciate is the Good Neighbor Fund and having funding readily available to the community.

You know, whether this is like HUD funding that we have that's been allocated to us or Good Neighbor funds, the flex funding is very important for us and so helpful. When a client is ready to make a choice on anything, if we have the funding that's ready to go and deploy, it's easy for us to place them somewhere. It's hard when you have to call a third party and say, hey, we have this client, and they say, oh, can you fill out an application? By the time all that mess has happened, a client will often not be around or change their mind. So flex funding is really great.

Next slide, please. I'm going to give a shameless plug here. We have an ask. As you heard before, we do have a high number of clients that cannot care for themselves. We're just a low barrier shelter and we're just filled with normal people who don't have nursing degrees.

We're not PCAs. It's a level of medical care that we cannot care for. For these individuals, what ends up happening is that we take turns. So they'll be with us for a while, they become, you know, too hard for us to care, we send them to the hospital, hospital sends, discharges them back to Linda's Place, Linda's Place, you know, it's kind of a ping pong effect. And really, these people need to be cared for at a higher level than we can provide.

We do need an immediate place for families and children. Family shelter is full. I have tons of children outside. I know it sounds crazy, it's not mentioned a lot, but we have a lot of kids outside. Yesterday we placed a family of 10, so there was 4 adults in the family and 6 children under the age of 18.

Their tent— they were all living in a singular tent, and the tent was attacked by a bear. And so we had 10 people looking for a place to go, and we unfortunately cannot take anyone under the age of 18. And a family does not like to be split up. So a lot of, a lot of moving parts. Thank you to the Coalition and RS and Family Shelter for making, making moves to make stuff happen.

I had mentioned this before, but it works well when shelters have the funding to move people into housing options. So this is funding outside of that $86 a day. When we have access to like TBRA funding or ERA funding, it's really nice for us to to be able, when we have a client who's ready to move into housing, for us to, all we have to do is fill out a landlord application or place them somewhere. We control the funding. It's rather than us having to call a third party, apply for that funding as well, go through all that and hope that our client is still there.

We get to have that back and forth. So shameless plug on that. And I think that's it for, there you go.

I talked fast. There you go. No, appreciate it. Member Silvers. How are families prioritized into housing?

Into housing? That would be a EU question. With families? Mm-hmm.

Thank you, ma'am. If you'll just introduce yourself for the record and then feel free to dive in.

Hi, Crystal Abbott. I work with Henny. So how we prioritize families is there's an application they have to come up first, you know. We have about 500 applications for the Golden Lion, but we do have 4 rooms put aside for families in emergency for APD, RRS. Ruth and Tonya.

So thank you. And Member Baldwin-Day. Yeah, thank you guys so much for the work you do. So I'm curious about the, the MOUs that are required by the municipality in order for community partners to come into the shelter. Is that, is that a, is that a Health Department policy?

Is that a muni risk management policy? Like, where Where did that policy decision come from? Do we know? Yeah, I believe it's a Health Department, Risk and Safety, and Law collaboration. They don't want anyone to come in, provide some sort of care to our clients, and then an issue arise and then the municipality is liable.

Interesting. Okay. Sounds like there's a really worthy conversation to be had about that because obviously we want We want partners to have access to shelter for a variety of reasons. And I did take a look at the MOU that, that was being used. I don't know if it's still being used widely for partners, but it includes things like cybersecurity insurance, which strikes me as a really strange thing to ask, like, a family member or a PCA or someone like that to have before they are granted access to someone who's in shelter for whom they're providing care.

So that So that's something I'm really interested in resolving and chasing down an alternative because I really think we need to be able to partner with folks without putting up crazy hurdles in front of them to be able to access the folks that they want to serve. So similar question with respect to the EMT versus a PCA. Is that a— where does that policy come from that there needs to be an EMT in shelter?

So originally when we bid, um, for this contract, an EMT was listed as one of the requirements. I think it was to ensure that 911 wasn't called for basic wound care and stuff of that nature. Um, but in the scheme of things, I would say that there are more clients that need, um, that need AVSs, someone who just has like an open wound and needs like bandage care. And EMTs are not lifting clients out of their beds when they've soiled themselves and need to be showered off. They're not assisting in any of that.

And our staff are. And so when you're paying, you know, $400 a day for an EMT versus one of our staff members who are making, you know, $25 an hour and we're lifting clients out of bed, taking them to the bathroom, showering them off, cleaning their beds up. I think the, the cost benefit of an EMT versus somebody who can actually provide those services would be more beneficial to the municipality. I don't know if there's a legal, you know, roadblock or hurdle in that, but we would like to have that level of care versus somebody who's bandaging a wound. Yeah.

And is that what you find that EMTs are generally doing? I mean, I guess what, what is the utility that you have noticed for an EMT?

