HHAND Commission Monthly Meeting August 2025

I second. Second. Any, uh, updates to the agenda or any changes anyone would like to see in discussion?

All right, I'm asking anyone opposed to approval of the agenda as presented. Are we going to take D1 out?

Oh, um, I think they can stay on there as action items and we just won't have the resolution to take action, or should we remove them? I mean, that's a good question. You could, you could, um, amend the order of business at this point to remove them from the agenda, but if you think you might want to maybe address them at a future— like, you're not going to take action on them this meeting because we don't have drafts, so text or anything. If you think you might want to take action at them on a future meeting, probably would be better to leave them on, and then when we get to that point, you can vote to table them for the next meeting. That's probably the better thing if you're— there's still things that you want to discuss in the future if you can't get to them this time.

Leave them on there. Yeah. We'll leave them on there then. Uh, approval of the minutes. Uh, you had as part of your packet the minutes from our July 2nd meeting, so give everyone a minute to look at those, and then would also entertain a motion to approve those.

Uh, motion to approve. Second. Second. Uh, any edits or amendments to the minutes?

Hearing none, any opposition to approval of the minutes as presented? None. All right. I skipped right over roll call, so I'm going to go backwards. Is that okay?

All right. I'll start with Shané. We'll go this direction, and then we'll have guests introduce themselves as well. I'm here. Jessica Foss.

Laura Raines, Commissioner.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Daniel Sager, Commissioner. Kyle Milkey, Staff. Jed Drollet, Staff. Darcy Montalvo, Human Services Division Manager, Anchorage Health Department. Frankie Dahl, Staff.

Chief Burberry, Staff. I'm Abe Hernandez, NYSARDC Center for Workforce Excellence Director.

I'm Ruth Shane-Lavin, Nine Stars Education— Nine Stars CEO and President. And we had somebody online.

Online, do you want to go? Maybe Kim, we can start with Kim. I can go. Sure, yeah. Kimberly White, Anchorage Health Department.

Lila Taylor, Anchorage Health Department.

McKenna Bacon, Anchorage Health Department. All right, sorry about skipping that. All right, our action items. We talked a little bit about this before Julie got here, but we had 2 action items on the agenda today. They were both items to review and approve a resolution.

We don't have those resolutions prepared. Prepared right now for discussion so we can have some discussion about the future of those two action items at this time and then can either make a motion to table them or a motion to—. Yeah, I mean, they would just die if you don't take any action, right? Yeah, okay. So starting with the resolution regarding the municipal initiative, 10,000 Homes in 10 Years.

I know we had started some of that discussion at previous meetings, and I don't have a resolution at this time, but is the, the will of the body to table that and continue that conversation in either a work session or at a future meeting to develop a resolution? Wasn't Graham supposed to come back? I think that's what we were holding on to, was his availability to come back. Yeah, so, you know, we can, we can reach out to him and see. We had Nolan Clowda come back and talk.

That was a presentation that We did have—. Okay, we did have Nolan talk about it. Graham won't be coming back to present on that. That's true, he's in a different role. He's in a different role right now.

That's why Nolan came back. Okay, so if we want to have an update from Nolan again, I can reach out. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, in terms of, um, you know, in terms of procedure, I mean, I think probably it would make the most sense for you guys to table it to the next meeting, and then either you'd have maybe further discussion with the administration, or maybe You could draft a resolution if you think you can. Do you think you know what you want to say?

Um, was— excuse me— was this a resolution that Michelle had mentioned to us? Yes. Yeah. Yes. So I, I would, I would think we would want to table it to have a conversation with Michelle available on her availability to either develop a resolution or inspire more conversation around it.

So would you want to table it until October then, since Michelle isn't present today? Because the next one would be September 3rd, and then we would have October. So if she's present in September—. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so we'll—.

In the actual resolution, we do though. Yeah, we do want to make that resolution to table, um, action item D1. Project Item B1 to the meeting of October 1st. October 1st. I make a motion then to move it to the April vote date.

You want to entertain that vote?

Anyone opposed to tabling that item to the October meeting? No opposition. All right, action item number 2, D2, which was review and approve a resolution in regards to AO 2025-74 version S1. We had had some email conversation through Frankie about the potential of drafting that resolution in advance of the assembly meeting, the assembly work session and the assembly meeting to vote on that particular item. The schedules and stars did not align to make that happen, so that item has now passed the assembly, is part of municipal code and is being enforced.

So if there was still a will or um, interest in drafting a resolution around that item. It probably makes more sense to have it be a whole new item and not this one referencing that AO that is already passed. So probably easiest to just let that one die. Yeah, I think so. Okay.

Yeah. Um, and you know, Julie, before you got here, there had been some discussion about maybe inviting, um, the CAP team or someone from the police department to the next meeting to, to talk about the process of enforcement and how that's working since it's been in place. Um, so we can talk to Thea when she's back next week and see if she can invite someone. Yeah, I think a lot of the conversation around that item was questions about implementation and what that might look like. So I think hearing how it's actually going might inform—.

Yeah, moving forward on that. All right, moving to informational items. This It's probably gonna be a fairly fast meeting because Fee is on leave. So informational item number 1, which is ongoing business update from.

