Municipality of Anchorage has a plan to address homelessness

The LaFrance administration has unveiled its one-year plan to address homelessness through four broad tactics:

• Reduce unsheltered homelessness through low-barrier shelter and housing.

• Increase access to behavioral and physical health care.

• Add new housing and increase access to existing housing.

• Harness community partnerships, funding and data

Farina Brown, LaFrance’s special assistant on homelessness and health, recently presented the plan to the Anchorage Continuum of Care Advisory Council and to the Anchorage Assembly Housing and Homelessness Committee. It includes action steps for the first 100 days, the first six months and the first year.

One fresh idea already working is the Police Department’s new HOPE team consisting of a sworn officer and a social worker. Their goal is to build trust and improve safety through regular visits to camps, said Lt. Brian Fuchs, who is overseeing the HOPE team, the Community Action Policing team that closes camps, and other special units. Jessica Parks, ACEH chief operations officer, shared a story in which the HOPE team encountered a man camping in a business park. They connected him with ACEH, which found out he had a housing voucher but had had trouble finding a spot because of his service animal. ACEH was able to find a housing unit for him and his pet. The close coordination between the HOPE team and ACEH led to a quick resolution to what otherwise might have been a lengthy process, Parks said.

Brown says the new administration doesn’t see the need to reinvent the wheel but instead is relying on efforts and plans already underway including Anchored Home, the community’s five-year strategic plan for solving homelessness.

“We intend to make incremental change through partnership and through collaboration,” Brown told the Assembly committee.

For this winter, the city plans to add 400 cold weather shelter beds for those experiencing homelessness in hotels scattered around town. Among other strategies, the Municipality wants to leverage public-private partnerships to build housing.

“We can’t create flow in the system if there isn’t somewhere for someone to go,” she said.

Click here to read the MOA plan.

Click here to watch the recent Assembly Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting.

Click here for a recent Anchorage Daily News Q and A with Farina Brown.