The Municipality of Anchorage awarded the contract to continue mass care shelter to contractor 99 Plus 1, Inc. The contract with Bean’s Cafe to run the mass care shelter ends Sept. 15.
“I am pleased that mass care shelter will continue without disruption in service,” said Mayor Dave Bronson. “One of my top priorities has been a commitment to helping our homeless neighbors in need.”
It will continue for now at the Sullivan Arena, although the mayor’s plan is to have a navigation center for those experiencing homelessness on Tudor Road at Elmore Road.
As part of the transition to 99 Plus 1, an Anchorage company, no clients will have to leave and there will be adequate staff, Bronson said. There will be bedding, food, and navigation services available.
99 Plus 1, Inc. will be onsite at the Sullivan Arena on Monday, Sept. 13 to interview prospective employees. Although Bean’s Cafe applied to continue running the mass care services, the nonprofit did not win the contract.
The contract is not indefinite; it will end on Oct. 31. The plan is to move forward with Bronson’s initial plans and get the Sullivan Arena back to use as a hockey venue. Bronson is being blocked by the liberal members of the Assembly, who want to continue to use the facility as a homeless shelter until they can push through their own plan, which differs from the mayor’s.
Beans not Woke enough? Found a long standing, proven alternative?!?!
99 Plus 1 Inc. has existed less than a year.
I uncovered that 6 months ago with their first two Covid contracts they were issued but the host here deleted my comments because I listed the owners name. If you research the person who registered the LLC you will find a close relationship to a re-election campaign.
Indeed – another shameless handout to his friends. What should we expect from a mayor with no experience running…. anything, public or private sector? A realtor is going to run a homeless shelter for hundreds of people. You can’t make this s**t up.
This might be a way forward, but something smells, and it isn’t good…
Glad to see your sense of smell returned. You are starting to smell the Stink about Anchorage we been living around. Hahaha that’s why those voting for Bronson and whom he brings to the table will actually clean the poop in the corner instead of buying a year supply of Air Freshner!
It’s About Time That “BEANS CAFE” And its Six Figure Salaried Mgmt. were Put out to Pasture…For Too Many Years, They Have Only used a Band-Aid approach with their Outdated 19th Century “Soup Kitchen” approach to the Issues of the Increasing Population of Chronic Enebriates & The Problems that They Create, Increased Crime, Out of Control Substance & Drug Abuse, And an Atmosphere of NEVER ENDING Problems created by both Beans & the Chronic Population it serves.
..It’s time to Move On & Move Away from an Organisation that Clearly has Never & Can Never Solve the Problems the City is Dealing with, But only serves to Give the Problems Longevity & Legs.
Who owns 99 plus 1 .
Look up the LLC and there you will find your answer. I posted the name on another article about COVID contracts with the previous administration and it was deleted.
Theresa Pisa, Director, President, Secretary, Shareholder, Treasurer. She also happens to be a real estate agent. AKA Terrie Pisa. LLC was formed 9/14/20.
“Terrie Pisa is located in Anchorage, AK, United States and is part of the Offices of Real Estate Agents and Brokers Industry. Terrie Pisa has 4 total employees across all of its locations and generates $133,269 in sales (USD). (Employees and Sales figures are modelled)”.
Stop feeding them if they don’t want to work; lots of jobs are available, some restaurants are paying wages on a daily basis. If they get hungry they will either get a job or go home to wherever they came from! We never had this homeless situation even in the worst downturns. This is a lazy factor.
We aren’t lazy. Your community jobs won’t hire us because they say we are too hopeful! There isn’t one person at the shelter that is hopeful. We are dogs being kicked over and over. I feel your community is trying to kill us!
Wow, this should be ugly as this is moved towards the center of Anchorage.
Better sell while property holds a high value, if your near the Sullivan.
I remember the good old days of seawolf and aces hockey ?
Add room and services to these programs and the villages will provide the bodies. Why wouldn’t they?
Wow, 99 Plus 1, INC is a LLC that was formed just before it was awarded its first “COVID” related contract. If you look into the owner you will find they are deeply connected to a specific State Senator. This already smells of insider corruption.
Culture Wars 2021 – Anchorage Edition
“Experiencing homelessness” … “Clients” … “Neighbors” … riddle me this – if they’re homeless how can they be neighbors???
Liberals and other assorted socialists/communists are expert at manipulating language.