Special Assistance to the Mayor on Housing and Homelessness, which is Thea, who's on leave. So unless someone else was making that presentation, I don't believe so. We will move to update from Community Safety and Development Division. Take it away, Jed. So we have, we have some stuff in the works.

We always have stuff in the works, but we— so our 2025 action plan was approved by the Assembly, so it is ready for submission to HUD once we get the forms signed by the Municipal Manager. They are currently routing for her signature and will be signed imminently, so we will be probably about a week ahead of our deadline, which is much, much further ahead of our deadline than we've been in the past few years. So kudos to Chase in particular for getting that process running smoothly and being ahead of schedule for the first time in a while. So we are excited about that. You know, I presented at the last CAN Commission meeting about that action plan and some of the projects that we're proposing to do in that.

Um, so it'll be exciting to get that, um, submitted. Um, we are going to be doing some requests for grant proposals for, for various pots of money, some of them in the 25 action plans, some of those PPD items, uh, public services, and, uh, some of the HOME money. Um, so those will be coming out. We also have some, some prior year money that we will need to reallocate from either projects that didn't move forward or projects that came in under budget. We have a couple of those, so we'll probably have a couple of relatively small, but in the maybe $200,000 to $400,000 range for projects.

I'm currently thinking that, you know, on the topic of the micro units that's coming up on the playground, which actually I can just I'll get that updated as well, um, that those might be actually tailored toward micro unit projects, um, because the RFP for the initial micro unit project got a lot of interest, um, and so, you know, they did select a bidder for that one, but there's clearly a lot more interest in that in the community. And with the success of In Our Backyard, um, it's, it's really what seems to be some momentum behind that idea. So we may decide to tailor our upcoming solicitations around that type of project because these are relatively small buckets of money. But, you know, the idea behind the microgreens is that it can be scaled to relatively small projects as well and develop an infrastructure of relatively inexpensive and relatively quick to build small projects kind of scattered throughout the city. That could be either in the shelter niche or actually providing housing.

You know, those are two different things really from our perspective and different buckets of money, but, you know, everything helps within the system. So, so stay tuned, we'll have some stuff coming out on that. Another thing that we're going to be working on is our plan for the end of Treasury Emergency Rental Assistance and what we're going to do to maybe try to cushion that blow. And when that money comes to an end at the end of September, that's a hard deadline. We are talking about trying to reallocate some of our Home ARP funding toward additional rental assistance through those existing projects to cushion that blow a little.

We're still not sure quite how much money we're going to have available for that due to kind of other, other discussions about how that money is going to be allocated. So, um, there is kind of a tight time frame to get stuff in place before September 30th, so we are going to do something, um, but exactly what that's going to look like is Unfortunately, still not, still not. Um, one thing I will say, um, kind of on that topic, because it's like a couple of you are grantees through ERA, is we really need you to submit those, this particular, those weekly numbers, um, that Frankie sends out the weekly emails about. Those are actually really important for the purpose of deciding about allocation of other funds because we really need to know, um, particularly if we're going to focus on, um, people who have been moved from homelessness into housing, how many people we have in those buckets, and how much money it might take to provide some additional rental assistance for that. So if you have not submitted your numbers for this week, and if you are in this room, you have not submitted your numbers, we've only gotten one.

Please don't make Frankie chase you down. Yeah, please don't make us chase you down. We do need those numbers as soon as you can get them so we know what the current state is of how many people we're helping, um, and how many are in which category so we, we can make informed decisions about allocation of our funds. So just wanted to make a plug for that while I, while I have you here. Um, on the micro units project, um, we— they, they did select a bidder, um, for, uh, constructing the units at the municipally owned site at the 2 Mercator, a more complex It's going to be 24 units with space to add 8 additional is the proposal that the developer came in.

There is a potential for additional funding that could cover those 8 units. So we are kind of working on that behind the scenes. And Thea, when she's back, can provide much more detail about that project. But that's— we're seeing that as kind of a model project that can hopefully be replicated either with other pots of public money or just with other resources in the community to kind of demonstrate that it can be done and build a pipeline of construction and production of modular units that can be put up relatively quickly. And again, thanks to In Our Backyard for really pioneering this.

And this is really like a second step where we're demonstrating it can be done on a larger scale but still at a scale where it's feasible to do quickly and relatively cheaply. So, um, very exciting, um, to have the micro units. And I can answer any questions people have about, um, CSD or the micro units stuff. Do you know, are they planning on adding more units to that same lot down the road, or is that pretty much maxed out? That's pretty—.

The 32 would pretty much max out that site. And the way it's currently being framed is that this would be a temporary project for 2 years And then they'd move them. That might, that could then, you know, might move to a different site, might, they might keep it permanently there, which would require some permitting things and some probably additional site improvements. Or, you know, or they could, you know, or they could just disband it at that point if it, you know, it's not working or if there's something that might be a better use of that space or, you know, there's, it preserves some flexibility. But yeah, the 32 units is about as much as you can really physically fit on the site.

Okay. I was just curious when I was looking at the numbers if the cost per square foot to build those would drop the more units you put in the same lot, or if that— a lot of that had to do with not that many units in one lot. Like, if, like, if you were to do 70, yeah, it should drop, I would think. You know, I— it's not so much the, the lot size as just the, the number of units. So, you know, since they're manufactured off-site, um, really it's the economies of scale.

