HHAND Commission Monthly Meeting February 2025

Today is February 5th. We'll start off with, uh, roll call. Uh, I am Dave Fritzenberg, Commissioner. My name is Laura Raines.

Laura Raines, you're Commissioner? I am a Commissioner. You're a Canadian Commissioner? Welcome, welcome. Daniel Sayer, Commissioner.

And who do we got online? I see Pamela.

Sorry, I've never used Teams for this before, so this is a little tricky to me. My name is Pamela Thomas. Is that all you need to know? Do you need to know anything else? Just who are you?

Are you just a— do you represent an organization, yourself, you're a citizen, you're a commissioner? Oh, I am with UAA. I'm a graduate student with the MSW MPH program. Oh, thank you for joining us. Uh, Michelle.

Good afternoon. Sorry I couldn't be there in person. Michelle Baker, Commissioner. I believe we have Kenny P. Yeah, I'm just a fan of all you guys, so I'm here to be a roadie. So thanks.

And just to confirm, Kenny P is Kenny Peterson?

Yes, that's right. And we have Sam. Hi, Sam Longacre with United Way.

Oh yeah, my name is Frankie. You all know, Frankie. Uh, okay, well, thank you everybody. We will move on to the approval of the order of business. I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

Any discussion about the agenda? If anyone wants to add, change, delete, move?

Going once, going twice, seeing and hearing none. Anyone opposed to approving the agenda as it sits?

All right, the agenda is approved. Um, we'll go ahead on to the approval of minutes from—. There are two there, one for October 2024, which we didn't approve last time, and one for January. So let's start with the October 2nd, 2024. We just approve these both together, or should we do separate?

Okay, whoops. Let's, let's see if I can do them in one fell swoop. Um, so I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

Okay, you— second.

Second. Everyone take a minute to read through them if you haven't already.

Anyone have any adjustments to the minute?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thank you. Thank you.

Is there any opposition to approving the minutes as written? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Seeing and carrying none, the October 2nd, 2024, and the January 8th, 2025 minutes are approved.

Action items, annual and report subcommittee. If we just sort of open this up discussion for new members. Um, we are also, um, going on the work for the municipality and the assembly on the end committee in 2024. Um, I think I would just sort of start the conversation with— we creating a subcommittee. Thank you, Jessica, for leading that subcommittee.

I think to really get into the meat of the report, it would be good to schedule a work session. So, this space to sort of go back and work on it. I would wonder what other folks' thoughts on Who would want to participate? So we would want to schedule a work session. A work session needs to be a publicly noted meeting.

Um, we could do it, or yeah, uh, we should have an issue to that. I can take a look, uh, I can set up a scheduling see what works for everybody and take it from there. How frequently would you like to meet? I feel like just one. I feel like we can probably just have one meeting and then we can review the actual report and approve it at this meeting.

So one meeting to kind of work on the meat of it. I can come to that meeting with an outline. So we're just kind of filling in the blanks on it. And then if we need a second work session after that one, I think we can make that decision then. But I would say just one.

Um, if, if we were to schedule it out to say at some time in like the last week of February, but that, does that give people enough time to work around schedules or something? I imagine it would probably be during During the day, just before we—. Yeah, during the day. I have— last month, congratulations. Um, maybe that—.

I mean, it's not due until June, so we do have some time.

Do we want to shoot for— I should do it on St. Patrick's Day.

The 17th.

Is that—. Is this one available?

17Th. Did Richard say he wasn't going to go?

Usually it takes about an hour to get caught up. Jessica, how long did it take? 2 Hours. 2 Hours. Sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to ask, are we going to kind of base it off of one of the past ones? Yeah, I was thinking pulling together a format that kind of incorporated a couple different ways they've done it. I like the idea of not just talking about what the Commission did during the year, but setting some realistic goals of the work for the upcoming year, especially since we'll be— by the time we're presenting it, halfway through it. So we'll know kind of what our plans were, what we were working on, what we were doing. So Yeah, kind of an upgrade of some of the formats that have been used before, trying to keep as much of it in the realm of the work that we've actually done and the work we want to do and a little bit less of the personal opinions on it, like the, our body.

So making the the work and the decisions and the, the actions of our body do what we're doing. So this room is open on the 17th except for between 1:00 and 2:30. So you want to do 10 to 12? Yeah, would that work? Well We don't need a motion or anything like that, right?

We say that we're going to do it.

Sorry, we did not do that officially. We didn't—. It wasn't an action. No, you had decided if you wanted to do that. Which is why it's on the—.

I'm going to create a subcommittee of the HAN Commission focused on the HAN annual report and schedule a work session for 3/17 from 10 to 12 AM. Be publicly announced.

Wait a second. Is there any opposition seeing and hearing none? So it's created, uh, and then do we put that in motion without a made chair, or should I just name a chair?

Hereby name Jessica Barnes as chair of the aforementioned created subcommittee.

Um, great. Um, so I'd say bring, bring your ideas to that meeting. Maybe we can have a little bit of email conversation, um, prior to that. Conversation going about that. Um, anything anyone else wants to say about the annual report?

Right, thank you everybody. Um, moving down to the informational item, just ongoing business updates from our Special Assistant to the Mayor for Health and Homelessness, Shelter and Behavioral Health components. That will be, uh, Karina. Um, what do you think? Great.

Um, I don't have any massive updates. So one thing we are working on a lot right now is funding. Um, don't know if we have a strategy that the mayor has preferred around health, and we're really following that. We're working with the health department to really kind of get down to the nitty-gritty. Um, we're working towards having a more stable year-round shelter system.

