Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance is betting big on big and costly government intervention to solve one of the city’s most visible and pressing issues: Vagrancy and makeshift shanties in greenbelts by those who are living the outdoor lifestyle.
With her “10,000 Homes in 10 Years” initiative, LaFrance has launched a large-scale effort to build housing, expand shelter options, and provide services — all with the belief that the public sector can engineer a solution to what many consider a deeply complex social crisis that involves mental health and chronic substance abuse.
She intends to somehow build 1,000 residential units a year. It’s unclear how many will be subsidized by working Alaskans.
Yet, there are not 10,000 lots in Anchorage, which means the mayor intends to increase density, creating more low-income housing, much of which will be provided to people at no cost or greatly subsidized cost. Property taxes will increase to offset what some real estate professional predict will most likely become tax-exempt residential units.
The philosophy behind LaFrance’s initiative echoes another massive government experiment: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, a sweeping federal program launched in the 1960s with the aim of eradicating poverty and racial inequality. While Johnson’s vision was to end poverty, the Great Society’s long-term legacy was more complicated. Generations have become trapped in a pattern of government dependency and handouts started in the 1960s under Johnson. Poverty has only decreased because taxpayers are subsidizing others with public housing, EBT cards, and free services of all sorts, from health care to subsidized phones and power costs.
Since the launch of the Anchorage housing strategy in July 2024, LaFrance says she has opened over 530 winter shelter beds, launched warming centers, abated two dozen encampments, and directed millions of dollars toward housing development. The administration’s message is clear: Government action and spending will turn the tide on homelessness.
But the truth is also more complicated. To compare, during the Bronson Administration, there were 360 beds in mass shelters in the winter of 2023, and another 200 non-congregate shelter beds (double-occupancy rooms) in hotels. There were other shelters as well, such as Brother Francis.
In other words, LaFrance has not provided more shelter than the previous administration, but she does present it to the public as though it’s a crowning achievement.
The problem? The tide hasn’t turned in Anchorage. Despite her efforts, the outdoor lifestyle in Anchorage appears to have grown, not shrunk. Encampments are visible everywhere, shelters remain overwhelmed, and public frustration is mounting. Inebriates, drug addicts, and criminals have once again taken over the city streets and trails.
Yet, like President Lyndon Johnson did before her, Mayor LaFrance insists the answer lies in simply doing more of the same: more housing, more services, more spending.
Johnson’s Great Society was one of the most ambitious expansions of federal power in US history. Programs like Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and public housing aimed to lift the poor out of poverty and provide a social safety net. But while it may have reduced certain poverty metrics, such as hunger addressed with food samps, it created a permanent underclass dependent on government aid. Mass apartment housing created ghettos like the Cabrini Green project on Chicago’s north side, which became a hotbed of crime and despair.
Rather than fostering independence, the Great Society entrenched bureaucracy, discouraged work, incentivized poor lifestyle choices, and eroded personal responsibility. As economist Thomas Sowell noted, “The black family survived centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, but it disintegrated in the wake of the Great Society.”
Now, it appears Mayor LaFrance is repeating the same mistake on a municipal scale, trying engineer a fix without confronting the personal, cultural, social, spiritual, and systemic factors that drive chronic homelessness.
LaFrance promises visible results in three years: fewer people visibly camping, more people in services, and new pilot programs like microunits and RV-safe zones. Skeptics note that Anchorage has already poured millions into homelessness with little to show for it.
“It’s déjà vu,” a Must Read Alaska reader said. “We keep layering programs on top of programs, but the root causes — addiction, untreated mental illness, lack of accountability — remain untouched. And without real change, no amount of housing will fix that.”
The administration promotes its dashboard and data tools as transparency, but even the most robust analytics can’t mask a simple truth: More programs don’t necessarily equal more progress. After all, the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness has been in the business of reducing homelessness for several years, but has had no measurable effect.
