ACEH News & Updates

“New developments in Anchorage’s homeless services” | Alaska Insight | By Valerie Kern, Alaska Public Media – February 3, 2023

Hot meals on a snowy day

Thank you, United Way of Anchorage and Alaska Hospitality Retailers Association, for providing delicious hot meals through the Restaurant and Hunger Relief program for our neighbors currently living unsheltered. The Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness outreach team, along with our local partners, will be handing these lunches out twice a week from now till August.

Funded by the Municipality of Anchorage.

January Outreach Update

Total Client Contacts in December: 350
Harm Reduction Kits Distributed: 43
Clients Assisted by SALA Medical: 146

Outreach pop-ups are from 1 pm – 4 pm

• Tuesdays at Midtown/Cuddy
• Wednesdays at Sullivan Warming area
• Thursdays at Davis Park.

At these events, outreach teams provide Coordinated Entry assessments and information regarding available services. SALA Medics are on location to provide First Aid for clients as needed. Snacks, coffee, and other items are to be distributed to unsheltered individuals.

The following organizations participated in the events:
– Alaska Behavioral Health
– Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association (Four A’s)
– Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness
– Anchorage Health Department
– Beans Cafe & Streets to Success
– Catholic Social Services – Alaska
– Covenant House Alaska
– First United Methodist Church – Anchorage
– Food Bank of Alaska
– Rural Alaska Community Action Program, Inc.
– SALA, LLC
– Southcentral Foundation
– United Way of Anchorage

Special thanks to the following volunteers:
– Ernest Kinnebrew
– David Hembree
– Mary Cates
– Mike Hill
– Roger Branson
– Intern: Trish Franco

If you are interested in donating your time or resources, please reach out to outreach@aceh.org

Local Housing & Homelessness Highlights

Alaska’s News Source

Third Avenue Navigation Center set to open this month

“I think for Anchorage it’s exciting to see some new projects coming online that are going to help to address some of our neighbors experiencing homelessness and move them toward permanent stability,” Catholic Social Services Senior Director of Adult Homeless Services David Rittenberg said. “Of course, we haven’t opened the doors yet, and so right now it’s just a building and we’re excited to put programming in here in the next couple of weeks and bring clients in, and that’s really when the work starts.”

Anchorage Daily News

OPINION: Moving forward on housing those in need

It’s important to take time to celebrate the steps forward; to highlight the times when we all come together to serve the common good. This happened in July of 2022, when the municipality, including both the Assembly and the mayor’s office, designated $3.4 million for First Presbyterian Church LLC to be used in conjunction with funds from private entities to purchase the Guesthouse Inn. This was done for the purpose of converting the hotel into a housing complex for people with low or extremely low incomes, with more than 130 rooms to be used as stable homes for people who had previously been experiencing homelessness. Continue reading…

National Housing & Homelessness Highlights

National Alliance to End Homelessness

Are You a Veteran with Lived Experience?

The National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans seeks veterans with lived experience of homelessness to provide input and help improve research related to veterans’ health and housing. Participants will be provided a stipend as compensation.

United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH)

VA Taking Applications for $30m in Case Management Grants to Help Formerly Homeless Veterans

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced $30 million in case management grants for organizations to help formerly homeless veterans maintain their independence and housing stability.

The funding, which is available through VA’s Homeless Providers Grant and Per Diem (GPD) Program, will give organizations the funding they need to hire case managers, who will help veterans search for, obtain, and successfully transition to permanent housing; troubleshoot challenges and barriers to maintaining permanent housing; and connect with services to address issues like poor credit history.

VA anticipates awarding 100 grants for up to $300,000 each to support approximately 150 case manager positions. Awards will fund two years of operations, starting Oct. 1, 2023, and ending Sept. 30, 2025.

Applications are due no later than 4 p.m. ET, May 4. Email questions to GPDGrants@va.gov. Continue reading…

Community Solutions

How are public health and homelessness systems collaborating? 

Built for Zero communities offer insights into engagement between these systems.

Homelessness is a public health crisis that affects a large number of people, threatens health over the long term, and requires large-scale solutions. But local public health departments haven’t traditionally contributed to homeless response systems. 

In order to help us understand the most effective engagement methods and roles for local health departments, we conducted an online survey and held conversations with six Built for Zero communities.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Assistance Animals and Fair Housing – Navigating Reasonable Accommodations Interactive Tool Now Available 

Explore the recently released Assistance Animals and Fair Housing – Navigating Reasonable Accommodations Interactive Tool! This interactive tool will provide persons with disabilities with information about their fair housing rights related to requests for assistance animals.

This interactive tool consists of a series of questions which guides users through HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) Notice 2020-01, “Assessing a Person’s Request to Have an Assistance Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act,” to provide information about handling a reasonable accommodation request for an assistance animal from, or on behalf of, a person with a disability. The interactive tool provides best practices to use when addressing requests by a housing applicant or tenant for reasonable accommodations for assistance animals in housing.

This interactive tool is a part of the suite of technical assistance (TA) products sponsored by FHEO which are designed to educate housing providers, HUD grantees, including entitlement communities, participating jurisdictions (PJs), public housing agencies (PHAs), HUD housing counseling agencies, and others involved in housing transactions, as well as persons with disabilities who seek reasonable accommodations related to assistance animals.

National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)

Homelessness and Housing First

Representative Dean Introduces the “Homelessness and Behavioral Health Care Coordination Act” in the House

Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) reintroduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 2 to help people experiencing homelessness and behavioral health issues, including substance use disorder, access critical supportive services. The “Homelessness and Behavioral Health Care Coordination Act” (H.R.773) would authorize a grant program within HUD to help state and local governments, tribal entities, public housing agencies, and Continuums of Care better coordinate services for behavioral health, including substance use disorder and homelessness. NLIHC has endorsed the bill.