We're teaming closely with our community partners, so really trying to think strategically about how we use municipal funds but then how we can also bring in, um, sources from other funders, how to be proud other community members. So really trying to get a much stronger sense of like we all are working together to address. So that's really— we've been— we made a little headway with some of our CBT funds. Thank you, PhD. So we got a request from the state to apply for some of the funds from— they had kind of told CDBG funds that they hadn't spent yet, that previously the community wasn't even eligible for, but we kind of wrangled our way into them.

So we just sent our, uh, request out yesterday and we look for back— um, get another source of CDBG funds that we're working on. That one we've, um, kind of sent over to another community partner who's going to use it to start some affordable housing. Summer, so that's great. Um, and then we also are working with another state, um, opportunity grant, that money. So that's a big focus right now.

Um, and then I'll turn to my brother.

Good afternoon.

Um, Brown. So just a quick update on shelter operations. We are the Russian Um, we are very excited to announce that we have expanded the hours for Wyoming. Wyoming will now operate from 6:00 a.m. To 8:00 p.m.

We're grateful to AHE and our partners at Dominion, and we're grateful to you, those of you who follow us. Just shelter capacity, that we're going to get out of our warming center to make room for other individuals to come in. So what they'll do is once they reach capacity, then they're free to pull outside readings, and the first group in will be asked to rotate outside. Do I need to move closer? Is that what just popped up?

Yeah, the audio is [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] What we found is that warming is running at capacity, and so our warming operator will ask individuals to rotate out if there's a line of 3 individuals waiting. The first 3 that have signed in will be asked to rotate out for an hour, and then they're allowed to come back in just as they are moving individuals through, just to make sure that everyone has an opportunity for warming. It really highlights the ongoing need for warming centers along with how do we address shelter services as we are moving into the period where we would start talking about things like decompression from our existing shelter system. Um, if any of you are reading the snapshots that come from the coalition, you'll see that we continue to see inflow coming into the system, um, fairly significantly. With roughly an average of around 430 folks, um, consistently since August that are identified as just being unsheltered.

So that doesn't include the 532 people that are utilizing shelter services alongside Warm Reach. So we really want to make sure that we are just talking about those we're serving and the ones that we're not serving. And how do we do that very differently? This has been the first year where there's been kind of an opportunity to think about what we're doing and how we're doing it and have the administration and the assembly be willing to fund these services in a general operating budget. Um, I will share unabashedly that we really need to be able to demonstrate what did they do with those dollars.

How are we able to demonstrate some level of outcomes for these folks? And it's a little bit of a tall order because this is the first time that we put many different components in place and that we are now actually tracking more than inputs and outputs. And so as we are all thinking about how to best inform practice, how would we all talk as partners in our different community meetings, these are some of the conversations that we should be having. What are the best practices and what are the ways that we recognize the needs the most vulnerable in our community, um, be, you know, identified. We're really working on a way to bring in additional funding because the community budget cannot just consistently support how much money is actually needed to support individuals that are unhoused.

We also have had very limited funding that's coming in for housing programs. So everyone is tracking, there's just a lot of buzz around Where do people go? Lack of housing stock and then lack of— I think it would be remiss not to address the federal challenges that we're seeing and how that can waterfalls down to us at a state level and a community level. And then what does that impact on us as a municipality when someone says, well, what are you doing for all of the unhoused? Well, there's very limited funding capacity.

And then when you constrain that with federal dollars, we get tied up for whatever reason. It becomes even difficult, more difficult proposition. So I just put that out there because I think it's really important that we're candid and we're transparent about what the challenges are and the need for partnerships around dollars, how we're bringing those dollars in, including how they're supporting individuals from our agencies and providers that are standing in the space operating and offering the services. To those individuals, that we move them into housing, that we connect them to services, the complexity of the issue and where and how we fund becomes more and more important as the dollars become constrained. So that is something that is— I really think this brings top of mind, and I just want to gag every time she says that, but that is one of the Primary issue that we are focusing on right now as we are really thinking about how do we best support the whole community system.

Um, and very interesting.

On top of all of that lovely news, things are going really well with our shelter operators. I'm going to give Jessica some thank yous because she does a lot of double duty. That doesn't get paid for, in addition to our role with the coalition and really doing air traffic control with our shelter systems. It is those partnerships that really have lifted what we are doing, not just the things that are funded, but just all of the partners that are willing to come to the table. So very grateful for that.

In the spirit of partnership, March 20— March 20th and March 21st, we are going to have a community meeting alongside of the Coordinated Entry Conference that the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness is hosting. The mayor's office, the Housing and Homelessness Assembly co-chairs have come together to really put on a community conversation. We want to engage not just providers, folks that are interested in the conversation, but also the larger community that has a lot of conversation, concern, and interest in what are we doing and how do they— how are they activated in this conversation. Something that coalition has heard me ask many times, we get asked who owns the system, and my answer is no one owns the system. It is an ecosystem that requires requires lots of partners in the safety net system.

What we can do and what the intent of this conversation is, is to really provide that 10,000-foot, that 10,000-level picture to the community on how the system operates. And so when you say, does the community own this thing? We own these services that we fund, but we can't do anything without the partnership. And so that, I think, is something I want to drive home for everyone that's listening as a part of this community convening. It is educating people on how we operate, providing some level of education and understanding about the complexity of the issue, but also listening that homelessness is a real concern for our community, and there are people that feel like that there is a significant amount of crime associated victimization from within camps and within communities.

And so not dismissing what those feelings and those concerns are from our community members, but bringing everyone together to say that we're not ignoring it. And then how do we bring partners together? Something Thea and I experience routinely is that once the person's done being angry with you on the call, they say, how can I Started that way, but all good. So I now segue into—. I am inviting the commissioners to please be a part of our meeting on the 21st.