When was it that Americans accepted the notion that we’re responsible for making sure that people who, for any reason, find themselves unable to pay their own way through life by working hard and making good decisions and choices have a better life than they’ve earned?
And through the coercive power of government, no less.
The concept that the government should take from those who’ve worked for what they have to give to people who haven’t earned what we’re being forced to give them is communism.
It’s the embodiment of the Marxist motto: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Anyone who accepts that government should take from some in order to give to others is a communist…most just don’t understand that.
Own it…you either believe that you have a natural right to the fruits of your labor or you believe that the all powerful government owns some portion of what you’ve earned or produced.
That’s a fundamental difference between individual freedom and collectivism.
Pick a side and take a stand…freedom loving American or communist.
Which one are you?
’99 Plus 1, Inc.’ won the contract but does its management have any experience running a shelter? Time will tell.
They have zero experience in running a shelter or any large scale business.
Keep in mind that many of our homeless have mental problems.
Next, we have an Alaska organization called, “Alaska Mental Health Authority.”
They feed at the State financing trough every year and get funding.
The Federal government gave them over a million acres to be self-funding.
If they wanted to hire and pay well folks to work with our homeless and even build some kind of housing to screen and document them, AK Mental Health could sell land and fund such an endeavor.
They sell VERY little. From their website:
“While the TLO (Trust Land Office) has generated over $124 million in land sale revenue since 1994, less than 3% of the land from the original million-acre entitlement has been sold and conveyed.”
Folks, the money is there. Lots of money. Until folks start asking why they are sitting on a million acres and still demanding funding, well, we’ll continue giving them money to do very little for our homeless.
I’ve heard about TLO too. I noticed they have a lot of testimonies from people in remote communities but their website has nothing about helping people in Anchorage. …not sure why that is.
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They could also raise more money with timber sales that could help manage our forests and reduce the chance of massive fires that threaten communities and release more CO2 into the atmosphere then the entire US population in one year. (not that I buy into that rhetoric, but some people do)
The bureaucracy labels homeless as clients now… sounds as though the problem is here to stay. Never let a crisis go to waste. Great job, manage the redistribution of wealth. What a joke.
‘Clients’ as well as ‘those experiencing homelessness’. Removes the element of self responsibility.
Our “Homeless neighbors”?
How many “neighbors” do you know, apart from these “clients” that crap on your lawn and piss in your doorway? Seems like being neighbors is sort of a two way street and by “not judging” them, we aren’t doing them, or us, any favors in the neighborhood.
Vagrancy, public intoxication, indecency, vandalism. These are all crimes. Prosecute them. Once processed, if mental illness is established, get them a qualified physician. If substance abuse is the issue, offer them treatment for the initial offenses, in lieu of jail time. If all that fails, then we already have places to house these folks…these very unneighborly neighbors—they are called prisons. Until you punish the behavior, you are going to see more of it.
I don’t know who 99 plus 1 is. I don’t know their experience in managing homeless shelters or what sets them apart. And I don’t know why they won the contract. Hope there is a follow up to this.
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Now, can we make it illegal again to camp within city limits? We have enough “alternative accommodations” so ACLU can’t interfere with kicking people off the streets now, although, I’m sure the lefties will see it as incompassionate to not enable people to have destructive lifestyles and they will throw a diva like virtue signaling fit. I have noticed less homeless, but they are still around. I also would like to know more about what “navigation” is exactly. Is that processing people so they can find proper support? What channels of support is that?
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This whole thing seems pretty simple to me anymore. Make it illegal to sleep/camp within city limits. Have shelters that aren’t great places to stay and don’t allow alcohol or drug use, and if people don’t comply with no drugs or alcohol in the shelter, they go to jail and get hosed off and de-liced and treated like a filthy criminal. They stay there until sober and then are allowed to get dropped off at their own residence if they have one or someone else’s residence that is willing to be their documented “sponsor” or they can go to the shelter. Rinse and repeat until they get fed up with everything and realize they need to move to California or straighten out their life. Then educate them when they are sober on how to find rehab, mental health programs, jobs, low income housing, etc. The government will mess things up I’m sure during this process and some people are going to get mistreated and slip through the cracks or whatever. And money will be squandered and end up in projects that are needed only because somebody knows too well how to beg and plead for more and more. So it needs a lot of oversite, a strict budget, and constant refining and a lot of human non-government support, oh, and tribes’ involvement. This business of just letting them pass out drunk on the streets, living in their own squalor, and not being a valued member of society needs to stop. And accommodating them in homeless shelters with no accountability needs to stop.