You would get would be in the manufacturing process. So yes, I think your, your per unit cost would drop if you did more units, and you would need a larger site for those units. So in that sense, it would, it would lead to lower unit costs. But then, you know, you've got the question of, well, like, how are you finding that site? And how much does it cost if you're acquiring it, or if there's a ground lease, or whatever the situation is?

Part of the deal with this project is since this is municipally owned land, there's not a cost for the land itself. Um, but yeah, if you were to do it on a larger lot with more units, um, you would potentially see some economies of scale with the manufacturing. Are they made up here? They are made up here. They are?

Okay, I figured they—. Yeah, yeah, there are actually— there are several, um, manufacturers that, that do kind of different variations on this, and, and this, this bidder selected one of them, um, to go with it, um, for this. But yes, they are made out of dirt. Can you clarify the lot itself? Which lot is it?

It's the— yeah, it's kind of confusing. And, and, um, I was trying to explain it to someone and then I was like, wait, I think I'm wrong. So it's the, um, at the Tudor and Elmore site, it's like the— it's, it's not the Tozer track, which is next to the main Tudor-Elmore site, but it is on that side of it. Toward Tudor, there's the—. Is it where the motorcycle—.

There's the motorcycle school. So there's a, there's a space where the motorcycle school is, which is rented from the city. That's a paved lot. And then there's a dirt lot south of that. Okay.

And then there's a fenced-in area that is again paved south of that. And that fenced-in area is the site that I was definitely looking at. I was telling people the middle section. Yeah, those two. So it's very confusing.

And they did look at several different parcels within that area when they were pulling back up. Can you give me the address? I was just gonna— I mean, yeah, directly. You can—. So let's see if you can— if you go to Tudor and Almore, I can see it from my office.

Yeah. So if you go to Tudor, yeah, and zoom in.

Go west of Boniface. Yeah, west. Yeah, so—. See where Wendy's is? You're going to go like right across.

Yeah, so it's that— so that big track there is— so you can see the motorcycle school there. So if you put it on the satellite view.

So zoom in. So yeah, so you see that green area is the dirt lot. And the area south of that, just below that, that has all those cars in it in this—. Because that was formerly used Storage for cars. Um, not, not that one, the one just right.

Yeah, so yeah, zoom in a little more. Okay, so you see the green area, and then just below it there's a long narrow strip of land that's full, crammed with cars. That's it. Um, that's the site. It, it is a little awkward in proportions, but it is paved and level and does have fencing around it already, which were considerations in, in choosing that as the site.

Is the intent for the access to be off of Tudor, off of Elm, or is that too far in the weeds now? Um, yeah, the access is, I think, intended to be off of that small street off of Tudor. Um, but I don't know if they've—. I, yeah, I don't know if it goes at that level. Yeah, I was definitely describing it as the grassy lot right there, the unpaved lot.

Um, and I had some of the same thoughts as Daniel where I was like, this is huge. But yeah, knowing it's just a little strip, definitely. It was kind of back and forth about like, well, you know, that's a larger lot, but then it's like, it's unpaved. So we're getting to prepare it. Yeah.

Is there going to be parking for people? I don't think there's intended to be parking at the, at the site. I think the target is going to be people that don't have cars. I think that's kind of the idea. Yeah, there's a bus stop there.

Yeah. Um, so that's kind of the target area because they are going to be recovery residences. So there's going to be kind of a structured program that people are in while they're housed there. Um, so, you know, the operator of that— there will be an RFP that goes out for the operator of that that will kind of flesh out some of the details of how it's— how the resident experience is going to work.

Any other questions? Um, I had maybe just a clarifying question. Is it the ERA money or the rental—. The rental assistance money? Um, so on a very, very small scale, so I have a guest who did recently that housing voucher, like in April, and just now in July just recently got into the program.

And so then he Would potentially be eligible if they are ending the rental assistance? Probably we would just limit it to people that are already receiving assistance through the program, but it would kind of depend on what we hear about, sort of what the demand is and how much we would need. You know, not— we haven't currently been talking to the grantees about reopening the application process to get new people in because they they got like more people than they could possibly fund through the initial application process. But, um, that, you know, is not, not 100% yet. Yeah, and an important note with that when talking to clients or people or calling about that is that, uh, the timelines of like when our program opened up and when the state program for their housing vouchers were around the same time.

Ours is not operating off of like a voucher basis. It's usually just agreements with individuals and landlords and things like that. And so oftentimes if they're talking about a voucher system, it's probably because they got one from the state which has a longer time horizon than our short-term funds.

Parks and Rec Committee visit August 14th. Frankie and I were chatting a little bit right before the meeting. That is still on. We are still on the agenda there. We, we by we, I mean me just now, made that offer that if they wanted some kind of formal presentation about what the HAN Commission does, I suggested that maybe we could present the annual report we just did and talk a little bit about what we did last year, what our plans are for this year, what we've done so far in this first half of this year.

So we'll see what, if they wanted something more formal like that, or if they just wanted us to be there and, you know, have just informal chatting. I am planning on being at that meeting, and if anyone else wants to join, they should definitely join. I know some people had conflicts with that day, but it would be wonderful to have more people here. It's at 11 AM, is that right? Yeah, 6 PM.

