The Anchorage Assembly and Mayor Dave Bronson haven’t been able to agree on much, but they agreed to ask the Alaska Legislature for funding to keep the city’s shelter open year-round.
The $4 million request would keep the city’s cold weather shelter, located at the former Solid Waste Services building, open and operating as a low-barrier shelter from May 1 to Oct. 15. Without the funding, the shelter would close at the end of this month, leaving 150 to 200 people without a place to stay.
The request was raised on Monday during the budget amendment process in the House Finance Committee, but it was narrowly rejected by a single vote. It was the first major opportunity for the measure to be approved, but not the last.
Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, made the amendment, arguing that Anchorage’s homelessness crisis is Alaska’s homelessness crisis.
“The homelessness crisis, which has impacted all of the western states, much of the United States and Anchorage in a profound way is a shared problem in that many people are homeless and not directly from Anchorage,” he said. “We welcome all our guests, but nonetheless it’s a shared problem.”
Every Anchorage lawmaker on the committee supported the measure, including Republican Rep. Julie Coulombe, who agreed that homelessness is a statewide issue that has fallen largely on Anchorage.
“I’ve always said it’s a statewide issue, it’s not an Anchorage problem,” she said. “You can’t say Anchorage hasn’t put skin in the game; we’ve put millions of dollars toward solving this issue and have gotten very little state support.”
While non-Anchorage legislators with the bipartisan House Minority caucus lent their support to the cause, the non-Anchorage Majority members had a very different view on the problem.
“Basically, they tell me that it’s a place where homeless folks can go throughout the day and be able to use drugs and alcohol and have a safe place to do that,” said Fairbanks Republican Rep. Will Stapp, of the shelters’ “low-barrier” designation. “I don’t fundamentally believe that the state should be in the business of giving direct million-dollar grants to places that allow homeless folks to be able to use substance abuse materials.”
That was a flatly wrong understanding of what a low-barrier shelter means, Rep. Josephson responded. He noted that low-barrier means that there are fewer screenings and other requirements put on people wanting to stay.
“Low barrier does not mean people are invited to bring their stash of drugs and alcohol into the shelter,” he said. “There’s a welcome sign, is what it means.”
But the 5Y-6N vote showed that while progress is being made in understanding homelessness issues, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done.
Reps. Josephson, Coulombe, Alyse Galvin, Dan Ortiz and Sara Hannan voted in favor of the funding. Reps. Stapp, DeLena Johnson, Bryce Edgmon, Neal Foster, Mike Cronk and Frank Tomaszewski voted against it.
The measure could still be introduced through amendments on the House floor or in the Senate process. Any funding would still have to clear Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has line-item veto power over the budget.
Assembly member Anna Brawley, who helped craft the city’s legislative priorities as the chair of the Assembly’s Legislative Committee, responded to the vote on social media, saying that the city planned to continue to advocate for the funding increase.
“The mayor and assembly jointly support this reasonable, targeted funding request of $4 million to keep our shelter operating year-round,” she wrote. “Our ask is that the state recognize homelessness is a statewide issue whose costs are disproportionately felt by Anchorage taxpayers and residents, and the visitor industry all summer.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.