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Ok ramble/rant done. Sorry, maybe I should just start a blog or find a good place to volunteer and actually get involved. If anybody knows a good place start for someone that thinks like me, I’m all ears.
I expect that the assembly at its Tuesday night meeting will move to void this contract as their general resistance to anything Bronson proposes. Meanwhile, winter approaches and the unkind comments are unproductive but insight into the owners of the 99 + 1 or pointing out the mental health trust fund are welcomed.
The question is not so much as where as when. This wasn’t an expanding problem until after 2002 and the American hard core street drugs began here like an infestion of cockroaches. Add 26 years of broken promises of bigger and better infrastructure. Add a decreased workforce do to aging population. And the best gab here is blaming the chronically ill, or the mentally infirmed people whose will for dignity is as valid as YOURS.
I do not believe a Contract over $30,000 can be awarded without Assembly approval. There is a reason that the initial agreement is for only 6 weeks. Bronson has made a s-show of an already messed up situation.
If Bronson can disrupt the money train, the assembly will lose interest in the “homeless problem”. This looks like a good first step.
I sure hope so! While the churches can amp their enthusiasm to do mission field work right in Anchorage cause Anchorage and Alaska need missionaries just the same as Thailand, doing street ministering work and working at ushering troubled peoples into church recovery fellowship and bible study groups and get the Homeless and Addicts what they need more than their physical needs being met. This way the Church can get them on the right side, since what did anyone else do that ever helped improve their life except dangle a promise in front of the troubled only to pull it away giving the treasure to governnent bureaucrat in they can drive the nicer car, live in the nice home, food in the kitchen, new Chinese made clothes, vacation brag photos on their social media, a retirement for old age, and medical care.
“One of my top priorities has been a commitment to helping our homeless neighbors in need.”
This is from the supposedly conservative Bronson…he thinks it’s an important government function to expend public funds to house, feed and otherwise take care of people who are unable to take care of themselves.
He wants to build a huge new government facility to do so.
He wants to either hire more government employees or enter into costly contracts with private companies to run the place…probably both.
And he’ll certainly reach the inevitable conclusion that this problem will never go away and new taxes will be necessary to continue “helping our homeless neighbors in need.”
Leaving aside the obvious fact that using government to take from productive people to give to non-productive people is the realization of the Marxist credo you do not solve a problem like homelessness by making it easier to be homeless.
That’s like ending welfare dependency by increasing welfare payments.
The stated policy works directly against the stated goal.
You would think that an actual conservative would be able to understand that when you feed the rabbits you always end up with more rabbits…it’s just the way the real world works.
While there are one or two likely speculations as to the “why?” of this, nothing really pins it down. C’mon Suzanne: Give us the dirt on this!
My understanding of it is that Bean’s Cafe has done a poor job with stewarding their grants, and that there are some real concerns in the community about whether they spend their grants on the intended programs. For all the good they probably do, they are not in the business of working themselves out of a job. Other than that, I have no inside info. -sd
Bean’s Cafe has been serving the homeless as a non-profit for over 35 years. To make accusations such as this based in rumour and without substantiation is unlike you Suzanne. I’d think your search for facts would be stronger, and frankly more focused on the unqualified contractor that was selected. Disappointed.
The article didn’t have speculation and at least she’s reporting on it. There a lot of comments asking for better details (myself included) and she’s doing her best to respond to those comments. But I agree, I would like a follow up article that has done more digging. The 99 plus 1 website really doesn’t shine a light on anything. I personally have no reason to believe Bean’s Cafe has done a poor job other than our homeless problem has only gotten worse and I haven’t heard of any success stories, but there might be many. I personally really want to know as many details as I can about our homeless problem. As a resident of Anchorage, I think small crimes and the homeless are our biggest issues… There are other issues I am very concerned about as well, but those are obvious ones in front of our faces almost every day.
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If there is a follow up, I sure hope she doesn’t use the phrase “those experiencing homelessness” or “clients”. These people are homeless. It’s an adjective and a noun. Not a derogatory term. I sincerely don’t know why she’s playing along with these silly virtue signaling word games.
Also look into Patrick and Jennifer LeMay (LeMay Engineering and Consulting, INC)?They have been paid 100’s of thousands of $ for their services in acquiring contractors to “work COVID issues@. All of the contacts were let outside the public process (less than 30K each) yet they total much more than that.
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