6 PM after. Yes, it's at the Spinard Recreation Center, Northwood. And yeah, like, if you go, if behind Spinard Builders Supply right there, kind of the road curves and you go past all the complexes and then you take a right. It's like right there. I can send the address out if you'd like.

They have pickleball courts there too. So, and then the Roberts Rules training on September 3rd. I believe that's still planned, still on the agenda. So that is planned for us. And that could be a time also that we could have maybe some of those procedural documents that we could give out, not necessarily to change at that time or have discussion about, but as we talk about Robert's Rules, having some of that same documents in front of us of what we've already approved and what our rules beyond Robert's Rules are for us in that particular way.

And I'm assuming that still works for everyone, and if it doesn't, let Frankie know. Yes. All right, that took us through our agenda real fast. So general public comments, we still just have the 3 online, but we do have guests. We have Jamie here and we have 9 seconds, so I'm assuming— You want to make any public comments?

Yeah, I'm Ruth and I've been at MassStar for 33 years, so been watching a lot of things happen.

We started out just education employment— or education services and then became education employment services, then it was education for employment, and we just began to really focus on getting people out of poverty. And, you know, when I hear about the housing, I'm always happy to know that there's housing available. But we also have a goal to take people out of the need for subsidized housing. When you get off public assistance, which we put during the last 2 years of COVID we put 1,747 families into employment, unsubsidized employment, and 947 left public assistance roles. But very few of them left not needing housing assistance, daycare assistance, medical assistance, utility assistance, etc.

And so that doesn't break the poverty level. If you, if you get off public assistance without training and without the ability to advance on the job, you know, some people are there just for a very short time and then they're done and they're ready and they're off. We never see them again unless they come back and say thank you. But outside of that, most people who have been who have been in poverty. And if you're in poverty, you've got some kind of trauma in some shape or form, so often.

And so when they are in that situation, they don't overcome that right off the bat. You know, there's a lot of PTSD stuff, you know, that is in people's lives when they've been in trauma. So our goal is to find funding and to build our Center for Workforce Excellence so that we can help people not only get off public assistance, but help them get into a job, get into some training, get into a better job, get some more training, get a better job. And we'd like to follow people for several years so that— and no offense to the government because we appreciate everything they do, but nobody pays for follow-up, and so people stay in poverty. And we are just really anti-poverty.

So, and, you know, I personally, my daughter had cancer twice. And she was, her last bout, over the last 3 years she had this. She was out of work for 7 months. And we had moved into her, we'd sold our house and moved in with them. And we were going to buy another house, never happened.

But we were there when she was sick. And we paid the mortgage. If we had our own house, we couldn't pay the mortgage. And it's hard when people don't have— she has a master's degree and a wonderful job. She didn't work for 7 months.

So we get.

All the need for some of the poverty support, but unfortunately she didn't need it because we were there. But most families don't have that, so we really want to see people progress and get past the need for poverty. And as much as I'm happy to see housing, we really want to see less housing and more prevention, you know, in terms of that. And if I'm not mistaken, Jed, you can probably answer this, HUD is now starting to look at that kind of ability, which they have not done much in the past. Yeah, there's definitely interest in preventing homelessness.

Yeah, so it's prevention, and it's if people are in poverty, it's the people who, you know, are afraid that they're going to lose their housing. That fear takes away their power, their sound thinking. You know, it's not a safe place to be. So we want to prevent the homelessness, but if they're homeless, we also want to help them get past that into those other things. So that's our mission in a reader's digest version.

And I'm really happy to say I've been at NYSARH 33 years, but Abe has been there 20 years now. And it took him 3— he left twice and came back, but he's still got 20 years in. And now he's the director of our new Center for Workforce Excellence. One of the reasons we want to do this center is we want to integrate our funding so that we don't have to have a job developer for this program and a job developer for that program. Where in one center we're providing job development and somebody becomes an expert, and then you send people from this program to the center and back to the case managers, etc.

So we're real excited. And yesterday we had a ribbon-cutting for a new computer lab that we have, and there were 147 people there, at least. That's the number of names we had. So don't tell the fire department, we don't know how full that was. It may have been okay, but we don't know.

But the idea was really very exciting. A lot of people that were there were— a few people were donors, but a lot of people were tradespeople and, you know, apprenticeship people and get training. And those are the kind of partners that we're looking for, as well as funding so that we can pay for our case management and all of that stuff. But anyway, that's a little bit about what we do. I used to be able to come to these meetings a lot, and I haven't had the time to do it.

Now I'm sending Abe. He'll be here and keep track. But just keep that in mind as you guys are planning and thinking because it's really so much better for people's self-worth to know that, that they can do this and they can raise their family. I'll give you one more quick story. We had a family that was homeless, a mother and two children living in her car.

And she came to— found out about Nine Star and for some reason wasn't eligible for public assistance. And so she came to us and we helped her get housing and we helped her find a job. But we had to hurry up and do that. And so we didn't have the time to teach her how to get a job, the next job, and prepare and, you know, all that stuff. We just helped her do this.

A few months later, her job went away. The funding had gone away. And so she came back and we, again, were in emergency mode and we helped her do that. And the—. But she wanted to get into a job with— where people were housed homeless, you know, had been in that work field.