We would really love to have you as a part of our World Cafe. Our World Cafe is the most exciting part of it, which will bring together a variety of different providers in kind of a World Cafe style to talk about how to engage with your organization. We have— I've had moms call to say, hey, I wanted, you know, my teenagers to be able to be involved in something. So I connected them to the coalition because they're looking to do something. I have others that ask, like, how do I get engaged at the policy level?

Like, I feel like you need to hear my voice. And it's not just sitting and listening to the assembly, because that's not an opportunity to be engaged. I think having someone or someone's some commissioners from the Hand Commission as a part of our World Cafe really gives our community members an opportunity to say, what is the benefit if I show up? How does that impart anything into what the assembly and the administration is doing outside of just one-on-one meetings with myself and Priya, or going to their committee, to their assembly members, saying, you know, I want to about this concern. I want people to feel activated, but activated in that collective energy and not, not being curbed or taking that and starting to stifle it and it turns into anger.

Um, I'll pause here for questions because that was a lot of information. I just have one. First, I will say, um, top of mind is not the one that always gets me, but take it offline, right? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Some of the federal challenges, and I was wondering if the municipality has thought about or heard any feedback on looking at some of your long-range plans, carving out things that might not be in compliance with the executive orders, kind of proactively looked at some of that to be able to see where changes might come down and how we prepared for them fast. And then on those same lines, we all had a bit of a panic moment when the funding freeze happened and then didn't happen and sort of happened again.

Um, you may or may not, I mean, you never know. Um, but when it comes to, um, some of the funding, I can speak for myself and for our partners that, you know, we all frantically drew down all of our money, like, as soon as we could get back in there. So is that something that is a concern for Ms. Palfrey. I would say, at first, I want to acknowledge what that meant as a former provider.

A lot of those calls to the state to say, what's going to happen with our dollars? I also just kind of walked a little circle in my office, like, okay, what does this mean? How do we think about all of the partners that are providing services outside of where they get funding from the municipality? And where are we going to start to feel that those constraints as people come to really prioritize what they can offer? We are actively having conversations about what does that mean as far as how we as a municipality within Stony Brook Community— I want to be very clear, um, at a higher level within our executive team, there are conversations— but how would we prepare for that, and what does it mean if there's And I say that earlier in the conversation about we are watching and recognizing what could come down at federal level.

I would love to say that there was just like this secret slush fund where we could bankroll all of those things, but it speaks to the work that he has really been putting in and looking at those partnerships. What are the different dollars and different sources? It also brings things that we, for all of us, including the municipality, to make sure that we'll go to any funding opportunities collaboratively because we're all a part of this ecosystem here. And so how does that work if the funding constraints at the federal level shrink and then the pressure that that puts on local funders? Municipality and other private entities, landowners, on how we continue to support the system.

So it's definitely something that we want to have conversation about, but need to tread very carefully that we're not getting out in front of just kind of a full understanding of all we can accommodate. Just like you all, you know, every day my Apple News will flash something, but now— so it's like we're kind of in a hurry up and wait situation. But thank you for answering the question. Yeah, if there's any opportunity, I am going to be in DC next month doing some advocacy and business, and if there's any message to help carry forward, it isn't just, "Get it together." I will tell you, this is unsolicited, unvetted. I think we as a community and providers at systems level need to think about what is the opportunity instead of a challenge.

So we're dealing with the federal administration that is not big on regulation. What are the regulations that are barriers for us? What are the things that have been planned to make it harder for us to do funding? So we have to have a definition of being homeless, which means that, is that unsheltered? Or is someone who is on the cusp, at risk, who maybe just needs some arrears payment?

What are some of the things that we could think about that could be stripped down to make our lives easier instead of saying don't touch these things. How about removing some of the barriers? Because we, I personally feel like that you have an administration that would be federal administration that would be friendly for those types of conversations. It's not my own unique thought. This was in conversation with Will Walker yesterday around how do we pivot in this moment?

And this is one of those ways that we do that is instead of looking at the challenge, what are the strengths of this administration? And that would be removing some of our regulatory differences. So I think that is not a conversation with PETA and I, but the coalition as an independent entity will certainly drive some of that partnering.

Yeah, and I think that's something where this Commission has an opportunity to do some of that as well, where we are, you know, separated, we're removed from some of that. And so as we develop opinions and pass resolutions, that could be something that we're advocating for to happen.

One last plug. Really excited about all of you who are going to show up for the World Cafe. I'll be rounding back with David. If it were— who is interested in will be there, and co-chair, uh, Perez Garcia will also be kind of co-facilitating the World Cafe. Really excited to have our assembly members engaged in this.

So Just one additional question. Um, well, it is beginning of February now, um, and, uh, Cold Blooded Pilgrim is up and running. Historically, we see a, a demobilization, uh, in the spring, the fall, and years past and leads to destabilization of the system. And I'm curious, what are those— what are the conversations about fake birth looking like at this point? What kind of planning is happening for that?

Absolutely. Thank you for the question. I think I failed to acknowledge that the emergency cold weather shelter is no longer an emergency cold weather shelter, specifically the 26th Avenue, and it's been budgeted in the operating budget for year-round operations. So we're not concerned about seeing that particular location decompress, um, which is a good thing, but definitely happy for different individuals. We are absolutely in the planning process, the planning process, which means to continue some level of shelter service beyond just what's actually covered, and recognizing that that could be a variety of different things from some type of a convenience warming to ongoing non-covered.

