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.
Long overdue for a complete investigation. Now that we have a new FBI, we should be able to ask for that investigation in so many issues this state and boroughs have been a part of and threw money and favors under the table. The new DOJ will be working fast and furious once they are staffed.
Can we get DOGE Alaska hoodies to give out to the un-housed ?
Bust them all!!!
The only way to “fix” the bums roaming around is to stop this shyte. It is HUGE business and everyone needs to recognize it. Just cut the funds off for everything and the 90% of the bums will drift back to where they came from, otherwise it is The Never Ending Party in their minds.
What a fraud.Lock her up!
Where is this money coming from? State? Local? Fed? This is for sure a conflict and for sure should be stopped immediately.
I’m not a resident of Anchorage, but I hope Zaletel has to account for every single penny that was thrown her way. Talk about a leech on taxpayers’ money. Why aren’t the taxpayers of Anchorage up in arms???? The more money that was thrown her way, the worse the problem gets. What’s wrong with that picture?
We all know she was middle class when she went in, I bet she got rich
I can see Meg needing more monies…Since Covid, more people in vehicles have become homeless because everything is too expensive!
It’s an endemic though and roughly more than half the “homeless” have a place to stay indoors. Others have had opportunities that they turn down. I don’t want to walk my kids past a disheveled man with his tent pitched along a public walking trail or park while he’s sitting on a bucket, sharpening his knife with trash surrounding the area and a fire pit.
Not at all conflict of interest…….
AECH might be working. Two things can be absolutely true and yet be mind numbingly frustrating, a paradox.
True- a sole source funding stream (noncompetitive)
True- an assembly member potential conflict of Interest
True- AECH should be audited
True- the number of people who are homeless may not have anything to do with AECH
True- as life becomes increasingly fiscally challenging more people may become homeless.
AECH should clearly remove any conflict of interest from it board or process. AECH should be transparent and provide updates. AECH should look to divorce itself from Anchorage taxpayer funding stream and look for other revenue streams.
Currently, it looks like an Anchorage version of USAID wasteful spending.
Every year the legislators in Juneau give millions to the public schools in Alaska while student test scores are one of the worst of all the states. And this year the legislators plan on wasting more money. Perhaps the program should be to deduct funds by 10% a year until the Alaska test scores are in the top 25% of the states. Charter and private schools consistently score there, why cannot the public schools do the same?
Let’s see if the Anchorage FBI has gotten the msg and immediately begins local investigations into serious problems in Ak, such as this, without having to be scolded first.