In Anchorage, 2,940 were “experiencing homelessness” in July 2024, a 54% increase in five years, while the residential vacancy rate is over 9%, with apartments renting for about $1,400 a month.
In her public statements, LaFrance emphasizes compassion and collaboration. But her approach leans heavily on accommodation, or making the vagrant and homeless lifestyle more tolerable.
Camp abatements are balanced with shelter beds added, but personal responsibility is rarely mentioned. Designated parking for RVs and “micro-units” for transitional living may offer temporary relief, but may just as easily institutionalize homelessness as a permanent lifestyle.
In seeking to copy the scale and vision of the Great Society, Mayor LaFrance may also be repeating its most damaging assumption: that government alone can fix a human heart or spirit that is fundamentally broken.
Last year, the Anchorage Assembly dismantled single-family zoning to allow more density in neighborhoods.
The Assembly has already created its own five-year plan of building less than 200 units a year, and passed a new zoning ordinance allowing multi-family in B-3 zoning, which is commercial zoning, requiring very little in the way of permits and very little parking spaces required.
Those B-3 lots may be the target for LaFrance, and there are a few of them in Spenard and Muldoon.
In addition, Rep. Andrew Gray has a legislative bill, House Bill 13, that would allow Anchorage to give property exemptions to “certain long-term rental units, certain mobile home parks, real property rented to low-income families, real property owned and occupied as a permanent place of abode, and real property owned by first-time homebuyers.” This would add even more property tax exemptions to the hundreds of exemptions being given to for-profit developers across Anchorage.
The people living on Anchorage streets and greenbelts are probably never going to pay rent. When they are put into LaFrance housing, the working and taxpaying public will be paying for it, just as taxpayers are currently paying for homeless to stay in hotels.
But with the current exodus of taxpaying citizens to the Mat-Su Valley, Anchorage homeowners may find their homes devalued by neighboring “projects” of Mayor LaFrance’s Great Society.
Creating dependencies is the primary objective of Public Sector Unions. Without dysfunction, chaos, addictions, confusion, and despair these unions can’t meet their pension obligations.
10,000 pup tents. Award REI with contract. New encampment at landfill. Problem almost solved.
Best idea yet…
This is just crazy. Stupid is stupud. She just crumbled anchorage and the tax payers including ER Clueless
Another “Great Leap Forward” into Marxism and degeneracy for Anchorage.
I wonder, when will LaFrance start writing her Little Red Book?
Let’s not forget that each and every person that has housing provided to them will now have an address to which a ballot can be mailed. Then, at election time, hundreds of helpful volunteers will receive lists of permanently dependent clients living at those addresses. Said volunteers can then visit those folks, inform them who is protecting and providing their benefits, and “assist” them with their ballots. This is how great political machines are built in Democrat controlled urban centers.
I thank God we moved out of Anchorage twenty years ago.
Scott, you forgot to mention that now they can get their Real ID. I also am glad I moved out of Los Anchorage 20 years ago. No shame in being homeless temporarily through no fault of your own, just don’t stay there. I lived in my car for a year as a teenager, it didn’t hurt me.
The Mayor seems to thinks this is simply a “supply” issue.. as if building the homes solves anything. Sure, if they don’t have to pay for it, day drinkers and drug addicts will move into to these taxpayer funded homes which will be very nice (and very expensive to the taxpayer) when first built and within a short time will look like the mess in the greenbelt next to my mom’s four plex (look just south of Dowling Road just west of and next to Campbell Creek).
Homelessness by and large isn’t about housing supply or cost of rent. It’s a “will” issue. Sadly there is a segment of the population that chooses to not work, not play any productive role in society, and just live the junkie/alcoholic lifestyle. Building “free” homes with taxpayer money to become indoor party houses won’t fix anything. Mayor LaFrance is either blind to these very obvious facts or doesn’t care..she just wants her hands on all that money. What does it cost to build 1000 homes in a year? $20 Million? How much to maintain them (the occupants won’t), to heat them? Now add that cost in to the tax base again every year for ten years. Now factor in inflation and the fact that seemingly no government progect EVER comes in under budget… the cost is mind numbing and the results will be new slum housing areas brimming with drug dealers and empty bottles.