These are all things that we talked about in Housing and Homelessness Strategy documents, so I feel very comfortable saying that. Those are— it is Ongoing planning really is just ensuring that we do all those things and to what level, because it does not serve the individuals that we serve and our community to just say, alrighty, best of luck. And it is a disservice for the work that providers are offering and then have that person just kind of say, okay, well, today was the last day, now I need to figure it out. Just another thing we have right now is the RP for public schools is closed, but we're in the middle of reviewing some proposals and then we're hoping to get that update out for— well, in the RP we added points for proposals where they're going to be able to provide emergency shelters, so we're really hoping to get some additional, um, energy happening into housing. In addition to—.

And we've really seen, um, housing slow through the coalition data, and that is, it's right on par with the original funding that's on the new grant. So naturally, if someone isn't moving out through their kind of own resolve, then it's very limited depending on the type of vouchers that we have. But just that additional flow of the finances going into the system just hasn't been there, and the system—. Really speaks to the need of the presentation you saw last month about build homes.

Um, last, and I guess I'll stop talking. Something that Ian has been spearheading, Bridge is working with a lot of partners on. We recognize that people need somewhere to go, that everyone isn't going to be housing ready for another 20 years. So the modular units, projects like, um, tiny homes are so critically important to give people their steps. Um, the modular is really important to us because it also recognizes that will have a lot of comorbidities that, you know, I just may not be ready to stop drinking and doing all of the other things, but I'm ready to be inside.

And so can we provide something that is incredibly low barrier that allows them to move and make those first steps? So that, as you hear us talk about it, as you see it in our documents, in the strategy document, and it'll be really big part of the 2025 conversation. Without projects that we're pushing and that we look for funding, we can wait, you know, 10 years, 10,000 homes to stay in housing. But we also need something that supplements the 10 years.

Any other questions? Just so I'm clear, the The bids that you were talking about, that is to pick up on May 1st when like the Alex Suites is going to be no longer an option for that. So no, it's the— the disclose is for housing services, so it's really— it focuses on a wide range of things, but it could be something like property housing, like helping somebody to get housing and shelter. It could be, um, other types of navigation. Yeah, those things, but the points that we offered for projects that propose to focus on the folks that are currently in the prison system.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Great, thank you. Yeah, thank you both.

Next we have from Jed. So, um, Jed Maloney, Communications Coordinator Manager, um, and really this is kind of a continuation of various funding solicitations. Um, we really have currently 3 requests for grant proposals in various stages.

Um, this is, as I've mentioned at some previous commission meetings, um, this is a, a new effort that we're making to allocate our funding in more open, transparent, affordable way using Quest for Grantability wherever possible. Um, so the first one we did that was for housing acquisition. We did that in the fall. We We are now finally at the point of negotiating with selected grantees, um, and soon for assembly approval. Um, those are acquisition of property for housing, so it is a little bit different from some of the types of projects we discussed here, but you know, it's all part of the same, um, to increase the housing stock as, as David mentioned.

That's one government— the housing is happening, the housing is being— so we're working on that. Um, second one, for supportive services, which you mentioned, that one just closed. Um, and we do want to do phone calls. Um, there were open. Um, so, uh, that is, uh, which gives a 1 grade, you know, and shows how much need there is.

Um, and, um, so we will, uh, review committee will meet, discuss those, come up with some suggestions. Like Thea said, you know, it is a very wide range of types of services, so we got a wide range of proposals. Um, but the scoring criteria they do some waiting for projects that would particularly target people currently in emergency shelter. Something we've had to solve within the RFP, but that there is additional expectation for projects. So we'll see what we get out of that, but aiming for the timeline of that to give us some compression issues.

Um, we have another one coming right down the pike, which is going to be for, uh, our 2025 CDBG funding. This is going to be for capital projects. Um, kept this one a little bit broader in terms of the type of project we're looking at, focusing more on just policy goals. So basically it's for, um, uh, increases to the stock of both housing shorter. Um, anticipating we'll get about $800,000.

That, uh, amount may be larger or smaller. We have—. Trying to get ahead of the game, get some new proposals in. So we're going to do our action plan. We have projects already developed.

Process. So, um, hoping to get, um, some good projects that could be housing, could be shelter, with not a particular weighting between the two. For Keith, however, strong weighting on number of units or beds that the project would have for— so find the, um, cost-effective with the money that we put in and get the most bang for our buck that we can. $800,000 Is not a whole lot of money, so it's probably not going to fund a lot of new construction, although, um, shelter side of the board, um, but things like acquisitions, um, expansions of current facilities, um, upgrades, um, to existing buildings so that we provide additional services or provide additional beds. Um, things like that are what we're anticipating we'll probably get, um, from that process.

So that is important to— we're aiming to get that out pretty fast, so next week or two, probably. I think at this point, um, that'd be out for a 30-day period, probably March. Um, to maybe be submitting our action plan once we get the final allocations from HUD in some— or so. So, um, those are the 3 main things we got going on. All lots of different, um, funding sources, as we can get.

Our regular, um, funding sources are, um, —fairly tiered— continue to serve grant proposals. And you're going to have home investment partnerships, being other development organizations, Housing Trust Fund, possibly as a subgrant from the Housing Development Finance Corporation, and other buckets of funding that you can get to the spacious building in the near future.

We will be looking for people to serve on the Global Committee, so if you're interested, let me know.

Um, and, um, you know, obviously, you can't serve on too many organizations, so you'll be applying for that solicitation, but you can serve on other ones. So, you know, apply for, um, A lot of diverse perspectives on review things. Something that you mentioned, members.

Thank you.