So the EMT can literally only like give bandages, assess somebody, and then give them like ibuprofen or Tylenol, or then at the end of the day we still got to get them to the hospital for more or deeper issues.

So it Maybe this is a slightly unfair comparison, but it sounds like the actual utility is more like a school nurse versus like active, like in-depth medical care. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful.

Member Silvers, another question?

With all the recent HUD changes, are you still using the coordinated entry prioritization system that puts people who have been unhoused the longest at the top of the list for housing, or has that changed?

I would say that we haven't been using CE as often just because certain types of funding that we have allow— like, certain people have certain types of funding and it doesn't attach to the CE. We still do use CE, but not as much. As we were required in the first place. And there's been no changes to the CE? No, not that I know of.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? It's a good conversation. We got the shelter providers here. That's helpful. Okay, just really appreciate the work you do.

That's so critical. And, um, yeah, please continue to communicate with us about ways that we can make sure that the municipality as being a good partner. So we absolutely want to do that. So thank you. Thanks so much.

Yeah, thank you.

All right, next up we have MASH.

Vasu, you sit down, you introduce yourself for the record, and then you are free to begin whenever you're ready.

And then actually, real quick housekeeping. It's 12:15. Do expect, you know, at least probably 20 minutes here. It's going to put us over on our allotted time, so we'll just beg indulgence from my colleagues to plan to run over. I suspect we'll have public comment as well.

So thank you. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Emma Fisher, the executive director with MASH. And I'm Sheldon Fisher, also with MASH. So we have our handout.

We run two shelters, the Alex, which is non-congregate, it runs out of the Alex Hotel and Suites. Linda's Place is a congregate shelter. Alex currently has 100 beds, sorry, 100 beds, and Linda's Place currently has 120, 'cause as mentioned, we surged on Tuesday to 120, and it will go up to 140 on September 28th. So over the past year, from the report that we pulled, the Alex has served 709 people, with 643 of those people being unique. Linda's Place has served 1,184, with 600 unique persons.

Out of the Alex, 136 were housed, and out of Linda's Place, 25, with Drug and alcohol treatment, 78 were referred with 25 entering treatment, and Linda's Place had 40 entries.

And so we do serve 3 meals a day for the past, since we've been opened, which is a little over a year. And so that's what those numbers are. Alex has not done, participated in warming, however Linda's Place did over this past winter. During the peak, we were serving about 100 people, which was for about 6 weeks. However, as needed, we had several people seeking night warming, and at max, we had about 20 people being warmed at once.

And the Alex has heavily utilized the Good Neighbor Fund. We've had about 80 90 to 95 people that have received assistance, whether that's, you know, help with going into housing or furnishing housing. Linda's Place has utilized about 10 to 15 people. And then for the Alex, we've helped 90 people receive assistance finding employment. Linda's Place has helped 20 people find employment.

And in addition to those 20 people that Linda's staff has assisted, they've referred about 80 to 90 people to other organizations that help with employment, whether that's PeopleReady or Nine Star.

And so as this is our first year of doing year-round shelter, one thing that we have noticed is that, that continuity really allows our staff to develop, but also to build those relationships with our clients. The Alex Shelter recently housed someone that had been at the Alex for over 250 days, and, you know, that that's longer than a winter. So that year-round shelter really allows us to have these success stories that you can't have with seasonal shelter. Yeah, and as I do want to echo what Henning said and kind of what RRS said, we've had a lot of improved coordination. We meet twice a week as shelter operators and with the city and RRS, but there's also the daily AMDOT meetings, which has really allowed us to coordinate.

So yes, that is kind of our presentation. What questions do we have? I'm gonna jump in first. So I'm looking at the top here for how many people did your shelter serve, and the Alex, you know, 709, Linda's Place, 1184, almost double, not quite. But then how many people were housed after that?

The Alex has a much higher percentage than the Linda's Place, or than Linda's Place. Can you kind of walk me through what's, what's the story there? Yeah, that's a great question. So Linda's Place is congregate. There is more people coming in and out.

The Alex being non-congregate, one of the things that we ask for clients at the Alex is that they work with case management. So they don't have to have a case manager going in to the Alex, obviously, but they do have to be actively working with the case management on site. And so, you know, this is a change that started, I think, 6 to 8 months ago. And so that requirement that if you're at the Alex, you're working with case management, has allowed those that are ready and willing to really engage and be able to find housing.

Is it a fair characterization then that requiring folks to do some sort of, some sort of steps, be that working with case management leads to them actually being more successful and being housed versus just, you know, low barriers, whatever is fine type of—. Yes. Yeah. But we also want to recognize that there is a real need for low barrier because not everyone is capable of actively engaging. Okay.

Thank you.

You go ahead.