But it sure lines up a bunch of government spending which the mayor can shower upon her chosen ones. If this moves forward, follow the money…see who gets the contracts. Of course, we’ve watched Meg Zaletel funnel money in the homeless “industry” for years and years and Anchorage keeps voting in the same clown show candidates. Heavy sigh.
Better off buying them a ticket to Honolulu . City of Anchorage has received , spent , stole nearly $160 million on the bums . And it’s twice as bad as it was five years ago . Mayor must be nuts if she thinks housing is the problem . They are unwashed and houseless as these drug addicts , drunks and non conformists prefer that lifestyle while impinging on the rest of us who follow the rules of society . They are houseless by choice , should not be given a choice . Rounded up and on plane out of here . Either back to the village or Hawaii .
Not likely to happen. People are exiting Alaska. Not arriving. Are these new homes for tourists?
I would disagree, more bums are arriving into Anchorage from the villages that booted them out.
I have seen several reports coming out of California that indicate even the Leftists there are questioning the “housing first” approach to the vagrant problem. IMO we have a vagrancy problem induced and supported by drugs. We ought not do anything that enables or supports drug use. Beyond that, I like the idea of arresting and prosecuting vagrants that commit crimes – and that might mean a bunch of folks in the short run. Time to take the cure.
Is anyone actually surprised at the Mayor’s highest-possible-cost-to-taxpayers plan?
There are misconceptions about the vagrant/bums/mentally ill/substance addicted people that live outside the norms.
When in Palm Desert California none of the above described were ever encountered. Why? Simple Bums are not tolerated. So all the news of the street peoples in California is where they are allowed to live in a 3rd World existence. Such as they are allowed to live in Anchorage.
Go into Palm Springs 8 miles away , all there as the cater to them . No hobos down valley as not tolerated !
“Higher density housing” is a euphemism for communist-style collectives. Anchorage already is (and has been for a long time) a s__thole and Lafrance’s stupid plan will make it more so.
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT
Yup, I concur. LaFrance is simply cementing Anchorage’s legacy as a leftist sh*thole.
As I recall, LBJ stated clearly that his Great Society was designed to keep a certain group ‘voting democrat for 200 years.’
Not just voting for, but utterly dependent upon keeping that welfare check
The “homeless” problem is not about homes. It is about addicts and bums. None of them want to live by the rules, they want to live on our dime. Giving them anything just affirms them in their lack of responsibility. If they want shelter, lock ’em up, away from their favorite addiction, and see how that turns them around. Oh, thanks Suzanne, for signing the death warrant for the city I used to love.
Wow Tamra, you sure have a very new and nuanced take on homelessness, addiction, and society in general. Would absolutely love to hear more from you! You sound educated, especially about these social and economic issues. All ears for solutions from someone clearly so passionate.
I have no patience for it myself. Drugs and alcohol kill & destroy families and entire communities. Does anyone reading this article not understand this. The Drug addicts know that they are destroying themselves. Stop the supply and the problem will mostly go away. No sympathy here.
Wow.. Emily; you’ve never had any direct contact with those bums.
Correction, Suzanne La France, not you, Suzanne. 🙂
As long as these bums stay in Anchorage, I don’t care. Indeed, the flood of cultural refugees from Anchorage converting themselves into Valley Trash” is concerning enough.
Where is Ben Stevens, anyway? Does he eat words?
Ben Stevens kicked the bucket.
Too bad he didn’t live to see Mat-Su eclipse Los Anchorage. One day, Mat-Su will have the larger population. I might even live to see that day.
Ben is dead
Meanwhile, we’re building welcome centers for foreigners.