Interested in serving on your review committee? Maybe each time period is a different review. Yeah, basically like at least at a minimum each year, um, when we get our new funding, do at least one. Might multiple funding sources and have separate ones for different programs, but will be at least possibly one. And if we get additional Okay, moving on to business.

Um, I'm sure we all know and love Jessica. I ask, um, you know, from ACDH. ACDH does a really great job of managing and holding a lot of the data for the Continuum of Care. I'm gonna ask Jessica to just sort of come and talk a little bit about that, potentially each month or regularly or whatever he has capacity for, just to get commissioners and the public familiar with different data points that are associated with the continuum of care. So I think today is just going to kind of be an interview.

I'm going to stop blabbing and turn it over to Deputy. Yeah, you can go ahead and hand those out. So, What I had Frankie share on the screen is actually on our website. So if you're navigating to our website up at the top, there will be boxes that say, like, Need Help? About?

Our Work? If you go under Tools, there's one that says Data Management. And then this is what you will get when you come here to our data. So this is our data snapshot. We produce this every month.

Our data runs about 2.5 to 3 weeks behind. So all of our providers that are entering information into our system, you'll hear it called HMIS. What that stands for is Homeless Management Information System. What it is, so it's our data system that we use as a community to gather information on people who are experiencing homelessness accessing the different programs that are in our system. So all of our providers have about a 2-week window to enter their data.

So if someone comes into a shelter or visits or enrolls in a program, that program has about 2 weeks to get them into the system and then they'll be considered somewhat timely at that point. So all of our data runs a little bit behind. So we get our, for example, our December data, which is what this report is, we got that like on the 19th of January. And so then we spend usually 4 or 5 days doing some analysis of that data and then create this one-page that it is a front-and-back document, but a one-page data snapshot document. And so we headed off by how many people at the end of the month were experiencing homelessness in our community, our continuum of care.

And so at the end of December, that number was just over 3,000. And then we break it down between who are we talking about and where are they. So the who breaks it down between what population are they. So are they a single adult? And that does include couples.

So when we say single adult, that could be a household that is 2 adults that are in a household together, but single adults. Are they what we call transition age youth or TAY? You hear people say, "Te." What those are are unaccompanied youth that are age 18 to 24. And so they're separated out in different programs by that subpopulation because we know that the needs of people who are in that 18 to 24 range are different from the needs of single adults. And so you wanna have a different approach when you are providing services to them because hopefully, You then are resolving their homelessness before they become one of the numbers in the single adult box over there.

We know that the traumas you experience when you are experiencing homelessness are far compounded once you're in those adult system programs. So really wanting to separate out that subpopulation and focus on it. Our primary providers for those unaccompanied youth up to age 24 in our system are Covenant House, Choosing Our Roots, and Volunteers of America. So we do have, we do have transition-age youth in our adult programs, but hopefully that are all connected at some point with a transition-age youth provider as well. So they might be in an adult shelter, but they should still be accessing services with one of that transition-age youth program.

Providers as well. And then the last number, there are people who are in families. So that's not indicative of 604 families. Our average family size right now is just under 4 per family. So we know that what that actually represents is more like 125 to 140 families.

And we do actually have that number, what that is, but So we separated out the who. So that 3,070 people, here's who they are. And then that second row there is the where. So where are they? How do we get to this number?

I'm gonna explain this a little bit because this is a question we get a lot. How do we get to that number is a little bit tricky. So we start with the big number and we drop off who do the people we know, we know who's in shelter. So we can take them right off the top and say, we know they're in shelter or they're in a transitional housing program, which counts as shelter. When we talk about housed, we talk about permanently housed.

You have rights as a tenant, you have signed a lease, you can't just be asked to leave at a moment's notice. There are processes that are in place before you could be asked to leave that property. So that is housed. Housed. Everything else is shelter, whether it is a transitional housing program, whether it is a— we don't have them up here, but they call them safe havens.

Whatever it is, it's not housing, so it's shelter. Then we look at who is unsheltered. We have pretty robust street outreach programs, not just at the the coalition, but Covenant House, Rural CAP, CSS has their navigation center, and then Street Outreach people that aren't affiliated with an organization that are just going out and sharing information in outreach meetings. So we have a good idea of who's outside. We have a pretty good idea of how many.

Are outside. We may not know all of their names, but we know when we go to an encampment, you'll talk to people, you'll count how many structures are out there, you'll ask the person who you're talking to, hey, does anybody staying in that tent over there? And they'll tell you like, oh no, that's Joe's storage, or no, that is Tracy's tent, but Tracy went to jail, or that is That is Kathy's tent and she went to the store, she's coming back. So you get an idea of who's actually at that encampment, even if you didn't talk to them. And then the last number there, which is the 835 set to go inactive over 90 days.

Our system has an inactive policy of 90 days. So we do not delete someone from our system and say they are no longer experiencing homelessness. Until they have not touched a service for 90 days. So you end up with some people that are in what I sometimes call the limbo phase. So they may have been staying at a shelter and they went out for a smoke and they never came back.

You don't know where they went. If they went outside, they're probably gonna have contact with Street Outreach at some point. Street Outreach will find them, they will pop in the Navigation Center to take a shower, shower, like something will happen and you'll touch them again, not in the bad way. So you tend to know if they went back outside. Most people who are in that window, they have self-resolved.

They are hanging out at their friend's house, sleeping on their couch, or they have left the community and reunited with family somewhere else, or they were just at the shelter for a couple days until they got paid. And now they're in housing or they are renting a short-term rental, you know, something like that. But we can't drop them out of that number until we know for sure where they went or they hit day 90. So we keep that as this box in the corner of the people who we haven't heard from in more than 30 days, but less than 90 days. They are likely to result.