So what What is the waiting list look like for folks who are interested in getting into the Alex? No, that's a good question. We don't actively, like we have a waiting list, but the first call when a bed opens up is to Linda's Place and 56. We want those that are in shelter to kind of have that first opportunity. And then if— and also the Safety Center.

But if those do not have anyone, then that's when we do turn to a waiting list. People do call in, but it's not frequent. I don't know off the top of my head how many people are on that waiting list, but yeah. Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about, you know, moving folks through sort of a ladder of engagement with services. And it seems to me that, that, that, that need is a little bit opaque, right?

How many folks do we have that are in a non-congregate shelter situation who might actually be prepared to go into congregate shelter, but the opportunity doesn't exist, or to move from congregate shelter into, into housing, right? We want people to be moving through as they're able. So, yeah, just, it strikes me that, you know, moving from a non-congregate environment into housing is a, that's a, it's a nearer step than moving from congregate shelter into housing. And so I'm just, I'm curious how many, what the gap looks like in terms of non-congregate shelter that just, that doesn't exist that we could utilize if it did. So thought experiment, and if at some future point you have thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.

Yeah. No, that's a good, good thing to ask.

Member Park. Thank you. Are there restrictions on conduct in the Alex Hotel? Is it sober living or—. So no, it's not sober living.

It's the same requirements that you'd experience at other shelters. So, you know, they do have a curfew. It's a later curfew. It's 10 PM. You do have a roommate.

You know, if there are conflicts, if it's a safety concern, someone might be discharged, but usually if there's— we try to work on those roommate conflicts, but it's— and when people enter, they do have to do a search. So the same shelter rules apply to all the shelters, so no weapons, no substances are allowed on site, but if someone comes on site intoxicated, it's only if they're a safety concern, that that is dealt with, but it's just being intoxicated is allowed. Thank you. Is there anything that you think, as providers, is there anything that you need from the city or from— and I don't want to get in trouble— but is there anything you need from the city or from the Assembly or from the Health Department that you need to be able to do your job better that you're not getting? Is there any any barriers can get out of your way?

Yeah, that's a great question. So there are, as has been brought up, there are people with that need help with their ADLs or have higher needs. So these are just rough numbers because it does fluctuate. At Linda's Place, there's usually 10 to 15 people that should be in an assisted living facility. There's another 15 to 20 that could handle independent living but still need a higher level of care than we can provide.

At the Alex, it's probably 5 to 10 assisted, sometimes less, but 5 to 10 that could handle independent living but still need a higher level of care. So there is that real need for people that don't have anywhere to go but still need a higher level of care than we can provide. Linda's Place does have EMT services. The Alex The Alex does not, but we do recognize that the Alex still needs that assistance. At Linda's Place in the past year, our EMTs saw over 1,000 people, 1,052.

They did not give me unique client numbers, but that's how many people they helped with. And so at the Alex, the municipality's clinic does stop by about once a month, and then we do have other organizations like the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Clinic that stops by, or Salamedics did have a clinic for a time, but I believe they no longer have the funding for that, but it's kind of hit or miss. So EMTs at the ALEKS, even if it's not, even if it's only once a week, would be useful.

And really what Henning said, the MOUs, those having a faster turnaround and more transportation. They did bring up good points with theirs. Okay, understood. Okay, excellent. Any other questions from members?

Doesn't look like it. Anybody on the phone or any closing remarks? Any, any last thoughts? Anything else at all? No, we're grateful to be here and present.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you're doing in the city. All right, we're going to this time move to public public comment. I see Jamie in the audience.

Anybody else going to be wanting to testify? Got 2 folks. All right, Mr. Travis, if you'll set up our public comment here.

All right, Mr. Peterson, name, what part of town. You got 3 minutes. Hi, uh, Kenny Peterson, Midtown.

Yeah, I first of all just wanted to say thank you. You've been at this for a long time, and, and what an amazing blessing to have our friends from RRS and Henning and MASH here. We had an Operation Winter Surge yesterday, which you would have loved to be at, in Midtown. We gathered in the Walmart parking lot and there was a about 15, 20 community members that came out to do a little pilot effort in Midtown with the beds that you guys made available, that you made available. And we went to some of the businesses and we— sorry, it's my magnetic personality here.

I'd just start moving the podium around. I could walk around.

I'll be—. Yeah, no, I'm serious, give it a shot. Let's see. Yeah, no, it's good. Um, and so it was amazing, we had, uh, new folks, um, uh, show up that I hadn't seen before.

A new outreach worker that just moved up from California, um, from Salvation Army, was there transporting folks in real time. And the amount of people that we had. The thing that was meaningful about it, and I think I just have a request, not a request, Ruth and Tonya of the HOPE team put together a chart of how we could do better outreach for the community, and it's split up by the police beats, which is roughly a community council or several community councils per outreach area. And they requested individuals who would take stewardship for those areas, and Midtown being one of them. And so I said I could do Midtown, just not as the primary person.