And we helped her get that job. And a few months later, she She called back and she said, "Oh, my money funding went away." We said, "Work with her and work with the company." And they found another position for her. So she was stable. A few months later, she called again. This time she called and she said, "My son, who is still in school, hasn't dropped out, he wants a job to help with the family income." And so we didn't have a program that fit his age bracket that he was eligible for, but we brought him in and we helped him with his resume and with his interviewing skills, and he got a job.

And we— his mother called back and said he's so excited and we're doing well and, you know, everything is going tremendously well. And we're breaking the cycle of poverty. And that's what I think we need to do. That's— at least that's my heart. So Abe can add to that if I didn't take all the thunder.

I just want to say the center is a personalized and—. How would you say—. Complete design training hub for Alaskans to come from, or move them from poverty to prosperity. That's what we want to do. And of course, we're offering academic employment and development and personal services at our center.

So we're very excited to be able to reconstruct that location for that because we saw there's a need. And having the event we had yesterday, having the attendance and people that were there, I think the need is now known. And so we're really excited that people know that we're there. Ready to assist with their clients. And we've been partners with all kinds of agencies.

We can't do this alone. We shouldn't do this alone. We should all— there's housing people and there's food people and there's whatever. So we need partnerships and we appreciate our partners very much. So that's kind of how we operate.

Very exciting times. Thank you. Anyone have any questions? I want to make sure we get some contact information so people come up with questions later, or if— oh, how we get cards. So you think sometimes we get comments from people after they watch our recordings.

So yeah, having, having that information, you can put it, put it in the minutes and then it will be available for people. Thank you. I like Frankie said, we do have— just saying, if you would like to join us, we have to make sure there isn't any kind of conflicts of interest, and so we will definitely look into that for sure. We definitely have MUNI grantees sitting around this table. We just declare conflicts.

Yeah, okay. All right. Okay. Hi, I'm Jamie Lopez, East St. Bridge formerly Coalition. Some of the people in this room, some I do not, um, but you know, there's a long background in the story.

Kenny Peterson got the 3-hour or the 5-hour volume and chapter version. I don't know how much time I have here, but clearly there's a problem. She got longer than 3 minutes. But anyway, some— was it Ruth? Yes.

Some of what Ruth said resonated with me, and there are a couple things I'm going to try and touch on. I'll try and get close to 3 minutes. But, you know, I got a voucher, EHB, homeless income, and unverbal for a 2-year period. Some people wish I still was, but Obviously not. So the whole thing was, if I make between $42,000 to $45,000 a year, I lose the thing.

If I'm making $20 to $25 an hour, it's 30% of your income, so therefore it does not make sense, or there's no financial benefit to taking a job in that range. And then if I work for peanuts, essentially, you know, I'm trapped in the poverty trap, or I can't go and help people. I spent a tremendous amount of money that I made the money from Coalition and then money when I totaled my card 2 days before that job, and I was in a rental car 10 months taking food to people. Uh, not the smartest way I should have run a card, but, um, the, the whole practicality of it all is that basically, uh, you get into this little trap. And so for me to be able to help people right now, either I have to take high-dollar contract work, short-term duration, or I would have to find somebody to pay me 80 grand a year where it makes sense for everybody to use the thing and then they move on.

The general scope of the nature is the people outside right now. They're not getting a lot of help and so while a lot of people are focusing on housing or housing-based case management, we hope that people at the top of the wait list and 2 or 3 in the behavioral health programs, there is not much focus on the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds that are outside. And so coalition data May 31st, it essentially showed that there were approximately 1,623 unique kids within a 90-day period, uh, you had 556— this is unsheltered— that would just repeat within the past 30 days. It's at that time that touched HMIS. Then you had 734 set to go inactive, people within 30, 90 days, essentially, uh, no idea where they've gone.

They've not touched provider, or 5 to 10% self-resolved, and the rest are pretty much outside. And then you had 333 inactive once they hit the R90. Stop tracking. Again, don't know where they are if they're still outside. And so then there's shadow population behind it, people falling in every day and everything else.

But there are a lot of people outside that need help and they're not getting it. Uh, bumped into a gentleman yesterday, and essentially, uh, he's been banned from the hotel for a year. And it doesn't seem like there's really an appeals process going on with some of the hotels right now. They're blacklisted, either private or specifically ones that are sort of not discussed, but I think there should be some sort of independent appeals process and review. So right now what you have is the AB 2025-74 has to pass.

Anybody who becomes a criminal and they don't have places to go, and then if you can't go in a hotel, what are you supposed to do? And they saw that there was something on the agenda pertaining to that. I don't know where it's heading and where it's going, but more or less, yeah, I, I'm looking at the, the trajectory of things, and it's not looking good. And you know, every time there's an abatement, people go 6 different ways. It becomes that much more difficult for people all around this table to support.

Support people when they have no idea where they're going. And now with this thing, they can just tell people, go to the next place, go to the next place, go to the next place. And they're moving so quickly, they're losing housing opportunities too. Because clearly, you know, the AHFC and the vouchers there, if you don't respond to them in 2 weeks, you lose the thing. And so, you know, people are losing really good shots at housing in addition to I'm not going to answer from like the Robert Woodhouse and anything else.

