The Anchorage Assembly is attempting a more legal method of getting homeless people into the Golden Lion hotel property at the corner of New Seward Highway and 36th Avenue.
The Assembly majority, which had illegally designated the property for homeless emergency shelter, has conceded it can’t legally be used for that.
The hotel was put under city ownership by former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, who was going to put drug addicts in it. That caused a neighborhood uproar, including objections from operators of a nearby Jewish preschool.
Now, it appears destined to become an old-fashioned flophouse until the Assembly can figure out how to use it for a drug treatment center. The Guest House is being run as workforce housing, under the negotiated agreement between the Mayor’s Office and the Assembly, but is not property owned by the municipality; it has been transferred to ownership by First Presbyterian LLC. The Rasmuson Foundation has money from the Assembly to purchase of old Barrett Inn in Spenard, for a similar use, under the negotiated agreement. With the Golden Lion, however, the fact that the city owns it causes different complications.
The Assembly majority put its new plans on Tuesday’s agenda as a surprise “laid on the table” item. Those items are supposed to be for emergencies, but the Assembly uses them to spring actions on an unsuspecting public that may have checked the Assembly’s agenda and didn’t find anything controversial. Without sitting through the meeting, the public would never know. “Laid on the table” items are now used a way to subvert the public process.
The Assembly now says that the municipality can get a third-party contractor and then charge rent for the tenants, for some nominal portion, on a month-to-month basis. The contractor would execute rental agreements with individual tenants for most of the units that formerly served as hotel rooms. “Rental agreements can be month-to-month or for 1 year, whichever maximizes access to availably types of rental assistance and is feasible during the duration the property is leased to the contract operator,” the Assembly wrote in its resolution.
“It is anticipated that rental costs will largely covered by rents made up from federal emergency rental assistance funds and other available types of rental assistance. Persons renting a single housing unit will be required to certify that one or more prospective tenants within the household has qualified for unemployment benefits or experienced a reduction in household income, incurred significant costs, or experienced other financial hardship during or due, directly or indirectly, to the coronavirus pandemic; one or more individuals within the household can demonstrate a risk of experiencing homelessness or housing instability; and the household is a low-income family,” is qualified as such under federal guidelines, the Assembly majority wrote.
Under the Assembly majority’s latest idea, the contract operator would not offer services that would qualify the facility as a transitional living facility or drug rehabilitation care facility, as defined by the federal government. None of the units has cooking facilities, nor would those be added to the hotel rooms, but the contract operator could provide dining services. There used to be a cafe in the building.
Further, according to the Assembly’s newest idea, no retail or wholesale sales would be able to be on site, nor any storage or display of merchandise, such as snack or candy machines.
Tenants would have to pay with an emergency housing voucher or other housing voucher that would cover the rental amount, or have the ability to pay the fee for the room without such assistance.
Regardless of payment type, the tenants could not have incomes exceeding 30% of the area median income.
The Assembly on Tuesday directed the mayor to provide details by Nov. 1 about how the Golden Lion will be used as housing, and to provide a written report to the Assembly by Nov. 4, which would outline any code-imposed impediments to putting the hotel into service as housing.
During the same meeting, the Assembly, on a vote of 9-3, chose to end its agreement with the mayor on the navigation center that has been under construction on Tudor Road. That center was part of the negotiated plan that the Assembly approved and partially funded last April.
