DOGE Alaska: How much did Assemblywoman Zaletel get for her Anchorage homelessness coalition?

By
Suzanne Downing
-
46
Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel led the effort to eliminate single-family zones in Anchorage.

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.

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46 COMMENTS

  1. 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.

  4. 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.

    • Hey, many/most are here due to the PFD, they know they get $$$ for all the pot and drugs. Many have drifted into the AK from out of state to get their pot.

  7. 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?

    • The bigger the city government , bigger the house less issue is . It goes hand and hand . How many houseless in Palmer and Wasilla ? They hang around Anchorage for the perks . Free parking for their firetrucks and stuff they collect . One hobo had a firetruck ! That ought to be a huge red flag . Crazy bunch of non conformists living off the land in downtown Anchorage . I’ve read recently that a $100 million dollars spent in the city of Anchorage on the houseless issue in the last 60 months . Time for the AI Colonoscopy, rats will be running for cover , most are city government administrators !

  9. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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?

  13. 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.

    • Do not get your hopes up. It is probably the case that WOKE ideology has deeply infected all corners of the FBI, including, in particular, the hiring process. I would not be surprised to see that most FBI agents and employees are thoroughly WOKE and social justice warriors. Ms. Zalatel will be viewed as a saint. In this world, only white males can be criminals. It is unlikely that the FBI will do anything in Alaska to upset the Leftist power structure.

  14. I used to go to the Homeless Committee meetings held by the Anchorage Assembly. The executive director, before Ms. Zaletel, had a study done to identify all the people involved in providing for the homeless in Anchorage. Each person was to be identified with their organization name and purpose. The number of people was reportedly in the hundreds and a lot of those people made in excess of $150,000.00 per year. I asked for and tried to track down the report. I was finally told by that I would never get a copy of the report and that the board of Ms. Zaletel’s organization had voted to keep the report secret as it would be detrimental to their organization. I think we would all be appalled if we found out just how much money was funneled to the Anchorage Homeless Complex.

  16. Would love to see DOGE look into the federal funds that go to our in-state special interest groups like REAP, AKPIRG, Alaska Center, ets., etc.,

  17. The self perpetuating issue; if Meg makes homelessness go away Meg makes her income go away. This will never happen and the numbers indicate she’s discovered how to improve homelessness for personal gain.

    At the Fur Rondy musher sprints last weekend there was a dirtbag holding a needle near his neck and clearly having trouble standing. That wasn’t common before Meg.

    At Taco King last weekend a dirtbag walked in and teetered around at the condiment counter before ramming his filthy hand into the sliced onions and eating them where he stood. That wasn’t common before Meg.

    Now we’re asked to carry Naloxone so that we can save these dirtbags in their moment of need and that answer is thank you, no.

    The question would be, how has that money changed Anchorage for the better and the answer is that it’s made Anchorage worse. The money has been spent in support of the dirtbags and to the detriment of the rest of us. If you get good at taking care of miscreants, drug addled street trash and the like, your reward will be more of them and that’s what Meg brings you.

    That she has a position on the Anchorage Assembly is a shameful conflict of interest.

  20. I’d like to see 5 bullet points of operation and or expenditures that did one thing to mitigate homelessness in the last year let alone last week

  21. Meg’s Corruption in Our Faces!
    These twisted people in office with mail in ballots and bloated voter rolls…this is what you get evil money grifters!.

  23. If insanity has been defined as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results every time”, what do you call insisting on doing the same thing over and over and getting WORSE results every time?

    NutMeg Zalatel is clearly running a criminal and predatory scam on Anchorage taxpayers. One could call it radical leftist “virtue signaling” as well, but in fact there is not an iota of actual virtue involved in what she is doing.

  24. I think I just found the profit in non-profits! Corruption, pure and simple. All NGO’s and non-profits should be non-salaried volunteers.

  28. My great and fellow citizens, now is the time, we have the political momentum, let us bind together to once and for all purge our state politcs from corruption and communism.

    We must find a stronger better executive to replace Dunleavy , he has been an absolute feckless weak man with no backbone.

    Sullivan and Murkowski…need I say more?

    We must cleanse the GOP cowards and criminals who have given us nothing but Murkowski and Dunleavy and many other piss poor humans who are not worth a dime.

    How bad does it have to get here before we realize the GOP is the biggest obstacle and threat for Alaskan conservatives.

    The democrats are evil, GOP are weak men who do nothing.

    What are we going to do about it?

    • Could not agree more .

      AkGOP is not my values . Terrible organization . Bunch of leftist . They handed us RCV on a silver platter . They are the problem for conservatives in Ak . Should be reorganized from a State level instead of Anchorage level . The people that run that organization are very confused and under the control of the left .

      The democrats during the time of Egan were way better republicans than the pukes today on the right .

  32. “What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please consumers in a competitive market. Instead, they are born in conquest and nourished by plunder. They are, in short, well-armed gangs intent on organized crime. Yes, rulers have sometimes come to recognize the prudence of protecting the herd they are milking and even of improving its ‘infrastructure’ until the day they decide to slaughter the young bulls, but the idea that government officials seek to promote my interests or yours is little more than propaganda—unless, of course, you happen to belong to the class of privileged tax eaters who give significant support to the government and therefore receive in return a share of the loot.”
    ― Robert Higgs

  36. I walk the camps every Monday.
    Been doing it since the Sully was housing the homeless.
    This number you put out there (346 in 2024) is way off.
    I understand this number is straight from ACEH.
    In my estimate we have over 500 on the streets.

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