So all I can say is I've been taking up a lot of time. If anybody has any questions, I'm willing to answer them. But pretty much for the past 2 years, I have been going to camps, taking food, going at all hours, and I'm pretty much the only guy doing it. And I wish the meanie would recognize that they need to do this and not do it without law enforcement, because they need to tie law enforcement to it. People just check out the resources and things.

So, all right, I'll stop talking unless anybody has questions for me. Thank you for sharing your story.

Commissioner comments?

Anyone have commissioner comments? Dave did send me something to say for him, so he wanted to, uh, State asked— I could just read it— I'd be interested if the commission would have thoughts about the winter shelter plan slash RFP process. Uh, he believes there's a better way that allows for more planning and the ability to braid multiple funding streams together. Um, not saying that the municipality shouldn't pay for emergency shelter, that that should be an expense, but paying for all of it through RFP and contract seems inefficient and expensive. So we wanted to broach that and perhaps bring it to a future meeting to talk about how that procurement process works, why it works the way it does, because we know there's rules in place that govern how some of that happens, and just brainstorm if there are more efficient ways to plan that.

My response back to him and what I would share as part of that comment is that yes, and I share Jed's excitement about the action plan being so far ahead of schedule. I would also share that, you know, having some of these shelter contracts and RFPs happening earlier in the year, I think, is always great. I hope we're talking about winter already. I know we are in the sense of with these other two shelters, or 56th and the new shelter, talking about the surge capacity that exists. But yeah, just doing some of that planning and thinking about that timing and what processes are in, in place and where that can be.

Yeah, and so Dave brought this up, and, and, you know, I think it'd probably be something good to put on a future meeting agenda. But, um, you know, we're— municipality is very receptive to ideas about, um, you know, doing a better process for shelter, um, funding, in part because what we've been doing the past couple of years really, really can't continue. I mean, the buckets of funding we've been using were kind one-time things that are going to be exhausted. And so I can't— I'm not involved in any of those discussions, obviously, so I can't speak for anything at that policy level. But I am quite sure that municipality will be interested in the input from the new commission on how to improve that process.

Right. I had a question, if it's okay. So it's the last assembly through two contracts that passed in any registered workers' CWS. And so they reduced the capacity from 2 to 150. Part of it is, they built a building, a facility, and no one signed up to buy it.

And so it's sort of a madhouse. But the fact is, that's why a lot of people leave. They have a bad experience, and they leave, and they don't come back. And so likewise, you also add 100 beds of the old, uh, uh, Clarigas/Fantasy San Fisk building where 100 people are going to be. And so you have 250 beds in Then you have 100 at the Alex Hotel, essentially for a 2-year contract, which is— so you have 350 beds.

But the whole thing I'm looking at is that people are haggling over 50 beds when the numbers outside are far, far, far beyond even what's— they're discussing. And so then the question becomes, all right, when they are displacing people endlessly I know some of the people have already sort of been impacted by SG right now, where they're going, people, uh, they're worried that they're not going to be able to get stable by winter. And then you're going to have more deaths, or you're going to have people losing fingers, toes, or whatever else. And then the question becomes, uh, not only where are people supposed to go, but how do you support people so that it's not the worst possible outcome? And that's what I try to warn people about with Davis Park is you have to go into snow cone.

And maybe it's not the best possible solution, but it's better than being in the neighborhoods without any sort of shelter to yourself or, you know, obviously in parks. And there was a story out of Alaska Public Media just yesterday, the day before, and discussing that, you know, and people that were there and some from Davis Park Metro Station Park, some, you know, the other place. But the question then becomes, I don't know if this commission wants to discuss the possibility of supporting the idea of sanctioned camping because there are, you know, if you can't build shelter and you can't house people, they do need to go somewhere. And then maybe you provide, you know, some basic necessities on site that allows the providers to go there. You're not going 16 different ways, people aren't getting criminal records, and, you know, it improves the prospects of the worst possible outcome, which is not perfect.

But it's a trajectory and then there are pathways out of it so that, you know, you get to better outcomes. And, you know, substance abuse, same thing, you know, people have to want to change. I think everybody pretty much highlighted the concept of community. Uh-oh, I must have missed that one. No, I'm all for it.

Yeah, I think that when the task force was formed and the assembly resolution—. Resolution—. Resolution—. 2023—. Yeah, I think that the Hand Commission weighed in.

At that point and did support the creation of sanctioned camping. I think that is content to the administration at this point. And, you know, we can't speak on behalf of the administration, but I mean, there certainly are ongoing conversations about what the options are. Yeah, you have to have somewhere to go, right? Well, yeah, if the alternative is to just make 1,600 people criminals based on how big they are.

Like, literally, you can't go anywhere. And then if you drive someone into the ground, eventually they're going to react or they're going to collapse. Those are bad outcomes altogether. But yeah, the other aspect that I was trying to get to was, you know, risk management, risk mitigation, and sending police and tying outreach to it. Interested people, you know, this guy that had enough experience and he worked the problem, and he maybe can diffuse things, you know, or prevent violence or prevent, you know, worst possible outcomes because you build trust with people, you build the relationships, and then they are more likely to go towards a positive path as opposed to a negative path.

