Anchorage Assembly authorizes another $2.34 million for hotel rooms for homeless this winter

The Anchorage Assembly, which gave a grant to Henning Inc. to manage 200 beds at the Alex Hotel and Suites for homeless people needing shelter during the coldest months of winter, today gave a grant to a different provider, MASH Property Management, operated by Mark Begich, to operate up to 132 beds at the same hotel, which is located in Spenard.

It’s a grant that is 25% higher than what Henning got a few weeks ago.

The new grant, agreed on a vote of 7-4 during a special meeting called Tuesday, totaled $2,343,000 to run from Nov. 25 though April 15, 2025.

The reason given was that the city wanted to diversify its use of Henning, which some members of the Assembly don’t like, because of its association with the now-out-of-office Bronson Administration.

But the contract to Henning in September was for $98 per client per night, while the Assembly has given MASH, which was the second highest bidder, a contract for $125 per client per night. MASH is co-owned in a 50/50 split with Sheldon Fisher, former Department of Revenue commissioner in the Gov. Bill Walker Administration. Mark Begich was mayor of Anchorage from 2003 through 2009.

Between the two contracts, Henning and MASH have been awarded over $6 million since October to manage hotel rooms for the homeless. Henning and MASH will have some redundancies at the Alex Hotel, while Henning also operates hotel rooms at the Merrill Field In and Henry House.

There are several other homeless hotels around Anchorage, but a growing number of homeless are sheltered in Spenard hotels, increasing the crime and general lawlessness of the area along Spenard Road. The Chelsea Hotel serves as a cold-weather homeless shelter in Spenard, for example.

In addition to the cold-weather homeless hotels, the 56th Avenue congregate shelter (mass shelter) can accept 200 persons per night. The feeding of all of the homeless people being sheltered in hotels and at the mass shelter is done under separate contracts.

Assembly Chairman Chris Constant said the Assembly had little time to work on solutions, blaming the “stain of the previous administration” and referring to the homeless crisis as “the mess we were given.” The new mayor, who was on the Assembly before she ran for mayor, has now been in office for six months.

Read the authorizing document at this link.

Assembly members Zac Johnson, Karen Bronga, Randy Sulte, Mark Littlefield, and Scott Myers were no votes on the memorandum. The item had been “laid on the table” at the last minute, a technique used to avoid public scrutiny. The public had received no notification about the sudden expenditure.