Of some kind. We can't drop them off that number yet. So we wanna represent them there. I can assure you that if all 835 of those people were outside, our community would know. We would be very aware of 1,200 people outside in the city.

There are not 1,200 people outside in the city. So it's on our dashboard. It exists as a number in this snapshot. It's people that we don't actually know. We don't know where they went.

And short of having the capacity of tracking down every single one of those people, we're just not going to know. Once our number is much smaller than 3,000, we may have that capacity as a system to actually track people who leave the system and we don't know where they went. But right now that number is just too large. I would spend all month tracking down 835. All right, so if you scroll down just a little bit, this is gonna be what's on the— this is a little bit slow at the front.

So we then look at inflow and outflow, and I'm gonna describe to you inflow is people who are entering our system. So they enter our system by interacting with something. They show up at a shelter, They go to the navigation center, they are outside and Street Outreach contacts them, they call and do a screening over the phone, one of our coordinated entry assessments. So they, they, they get in contact with us somehow and we know this is a person experiencing homelessness. We break down that inflow into 3 different categories.

There's new to the system. So this is someone who is brand new to homelessness. Or it has been more than 2 years since they have ever been homeless in our community. So after 2 years, you kind of reset and you will be newly homeless again if you have been housed for 2 years. We then have this number of returns from housing.

So this is someone who was experiencing homelessness, they exited to housing, it has been less than 24 months, and now they are experiencing homelessness. Yeah, so that is a return from housing. And then this last box is returns from inactive. So somebody hit that 90 days, they went inactive, and then at some point in the future they came back. So they are returned from inactive now.

Is there a timeframe on that? Like between 2 years? Between 2 years. So the same 24 months. So if you've been inactive for more than 24 months, you're now new again when you come back.

And then the outflow, these are the people who have exited our system. So there really, there's only two ways to exit our system. You either exited because you're housed and you are no longer experiencing homelessness, or you became inactive. The housed number does also include, when I say housed, I really mean exiting to a permanent destination. It can include an exit to an institution like jail or a hospital that lasts more than 90 days, that's gonna be a permanent exit because that is a break in your homelessness.

That also includes people who have passed away. A death is a permanent exit from our system. And then the list is went inactive number. So we break down the inflow and the outflow. And what we always want to see is the outflow being bigger than the inflow.

That means we're making progress. If you think of it like a bathtub, you want your water that's coming in to be happening slower than the water that's going down your drain, because if it's the opposite happening, eventually you're going to overflow your bathtub. So unfortunately, you can see for the month of December, our inflow exceeded our outflow, and you can see that the permanent exits, that 67 number, that is low. The same time last year, that number was almost double that, 121, I believe. So December of 2023, that number was over 100 people that exited the housing.

So you can really see, as Farina was saying, we're starting to see that there's no exits for people. There's not room in existing housing programs. The affordable housing that exists in our community is very low. We have a very low vacancy rate right now overall. I don't know of anyone who does an analysis of vacancy rates of just housing that is under fair market value, but if they did, I can imagine it's even lower than our, our actual vacancy rate for the whole, for the whole city.

All right, so then scroll down just a little bit. And then these, this is what's on the back of this particular document. We have a little, a little section here. We kind of call it our FAQs. So, as we've been producing this document, it goes out to a lot of different people, and those people will then ask questions.

So, we started to try to answer them in advance. So, these are one of the questions that we got over the last few months that we just added on here, and we do this analysis every month. So, why have exits to housing slowed? We know that housing program capacity is full. The people that are in that housing are maintaining their housing.

So those returns to homelessness, those exits from housing returning back to homelessness, those are really low and those have been trending low. So that's good news. That means the people that are going to housing are maintaining that housing. Our housing retention rate is really high right now for our system. But what that also means is that those programs turnover.

So there's not room for new people to be coming in.

Yeah, so I guess that was that last bullet there. How does this compare to last December? So we started doing a comparison so that we can see, you know, is this— does December always look like this, or what did last December look like? And so we have some of these comparisons. So we— our total homelessness number is up a little over 300 from where it was last December.

I'm sorry, the upload was 292 last December, and it is 67 this December. So that is huge. And then the returns from housing, you can see that that is down. 53 Last December, 34 this December. We talked a little bit about cold weather shelter.

So now that emergency cold weather shelter is open, what can I expect? Um, what we have noticed is that when we have had that inflow, we haven't seen significant increases in people who are outside. We've seen some of the people who are outside cycling through those shelters. Um, just about everyone who's outside has had a visit to the shelter in the past couple months. Uh, so it means that people are accessing the shelter and accessing warming when they need to, but they aren't necessarily staying there.

So when we have seen this inflow, particularly families, we have been able to absorb them and they have been able to get into the shelter beds that do exist and just kind of cycle through there. So we haven't seen huge balloons in related to that inflow. We know that people still have barriers to shelter. People have pets. People are in a couple.

That's probably our biggest, our biggest list right now. If I could turn all of our shelter beds into couple beds, that would be amazing. We have a lot of couples who are still not wanting to access shelter unless they can stay with that person. And then just the ongoing trauma. There's a lot of trauma that exists for people around shelter.

Shelter is essentially institutional care. And so if somebody has had a really traumatic experience experience in shelter or in an institution, they are way less likely to access that shelter. So I feel like every year we get better. We have more couple beds available this year than we ever had before. So we are getting better.

We have a shelter that accepts pets, which is great. So we're breaking down those barriers with the shelter that we have. Looking at the impact of the emergency cold weather shelter capacity, So this is just a 1-month snapshot of that December 1st through December 31st. This is also a data analysis that I do for the entire period of that cold weather shelter capacity. And this is just looking at those non-congregate beds that were turned on because as Farina shared, our Shelter 56 is no longer a cold weather shelter, even though we still call it CWS.