So outreach support is something that really needs to grow.

There's an article in Science too, of course. But articles are not as good.

I'm thinking that I want to have a little more information. You know, maybe at another meeting I can ask again with Winter Outreach, and it was when Heather presented it about our plan, and then she also had proposed all that acreage. Winter Mobile Outreach and Protection Plan. And I didn't— when I read it over at the time, I— it made me wonder, what do we act— what does the municipality actually do? Because in our plan, I thought, well, do we already do this in the municipality and it just isn't known?

Um, I didn't reread it right before this, so it's not fresh in my mind, but what I would like to maybe hear is how does the municipality do the winter mobile outreach because I think a lot of what she said possibly is already done, or maybe it could be done differently. So I didn't know if anyone else had questions about that, or, uh, next meeting, or—. Yeah, maybe next week. You know, I don't know enough about it too. Okay, I didn't know if anyone— Yeah, um, yeah, to go on the details.

Yeah, we do have some folks from the Housing and Homeless Services team online that might be able to I think we answered some of those questions about specifically mobile outreach. Yeah, just how does it happen or how do people get found or where might they go or how do groups work together? Kimberly or Lila, did you hear that? We had a question about how winter mobile outreach works. Well, particularly in the winter and getting people into spaces or finding [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] There's a lot of conversations surrounding all the moving parts, you know, kind of like that.

I don't have anything that.

I could speak on today because it's all still probably in planning and things have changed since last winter. But I would be happy to answer any other questions after we have time to research that a little bit. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And, and if we wanted to put that on the agenda, I'm happy to put on my coalition hat and talk about how it's worked in past winters and how it hasn't worked in past winters. So yeah, I think that would be a good idea to put on the agenda and even have an opportunity to follow up with her if it's currently being done. Yes.

Yeah. I do have another comment. I definitely understand everything you're saying. I work with the housing organization. There are a lot of people in that mode.

I either accept a high job, suffer these kinds of consequences, or accept a lower job, suffer these kinds of consequences. There are a lot of people and a lot of families. They're navigating that. The other thing is with the— I was on that Sanction Camp Task Force. It happened at the end of the last administration, and I wonder if this administration received what was worked on from that task force to even look at whether or not it could be implemented, because it happened at the end, and it seems like we keep starting over.

Every time a new administration come off, come on, and you start from ground zero, and it doesn't seem to be making any momentum. I think, yeah, I think it would be beneficial to find out what was the outcome. Did they do— they are even aware? I mean, it took up a lot of our times to have that task force, to meet with it, to see nothing come out. I haven't been told, you know, what actually resulted from people time.

And when you do things like that, you're going to get people not willing to even participate if it doesn't look like it's doing any good. So I just wonder. I know that the safe parking RFP and like that kind of came out of that also because the task force discussed sanctioned camping and basically sanctioned parking. Right. One of the main things that came out there was, I thought, just a place for people to get mail was something that came up.

If it happened, again, report back and say these were the actions taken out of this meeting, out of you volunteering your time to discuss this. This is what has happened. Yeah, these are really big questions more for Thea, but certainly the administration, the new administration, did receive like everything that came out of that Ascension Campaign Task Force, and they are like aware of all that, and it has played into decision-making about what efforts to prioritize. But beyond that, really, I'd have to defer to Dionne kind of what her thinking is on that. Right.

But I think an update so that people would know. And that might fit really well into an agenda item talking about winter outreach. Like the whole kind of concept of where do people go? Where do we tell people to go? I think the other piece is too, is we're spending a lot of money.

The city is spending a lot of money on temporary solutions.

What about the permanent solution? To hear as much money went into a shelter that in 2 years these people are back on the street, them plus some, and $18 million was spent. That doesn't make sense to me for something that's permanent. I mean, that's temporary. I would think that something more permanent could be used for that amount of money.

So I think it would— I would be looking for the Hand Commission to make a statement about those things because if you don't say anything, it sounds like you're agreeing with it.

That's the way I feel about it. So I think the HAN Commission should have a resolution to say we don't or we do agree with what the way that things are moving. I think that should be an item that we'll talk about also on the agenda, put on the agenda to discuss. Sheena, just to respond regarding the task force. So Sylvia, who was down on the Downtown Community Council, she was on as well.

I think she was co-chair. And Charlie from Mountain View, uh, this guy's name, Peggy, I don't know if you know. But anyways, what ended up happening is Task Force Sense, uh, they take what was there, they produce AR-2023-188-S1. And so if I remember correctly, there were 11 sites, uh, by the time it made it to the order, the resolution, it was 6 sites, no more than like 50 to 75 people, uh, promising people free Wi-Fi, free electricity, potable water, sanitation, pilothouses for home production. I had shows about people getting a free pony too because of all the stuff that was in there.

Uh, but, uh, June 6th they whittled it down to, uh, the National Archives lot. They passed it, and this was just after they posted the abatement at National Archives lot, just before Memorial Day, because you had the Sundown Showdown Music Festival. And so they kicked all the people out, uh, but then they said you can come back July 17th, 2023, and it was supposed to be a protected lot until September 1st, 2024. And so Meanwhile, I'm like sitting with homeless this time. I'm about to start coalition.

