While serving on the Anchorage Assembly, Meg Zaletel has kept a day job running the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. She has been able to get millions of dollars in public money, all the while the homelessness in Anchorage has only increased.
Zaletel has served on the Assembly since 2019, and was named interim executive director of ACEH in 2021 and then became the formal director shortly after winning reelection in April 2022. She has had major successes steering tax dollars toward her organization.
Since 2021, the money that has poured into her nonprofit through noncompetitive, sole-source grants has gone from $55,000 in 2021 to $1.5 million in 2024. The total for past six years is $2,576,127 of taxpayer dollars in noncompetitive awards to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness.
By the end of 2024, the coalition reported there were 3,070 homeless people in Anchorage, an increase from November, 2023, when the group reported 2,822 homeless individual in the city. The word “homelessness” encompasses people who are temporarily living with friends or family, not just on the street.
The homelessness problem has only grown with the money. Between January 2019 and January 2024, people sleeping out of doors (tents, cars, under City Hall) has climbed 256.7%, from 97 people in 2019 to 346 in 2024.
Zaletel is paid over $100,000 annually from the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness and earns another $65,000 a year as an Assembly member, where she uses her influence with the other members of the Assembly to steer noncompetitive grants to her organization.
DOGE Alaska is a project to identify waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Alaska.