It is a year-round shelter. So we don't talk about it when we talk about the cold weather shelter, um, capacity. So in the month of December, those 332 beds served 545 people. We had a 16-day average length of stay and 274 people that came into that shelter. So out of that 545, 274 of them were living outside the night before they came into that shelter.

So they spent the night outside, came to that shelter. 46% Were experienced— I'm sorry, so most of them, over 50%, were experiencing homelessness for 90 days or more. 46 Of them were classified as chronic, chronically homeless, which means that you have been experiencing homelessness for more than 1 year consecutively or 4 or more instances in the last 12-month period. It's a little bit complicated explanation, but basically it means it's someone who has been mired in homelessness for a while. And 43% of those people had been experiencing homelessness for more than 2 years entering that shelter.

We had 221 exits from the Emergency Cold Weather Shelter. 5 Of them went to permanent housing. Yay! 1 Went to another temporary destination, so that could be a transitional housing program or They're couch surfing, but it's not a permanent situation. People exited to another shelter or an outside homeless situation.

And then the big one, 144 unknowns, the person who went out to have a smoke and never came back. So we don't quite know where they went without that in-depth analysis of literally every single person and saying, huh, Where did you touch the system next? And that's just difficult right now. All right. And then, where are the people new to homelessness coming from?

So we know a big part of this is evictions and the inability to pay rent. Overwhelmingly, we are seeing evictions at a level that is rivaling the pandemic level. Elections are— and we know that rents at the top, the cost of your rent and your housing is exceeding your capacity to pay. HUD identifies reasonable rent as rent that doesn't exceed— or housing costs, I should say, 'cause it includes everything— that doesn't exceed 30% of your income. Over half of the people who are renting in our city are what HUD calls housing burdened, which means they are paying more than 30%.

And just under 40% are considered extremely burdened, which means they're paying more than 50%. So half of what they make is going into just sustaining their housing. And that's just not sustainable. That puts you one emergency away from homelessness. Homelessness.

How does the new homelessness inflow impact Anchorage? So one thing that I do wanna note, most people who enter our system leave really quickly through self-resolution. Oftentimes they just need a couple nights at the shelter. They need to go down to the navigation center and connect with someone who can help them get their SSI resolved. They just need a security deposit.

We have many faith-based organizations that just held out with just like, just a security deposit, just a one-time, you know, little influx of cash into them. So we have seen that slow. We have seen that most people do self-resolve. Fewer people are self-resolving than in the past. When we don't have housing program capacity, it means that people who need rental assistance or other types of housing supports, they have to wait.

And then the longer that you are waiting for that, that you are experiencing homelessness, again, those traumas, they just start to compound. So the goal is always to help people bounce right back out.

We've seen that this influx, this inflow of people experiencing homelessness It is disproportionately affecting Alaska Native populations. They are not receiving timely or equitable solutions. And so when we look at the proportionality of people experiencing homelessness and what those racial demographics look like, we see that proportion growing. So that's something to call out. Uh, Alaska Native individuals are making up 53.5% of the people experiencing homelessness.

Homelessness. Uh, when you look at our census population, um, there— the population of people who are Alaska Native as part of Anchorage's, um, population is around 18%. Uh, we also see disproportionality in Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian populations and Black community members. Uh, the shelters are seeing this increased demand And they are full. I can tell you, we don't see empty beds.

Empty beds are like that. They are snatched up. So it is really rare to have an empty bed at a shelter right now. So looking at what's coming up, so at this point, our upcoming action, the Point-in-Time Count. Last week, we did our annual Point-in-Time Count.

Of the night of January 28th and then the warming center is now available, as Farina said, every day. So it is not being triggered week by week based on forecast temperatures. It is just now open for the rest of their contract from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM daily, limited capacity as Farina said. Thanks. And this was published, it was still 8:31.

Yes. So that's right, 6:00 PM to 8:00 AM. And limited capacity, so we do try to share with everyone, if warming is what you are interested in, be prepared to get there early. And if it is full, be prepared that you may be cycled, cycled out to allow everyone to get in. So this is the data snapshot.

It's available on our website. We have a multitude of different dashboards. If there's any number you want to dig into, you can. If you want to look at the racial demographics of Tay, it's on there. For a snapshot, this is something that we produce.

We have been distributing it to the assembly members and community councils, business groups, things like that. I will not do this level of in-depth conversation on it every month, but I'd be happy to touch on any trends on a monthly basis as we are seeing things and highlight anything big. And of course, I am always available if you ever want to dig into numbers or talk more about what our data's telling us. Thank you. That's— I would ask, is it a big ask of you?

Um, I just want to make sure that's something the commissioner would be interested in, having a standing part of the agenda, um, each month to sort of have a little Gabba Duggett corner. Yeah, yeah. Not the whole—. Your website up Yeah, so the shelter at 56, um, there have to be— okay, yeah, access. Yeah, that's the only one that we did because we have— there were some transitional housing programs that a lot wild pets, and in terms of shelter, especially low barrier shelter.

Great. Any other questions? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thank you. Um, do we have anyone in the room or anyone online here for general public comments?

Anybody online?

Alan? Yeah, I just think, um, so Alan Kimplin, live over in the Fairview area, and I would just encourage, uh, you know, commission members and the attendees to the commission meeting to try to squeeze in some time for the ND in the Hand Commission. So that's neighborhood development. And so I know homelessness and housing and homelessness, it can consume everybody because it's a very important issue in our community. But how we develop our neighborhoods is also very important.