I do feel compassion for those who are homeless simply because they fell on hard times. I feel less compassion for those who choose to “live off the land”, i.e., handouts, theft, and government subsidies. One only needs to look to the side while driving through Anchorage to deduce what all those new housing units will look like within a very short time. People who have no respect for themselves or others will not be changed by a new apartment. History has already demonstrated that. Making it easier to be “homeless” and lacking in responsibility is not going to help anyone. Drug abuse treatment, mental health treatment, and (for some) a kick in the pants will help those willing to be helped.
You are spot on. Unless substance misuse is addressed and treated, many homeless people are unlikely to regain the stability that will lead and keep them off the streets. Drug addiction and mental health has to be in the forefront when addressing the root issues of homelessness.
I had to stay in the rescue mission on Lake Otis and Tudor 12 years ago for about 2 months. I can tell you that 90% of the bums there were proud of being lazy and entitled.
They will build some ugly, high density tenements but also zoning laws will be eliminated. You can divide a 3 bedroom home into 3 or 4 units with common living and kitchen areas. Back yards are room for a second dwelling. Too much stress on public services and utilities? Don’t worry about it.
“They” are already building tenements in Eagle River near Fire Lake.
Seattle is full of large old homes (Capitol Hill) that were divided into multiple apts (Stalin style) a long time ago. That’s why Cap Hill is the epicenter of (supposed) artists, filth & laziness.
The “tenements” of which I write resemble the old S&S apartments around 7th and Karluk back in the day. As I recall, the S&S apartments were built to house military families during their tours. These apartments off the Old Glenn look tacky and cheap as “they” are building them. Who do “they” plan to cram in those units?
Escape from Los Anchorage… Great Movie… *****
When she is talking, as usual, LaFrance is LYING so beautifully.
Everything she pitches is Bu__ Sh__
I hope your property taxes go up more than even you can afford.
Just wait awhile, it will happen.
You deserve LaFrance.
The folks that voted for her eminence plus those that could not get off their dead butts and therefore did not vote — ENJOY
You know only what you were told by unelected officials who count the votes and who work for Assembly members running for re-election.
.
Karma can be a bitch, hope it doesn’t come to a neighborhood near you.
The last “Great Society” prolonged the Great Depression.
It’s fascinating watching Anchorage commit suicide.
You dimlibbys will NEVER learn, why would any of these homeless zombies ever care to get a job and be productive when you give them EVERYTHING, food, shelter, money, drugs, etc…
Just unbelievable the stupidity of the dimlibbys! UNBELIVABLE
Building the Knik Arm bridge would open thousands of home sites closer to downtown Anchorage than South Anchorage is.
Guess who has helped kill that every time over the past half century?:
Anchorage.
Let the place stew. Mat-Su doesn’t need Muni Trash.
The bridge idea is dead and gone. I think she wants to build a new tent city for the homeless.
Sunflower Hotel property on government Hill was purchased & torn down as the start of the bridge.
That lot is now a hippy community garden.
Chris Constant lives right down the block.
Utopia’s coming folks ….. just give them more time & LOTS of money.
The issue isn’t housing units. It is that there no facilities for the lifelong serious mentally ill. Then you have the alcoholic bums and hobos who have zero interest in any endeavor that requires any personal accountability or work. We need some tough uncompromising rejection of people who refuse to participate. The mentally ill need lifelong supervised housing until there are some miracle medical breakthroughs.
These bums are getting aggressive as well. I’ve seen them throwing glass bottles into the street, food into the street, flipping off cars, and leaving large piles of their filth. I don’t think they’re happy with what we’ve been providing them. The campfires are burning almost every morning on the green belts and they dart across streets whenever they feel like it. If anyone cares to, Venture down to the hill going to the Alaska railroad yard. I’ve been to border towns in Mexico that looked better. Lawlessness begets lawlessness. There’s a difference between a handout and a hand up.
