At an emergency meeting Friday, the Anchorage Assembly agreed to move forward on a request to expand capacity at the city’s largest mass shelter for unhoused people, setting up formal action at the regular Assembly meeting on Tuesday.
The proposal would increase capacity at the congregate shelter located at 1111 E. 56th Ave., a facility that serves people considered among the hardest to house, due to their mental states and behavior problems. The Anchorage Health Department has requested a waiver of Title 7 and an emergency procurement to allow an additional 50 beds, bringing the total capacity to as many as 200 people at the site.
Under the emergency waiver, the contract could be amended and executed without competition, formal advertising, or other standard procurement procedures if the mayor determines in writing that an emergency exists. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance finally made that determination on Friday, signing a declaration stating that the “health and safety of the public are at immediate risk if congregate sheltering capacity at 1111 E. 56th Ave. is not expanded.”
In the written finding, the mayor cited sustained temperatures hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit over the past week and the lack of available shelter space elsewhere in the city. The director of the Anchorage Health Department determined there is a life-and-safety concern for individuals currently unsheltered and unable to be accommodated by existing facilities. Both congregate shelter operators and the Anchorage Safety Center contractor, SALA Medical, have reported they are at capacity, while people continue to seek shelter, including individuals discharged from local hospitals and those dropped off by Anchorage police.
Given the conditions, the mayor’s declaration states that sleeping outdoors constitutes a life-safety emergency for unsheltered individuals. Henning, Inc., the operator of the 1111 E. 56th Ave. shelter, has indicated it can accommodate up to 50 additional beds, and the waiver would allow immediate execution of an amendment to expand capacity accordingly.
The item appears on Tuesday’s Assembly agenda as a “laid on the table” matter, meaning it is expected to be taken up without further public hearing.
The Alaska Story has been documenting conditions on Anchorage streets for months as temperatures dropped, showing people huddled in doorways, on ledges, and in exposed areas around the city, often without visible outreach or shelter options. Sometimes they have just a thin blanket over them and a piece of cardboard beneath them.
As winter intensified, many of those living outdoors appeared medically compromised, with others showing clear signs of mental illness or mental disability.
Mayor LaFrance campaigned on a promise of competence in city management, but the administration has allowed a life-threatening situation to persist downtown for weeks as cold weather worsened. Friday’s emergency action marks the first significant movement from the mayor’s office this winter to expand shelter capacity amid increasingly dangerous conditions.
Street people camp in doorway of Anchorage Visitor Center as winter sets in
16 thoughts on “After weeks of deadly cold weather, Mayor LaFrance finally decides to take action on street people”
“shelter for unhoused people.”
So in plain language homeless. I would post something from Orwell about langauge, but I am sure we all know the pertinent quotes.
More money laundering by Anchorage and Alaska NGOs. You can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves.
Rest assured, the usual players in the homeless-industrial complex will make a big pile of money out of this. The magic words “without competition” will bring out the worst of the worst. I bet the airline tickets and hotel rooms to the Caribbean and South Pacific are already being booked. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Will our INCOMPETENT mayor be opening up her own home to help the poorunhoused people???
There’s about 4 or 5 others on the assembly who should be opening their home to assist with the homeless. I don’t see you out on the streets other then visually see the group of people..any idea of housing some..yourselves??
You criticize the Assembly for proposing a sales tax that will provide help to the homeless. You rage against property taxes used for the same purpose. And yet you now have the audacity to insinuate that the Mayor is uncaring and slow to provide support.
Past stories and comments both here and on MRA have exhibited an attitude of distinct unwillingness to pay for homeless support, and/or a desire to simply ship “them” elsewhere. But now, when you imagine even a small gap in the Muni’s response, you pounce on it and use it as a cudgel.
So dishonest. So hypocritical. So un-Christian. So MAGA. Anything for clicks. Anything to feed the rage.
Where has this deep compassion been hiding for so long?
Spare me with your liberal tears. Anchorage taxpayers are paying millions to the homeless or ‘unhoused’ bs. My compassion has reached its max amount of giving a 💩.
I second that Lorna.
I’ll third and foruth it along with you..
Don’t feed the troll!!
How many years did the ASSembly funnel millions into their own pockets? Meg Zaletel’s six figure salary day job at Anchorage Coalition to end homelessness? How many millions of that money went to former Democrat Mayor Mark Begich to fill his newly remodeled “Homeless Manor”? Throwing more money at the homeless only grows the homeless population is the only result Anchorage taxpayers have seen unless you are a Democrat catching the millions. Put your money where your mouth is and donate your home first. That will please at least a small group of them until they burn it down.
No one cares what you write.
Hans, perhaps you missed the alcohol tax that was supposed to solve the “homeless” crisis. Seen any action with THAT money? Neither have we. What makes you think more taxes will change a damned thing? And if you think for a minute that it is Christian virtue to confirm people in their sins, you need to do more reading.
Hans look at yourself in the mirror, there is more you personally can do as the rest of us for the most vulnerable in anchorage that we don’t do that we can do. Because of a lack of imagination as well as fear we hold back more than we give. All the groups of people you criticize you are just as guilty for your own selfishness even the homeless or hobos are included being selfish too. Just as all of us I meet homeless, talk with them, and observe they are no less selfish than the liberals controlling this city. This is not a critical comment than a REMINDER when we can all do more. When public leaders and non profits using tax dollars supposedly for homeless services aren’t being spent to help keep these people warm, then the good acts fall again on the neighbors who must live around them watching them from our windows, praying for their lives, helping them get through the night. Because at the end of the Christian’s life or even the rich man’s life in the story of the Rich man and Lazarus, We will be judged and responsible for how we treated the one that God placed in front of us. Not the hobos not in front of us but that one hobo sleeping across the street in front of our house, or workplace, or in our neighborhood close to home. Just as Lazarus sleeping in front of the Rich man’s house day and night and the Rich man just stepped around him.
***Salvation is not in how many good works a Christian does. how many good works a Christian does, doesn’t matter. they don’t mean anything. A good work doesn’t matter when it doesn’t bring Glory to the Father in Heaven. Bringing glory to Him means one more person saved by Christ out of the eternal fires of hell where they were headed before one came into their life to reveal to them Christ.
She must have gotten permission from Chrissy. Cheers –
1111 E. 56th Ave. An inconvenient location for the users. but a perfect hidden location for stuffy collared liberals who don’t want to be uncomfortable for seeing them. How do they suppose the hobos going to reach it? will the muni be shuttling them there by police, bus fare, community patrol service which is all paid by taxpayers, or do they expect them to walk it. There isn’t a whole lot of community in that area either making it worth their while. The hobos who’d be in that area would be hobos Choosing to camp along the Campbell creek trail and they already made their little shelters; while the hobos that don’t get in time to use the shelter be stuck wandering somewhere be hard to reach and find them before death.