But they're looking for folks who could take stewardship in different areas of town to make sure that as the cold comes for the winter, that someone could be checking on people each day. And unfortunately, in outreach, we only have 3 groups that do general outreach. Everyone else does by referrals, and so the general outreach is by Kathleen and Emily, the Coalition, and the HOPE team. Everything else is not covered, and so we didn't have enough people to cover all those areas. And so those are roughly community councils, and so as you hear people that are concerned about homelessness in your visits to your community councils, we need folks who will cover each of those areas to do rounds, especially as we go into the fall to check on people to see that they have safety checks and so on.

After a heavy snow, that they can go around to their same area. So we could use some help in outreach by community council or by area or even by assembly if you want to take a little bit larger chunk, if you like, yourselves. And then our goal is to have a Good Neighbor Fund available for each of you. And so we have some flyers that when you go around, if you could take those flyers around to help contribute to that outreach work too. So, so a little bit of effort that you guys could hopefully do to help support some of those areas, and we can help you to do that if you like.

So thank you. Excellent. Thanks so much for, for testifying. Anyone else? I'm actually going to sit down if it's okay.

Part of it's curly. Where you go? Sure.

Uh, question. As the self-anointed head of the Anchorage Homeless Community Council Can I get 5 minutes, sir? You can have 3 minutes. You will not recognize me. I will not recognize you.

At least publicly. So, Jamie Lopez, East Anchorage, formerly Coalition, formerly homeless. So you will not pay for outreach. You will pay for any number of police officers. Some are getting $100 grand, $200 grand.

There's a guy last year made $357,000 more than the chief of police. Brian Wilson makes $214,000. Most of them are making $150, $190 grand. But being a police officer is a barrier to helping people. And so when you attach services to police officers, it's going to fail.

So the latest sort of metrics from Anchorage Police Department anti-camping ordinance from July, July 31st: 17 arrests, 155 voluntarily complied, 4 accepted services. That is a 2.6% acceptance rate. So it's gone down. And if you actually include arrests and voluntarily complied, it's actually 2.3%. It's not getting better, it's getting worse.

So aside from that, Anchorage Recovery Center, I actually live right next to it. I can see the top of the roof, and I could tell you any number of things about that place, but I don't have time right now. Uh, restorative reentry services, 8 PM curfew, that was not hard to understand why people are not going in shelters. These are adults, they have communities, interact with people, and more or less, when you treat adults like children, uh, sometimes they just go outside. Not only that, Some of the shelters are not conducive for the environments that people wanna have sort of living experience.

So you talk about HMIS outflow, 41% are unknown, 29% other homeless. Well, you add them both together, that's about 70% that you'd have no idea where they went. They just went back outside. Hope Team and True North, it said 42 were connected to treatment, but if you looked at the table, only 29 were listed. Something didn't add up there with the numbers.

Um, Mr. Williams is now doing sort of the efforts instead of, uh, Mr. Fuchs. And so the unfortunate thing is, um, again, like I was saying, it's like Stockholm syndrome, uh, where you expect somebody to identify with their captor when they've been traumatized, and you want them to take services. That's not trauma-informed, that's trauma-induced. And so it's no real surprise why your numbers are going down when you drive people like cattle endlessly and then you expect them to accept services from somebody in uniform. Not only that, but they may not have the ability and freedom to talk to people when they're next to police.

Uh, aside from that, um, the Alex policy— why there are more people cycling through— they have a 90-day sort of, uh, policy now where they kick people out. Part of that is because they did not have enough shelter beds last fall. There was pressures about turnaways on the front end from congregates. They're kicking them out the back end and then cycling people through. So I have 8 seconds left.

Uh, what can I say? $177.38, $177.39 Per day to house somebody at East 56th. $86.57 Going to Henning. Again, cost $62,000 to house a person. I'm not being paid.

I may use the facilities. You won't pay me. Thank you for your testimony. Anybody else?

Come on up, introduce yourself, what part of town you're from. You have 3 minutes. Hello everyone, Alexis Johnson back again. I'm from Eagle River. Um, I just want to give a massive shout out— Kenny Peterson is in the room, and speaking of Good Neighbor Fund, he is up for Neighbor of the Year.

Neighbors Bank is hosting a nationwide, uh, contest for Neighbor of the Year for his efforts for Good Neighbor Fund. So just wanted to put it on the public record, Kenny Peterson is an boss, and it's crucial for the work that we do. So congrats to Kenny Peterson. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you for highlighting.

That's great. Congratulations, Mr. Peterson. Okay, anybody else? Okay, hearing none, this meeting is adjourned.