I'm telling people, like, why don't you go deliver all this stuff? You know, that's that. You protected you. At least now you can go there and rest your head. And so what had happened is, then they go into around July 11th, and, uh, they had an assembly meeting.

And I'm in the back of the video of both of these things, but more or less they had AO— I think it was 2023-7, that's maybe— and so this was like sort of the discussion about how the contractor is supposed to implement this. And Alexis Johnson comes up, called up by the city mayor. I remember this scene. And somebody asked her, do you think you can get this done by fall? And she said, oh yeah, sure, we can do it.

And then more or less, I'm looking at the back of my room, or excuse me, I'm at the back of the assembly room, and I'm thinking, uh, there's probably not a chance because of the red tape. Typically, uh, you know, if you look at just like disaster relief, then, uh, if you move quickly and you do phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, you execute because because, you know, you have to get it done and you know the snow's coming. And they were already burning up too much time, and so you have to have everybody at the table and they all have to agree and then you just stop with, you know, the arguing and the bickering. But more or less, I didn't think that they were going to— both sides weren't going to agree because of politics. And so you get to the end of September and essentially what happens is— I will never forget this— they pulled the toilets and the porta-potties, they pulled the hand washing station, they put up the gate, they put up the fence, they had a single porta-potty for the security regard, and, uh, a floodlight.

And then right around, uh, it was October 11th, you had Tiffany Briggs and the, uh, Community Housing Director give a presentation, uh, in front of the Midtown Community Council saying we intend to rezone and sell that lot. We will begin taking RFPs beginning January 1st, 2024. If you didn't go to there, you didn't see it. And so I left Coalition, and then more or less it was personal fault. I bashed Jessica here, and I was This is a mission.

Because it was 12 inches of snow. They weren't plowing that lot. And it was like, more or less, you know, the emergency services, they can't come in, they can't go out. But it's like, we should send a self-defying bullet to somebody. And more or less what happened is, I think somebody got the message.

But instead of taking the good step, which is to support people there, they pulled the security guard, they pulled the border body, they left the gate open, and then it was just, you know, free-for-all. And so then you move forward into the next especially into the spring, and you know, they, they were only picking up trash at the front of the lot, and then they weren't picking up trash at the back lot where they used to. I thought it was a strategy where they were allowing the trash to accumulate, or if they plowed a lot, they could put dumpsters. But instead, uh, what happened was everything began to melt, and so then you see everything in its full glory. And then, uh, of course, there's the way to get around Grant's Pass Johnson, which is such an amount of trash accumulates and becomes a health and human safety hazard.

And, you know, you have got a recent debate, and of course it's during the election. And so I'm thinking, this must have been a, you know, election strategy. But that's sort of how it happens. Nothing came of it. Police never supported.

The people there were left to their own devices. And so when I left, I said, I'm going to do some good. My rent was $33 a month. And so I paid for the Domino car to take people food, at least to keep them fed, and go into the pantries and doing that. But that's more or less, you know, sort of what happens from that thing.

So there was never even an honest attempt, I think, to try. Yeah, yeah, I think it's been an ongoing challenge from— like, I've served on many, many task forces as well, and it's—. It's—. There is that frustration. That you put in a lot of time and effort to create a strategy not knowing what might happen to it.

So I would love to see that on the agenda to talk about that, um, along with the outreach stuff. Any comments, Laura? Well, my comments are going to be more informational, partly because I have some people here that I really want to hear this, but, um, Project Homeless Connect is in September. And I would love to have NYSAR and SHILOH there if you are interested in— we always are— in tabling there. I will make sure we get connected with you all to get that.

But for everyone else here, if your organization wants to table, absolutely. If you want to volunteer, love to have volunteers at that event.

We do have some opportunities the day before as well with some setup and sorting through some gear and stuff. So there's outside of normal work hours volunteer opportunities with it as well. And then the second thing, people may have heard about this already, but the HUD Secretary is going to be here next week. So there will be some roundtable discussions and then they're doing some site visits out in rural Alaska. There's a few team members staying here in Anchorage that are going to go around and visit some sites here in Anchorage.

But that is happening next week, and so I'm really excited in my other role to be able to talk about some of the really cool things that have happened and some of the challenges that we've had and what HUD can do to maybe make that better for us. One of the things is a conversation about prevention funds. And I don't know if people had an opportunity to see or look at the executive order that was signed by the President 8 days ago now, but it's a pretty significant shift in the thought process of prior administrations on how funding is allocated and how projects are funded. So there are some things that we've done here in Anchorage that are, that feel really innovative when we look at it from that lens, particularly like those recovery residences. So I'm really excited to talk with them about projects like that, where we are doing a lot of the things that they appear to be pushing out as federal priorities that we've been doing with municipal funds or with other funds that have been available to us.

So excited about that and excited to share back with you all what some of those conversations end up being.

I don't think we have any reports for today's meeting, so would entertain a motion to adjourn and get us out of here a little bit early.

Move for adjournment. All right, all right. 5:13. Next meeting September 3rd. Okay, well then let's make sure that the conversation about the, the winter outreach and the sanctioned camping and stuff gets on.

Yeah, yeah, we won't— I won't need it. And I will be— some interest in hearing from Yes.

So next week— yeah, it's 2 weeks from now— is the Housing Summit.