With the closure date of the Sullivan Arena shelter less than two weeks away, homeless service providers are asking the Anchorage Assembly to adjust the plan to better accommodate medically fragile people experiencing homelessness. The Assembly voted unanimously last Tuesday to close the shelter on April 30, leaving residents wondering where they will go next.
At an Assembly Committee on Housing and Homelessness meeting on Wednesday, the homeless services providers expressed disappointment at the abruptness of the closure timeline and asked for more time.
“It is a surprising and, quite frankly, a disappointing outcome,” said LeeAnn Garrick, the chief operating officer of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council. “Keeping this facility open a little bit longer is critical, given the current cold temperatures, the lack of a comprehensive support plan for the most vulnerable individuals and the absence of a timeline to provide integrated services across the community.”
A survey conducted by Henning Inc. and Restorative & Reentry Services found that 174 unhoused people with significant physical and mental health disabilities, including 26 people who use a walker or wheelchair, would be put at “significant risk” by this closure.
“The 174 is comprised of individuals with significant physical disabilities, wheelchairs, canes, walkers, inability to walk for long periods of time. It also includes people with significant and severe mental health issues and it also includes significant and severe issues with SUD – substance use disorders,” said Cathleen McLaughlin, CEO of Restorative & Re-entry Services. “These are people that cannot manage themselves in the community without supports.”
Assembly members asked if any of those affected could move to the Catholic Social Services-run Complex Care facility, housed in the former Sockeye Inn. The facility is full with a waitlist of 64 people but does not include a large number who are ineligible due to not being able to take care of their basic daily needs.
If the Assembly plan proceeds, it would be the second year in a row that the Sullivan shelter has closed without clear plans for sheltering the most vulnerable.
Last year, Mayor Dave Bronson abruptly closed the Sullivan at the end of June and directed clients to Centennial Campground for the remainder of the summer. The Bronson administration continually said the campground was “not part of the homelessness response,” so no services were provided by the municipality. The campground residents endured inclement weather, crime, overdoses, roaming bears, a shooting and deaths.
The Assembly’s current plan would close the Sullivan with significant snow still on the ground after a winter of record-breaking snowfall. Before voting to close the shelter, several Assembly members expressed the need to take action at some point, and said the municipality did not have the resources to continue using the Sullivan as a shelter indefinitely. Assembly member Felix Rivera said that the limited resources would be better spent on long-term solutions.
The municipality is working with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness (ACEH) and Henning Inc. to bring in the Aging and Disability Resource Center, a state-funded program run by the Anchorage Health Department, to assist with identifying people who need a greater level of care, and to connect them with Medicaid funding for assisted living.
“There is a timeline for this process that is not quick,” said ACEH’s Terria Ware. “It is usually a six to eighteen month timeframe.”
At least some Assembly members indicated openness to extending the Sullivan for those identified as medically fragile, both during the meeting and at a press conference afterwards.
“Do we extend the Sullivan arena for a limited duration for a limited population?” asked Assembly member Daniel Volland, who represents the area around the shelter and has been a proponent for transitioning away from mass shelter to a scattered site model.
Rivera, who is the chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, expressed that he may be open to the idea of extending the Sullivan longer for the most vulnerable, and promised that there would be resolutions introduced at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting to address some of the issues they were discussing around homelessness.
Assembly member Chris Constant attended the press conference after and said that extending the Sullivan for the most vulnerable was the right thing to do.
The administration is also supportive of using a step down approach for closing the Sullivan. “Focusing on this specific population that faces the most challenges when going unsheltered is a shared priority of the admin and Assembly,” Alexis Johnson, Bronson’s homelessness coordinator, wrote in an email to the Current.
It is estimated that the unsheltered homeless population will swell to between 700 to 800 individuals when the Sullivan and another facility that has been housing homeless individuals, the Alex Hotel, also closes.
ACEH is planning a pop-up event before the Sullivan closure, offering basic necessities, which may include clothing, food and emergency blankets, as well as bus passes. On the final day of the Sullivan shelter operation, ACEH is encouraging the municipality to ensure residents have one last hot meal and a sack lunch to go.