And I just want to make that pitch. Thanks. Thank you, Alan. And I think that is a great segue on the commissioner comments. So, um, okay, with the rest of the commissioners, I will start.

Um, so I reached out to some community councils that I frequent, um, and it was Fairview being one one of them, um, and have sort of asked, or, or, you know, um, they would be interested in coming and talking to the Hand Commission about some things that they are working on. Um, Carolyn has come and spoken to this— well, it may just be you were part of the commission at the, at the time, but about, um, the plans for the Sewer Highway running through Fairview and how that could, um, be an opportunity or a disaster, um, for the neighborhood depending on which— how you look at it and what route happens. And so, you know, I would be, um, interested in inviting Alan back to, uh, you know, sorry Alan, to ask you kind of to reiterate a wonderful presentation you already but we have a lot of new folks in here. And the good news is we have enough commissioners to actually do some business, um, and, you know, lend some, uh, some support, um, towards something. So, you know, Alan is wanting to talk about that.

He also has, uh, an interesting presentation on, um, shadows and sort of rights to light and setbacks, and he could speak to that much better than I can, but that is also something that he is speaking about, you know, in a subarctic city like Anchorage where lots of the year the sun is not up here, it's over there, the height of our buildings And the, um, you know, the setback and stuff can have a big effect on your access to sunlight. I know there's, there's a big conversation about Town Square Park last year as well with some changes to buildings regulation, stuff like that. So I'm— Commissioner Sanchez didn't listen about that. Um, I can put that on the agenda. I've also spoken with, um, Northstar Community Council.

There is a Fairweed redesign that is being talked about right now, about going— you know, right now it's 4 lanes. Did they go down to 2 lanes? Did they go down to 3 lanes? Increase pedestrian access. So, um, the council has some thoughts about what they would like to see.

And so I've spoken with, um, um, who is the president of that council, um, see if he's interested in speaking, um, with us. Um, I've also invited Lila, Lila, um, with, um, new to the health department, to talk a little bit more in depth about, um, the cold weather shelter and everything that's sort of all the work that the Health Department been doing, um, is here to kind of give an update on that. Um, there are some other things that I have feelers out on, but wanted to sort of gauge other commissioners' interest, um, in hearing about some of those topics and getting them on the agenda. And also, if you all hear a thing, um, or are talking to people that like, this could be good for the Commission. Yes, the housing and homelessness piece, but as Alan mentioned, the neighborhood development piece as well.

Um, I would invite you to—.

Yeah, just, um, Airport. Excuse me. That issue is also talked about. That was a couple of weeks.

It would be interesting if we could get regular updates on the progress for the 10,000 flights in 10 years as well. I was looking through that again the other night. I was kind of wondering I know that it's a new thing this year, but just kind of curious. Is that Graham Downey? That— yeah, he's the main dude.

Okay. Yeah, it'd be cool if we could leave it quarterly, get something on how the progress of where that's at. Yeah, I can invite him to come back in the spring.

I, I, um, I get the sense that that is going to be relatively slowly. You know, it's a 10-year project, so I imagine it's going to be 10,000 years.

Yeah, we get quarterly updates or monthly updates, it may feel like nothing, nothing much changed from, you know, you know, maybe quarterly or every 6 months there might be a meaningful update. Yeah, um, but yeah, I can, uh, I can back. I checked out the dashboard and there were 10 permits pulled. They were all single family. I was going to ask, 14% of the way there?

That's for 1.2. Uh, if, if people are interested in hearing about that, I can get them scheduled on the agenda for March and April.

Yeah, that'd be awesome. I was hoping that Richard was going to be here because I know I heard some people talking recently about— and I don't know if anyone at the Muni is— this is, I'm sure, come up before, but Richard was on Parks and Rec for a while. I know there's people that talk about looking at those 1-acre neighborhood parks and potentially turning those into multifamily developments, which would be something interesting to look at. I think something in the neighborhood development realm and a bit of that too that I would be really interested in hearing about is work that's being done on, like, code enforcement and blighted properties. And, you know, what work— I know there's some funding that has been put aside to help renovate those and that there was that effort last year.

Emiliano Martinez leading some work on. So, you know, hearing a little bit more about the work being done there and what we as a commission and the community at large can do around that. Is there, is there things we can do to help? Is there stuff that's underway? Should we be reporting when there's properties that are vacant and abandoned to be renovated?

Things like that.

You know, I have tried to figure that out, and it's been— so I think George would be the first to start with. And, um, yeah, I, I several different municipal departments have touched pieces of it, um, but not been able to figure out who really did it, to what extent they should have.

Something about that. Do you— I know some of those properties were identified in Fairview.

Maybe not. Did you— was that a question for me?

I'll catch up with you later. The, the strategy, that's part of it actually. I do think there's quite a bit going on. That's— I think it's— oh, okay, maybe you thought, um, at rate of, you know, but he would, he would be a good resource for that. Okay, excellent.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, for the bonded properties, I heard that on mostly in the like discussions that they had with the community. So if they had anything during those meetings that they had as reports that could be reviewed by a technician, that may be a good opportunity for collaboration in that kind of redevelopment piece.

Um, okay, yeah, I can reach out to Graham and see if he can come either next month or the month after.

Specifically about the Black promenade, that'd be great just to understand what that process looks like. Yeah, we have a minute. Anything else from Ms. George-Michelle? Anything from you online? No?

Thank you. Thank you for sticking around with us.

Well, thank you all for being here with Nothing else, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

Second. Any opposition?

We got one minute early. Thank you, everyone. Bye, Michelle. Thank you.