Great. There are 10,000 of these bum shanties already throughout out town, littering our neighborhoods and parks like steaming dog turds. Their residents fan out at night through our neighborhoods stealing from cars, carports, backyards and sheds. And nothing is done. Does this mean she’ll add another 10,000? I thought she was going to be a loser, but had not idea she’d start this crap this early in her administration. Hold on, Anchorage. It’s going to get worse.
There are Tinkers (Travelers/Gypsies) in Ireland who live in wagons & vans.
The Irish government (good Catholics that they were) wanted to end their roaming, homeless ways & gave them houses to settle down.
Within a year, they had stripped out the copper pipes & moved back into their traveling homes.
This was in the 1970s & drugs were not involved back then
My friend said they would show up at farms on Sunday, when one person stayed home from church, ask for water or a restroom & then ‘shoplift’ stuff from the house.
Some people want to live outside, just the way it is.
I like the residential allowances for the B-3 properties.
This should be done in every city.
W/ modern work technologies, communications, tele work, zoom, etc business need less commercial space.
And there’s lots of empty commercial everywhere.
Let the people who own those properties make the market decisions on how to use them.
BUT keep the Gov $ out of it …..
And the rest of her plan stinks
Behavior & TREATMENT first you idjits!
nope
I will bet every dollar in my 401(k) that not a single one of the “affordable” units will be in LaFrance’s neighborhood. Or within two miles of it.
Absolutely true, and most other neighborhoods of the ones promoting this non solution idea.
The 10,000 homes piece has generated Fabulous Blog pieces. All of them are 100% accurate showing how stupid our voters are and the Unions who placed LaFrance in power. We are pissin into the wind by averting the real problem “QUIT FEEDING THEM AND THEY WILL STOP COMIN ROUND”
It is simple and will solve the immediate and future “homeless” problem
I agree with jim, my brother didn’t vote but he doesn’t pay attention to the news either. You people that didn’t vote YOU deserve the 7000.00$ per year tax on property not just her supporters. As for the homeless, I live in copper basin and in 1 week the park I walk my dogs in exploded with encampments.. human crap, tp, trash, old clothing, etc. heck I don’t even bother to clean up my dogs poop any more. You people are disappointing and are not true Alaskans.
Build it, and they will bum.
Before embarking on the Great Society 2.0, LaFrance, et al ought to take a close look at Pruitt Igoe apartments in St Louis. It started construction in 1954. Eventually built 2,870 apartments. Things progressed as expected, with the first demolition in 1972. It took 4 years to demolish all buildings. As of today, the site is still empty. Did the locals go full Roman and sow salt on the ground so nothing could grow afterwards?
Insanity, and democrat initiatives are similar as they keep doing the same things hoping for different outcomes. Cheers –
Our Assembly has been opposing the Knik Arm bridge for decades. If they really want to get serious about expanding housing construction, they would enthusiastically endorse build the Knik Arm bridge. It would make available thousands and thousands of acres for housing development.
I don’t think you are an engineer, Dan. It’s not doable. Tremendous tides and continuously moving silt 200 feet deep. This has been known for decades.
Three days ago, we asked:
(https://mustreadalaska.com/forestry-meeting-raises-questions-if-carbon-credit-forests-burn-do-the-credit-buyers-get-refunded-will-anchorage-be-on-the-hook-for-forest-fires-that-spread/)
.
If a single wildfire started in a bum camp could cost tens of millions of dollars to put out, if bum-camp fires could bring Anchorage its first $100M fire year and opportunities to convert burnt-out private properties to public bum housing, might this explain why the whole bum camp thing sort of slides into official indifference?
.
residents can be scared into passing huge fire-related bonds,
residents can be scared into passing huge AWWU expansion bonds.
residents can be scared into passing huge road-construction bonds,
residents can be scared into passing huge school fire-proofing bonds,
residents can be scared into passing some sort of fire-proof bum-housing program,
the Assembly can award massive sole-source contracts can be awarded for these things,
money thus taken can be laundered into other enterprises, and
burned-out properties can be condemned, seized by the city to build tiny, public housing?
.
Amazingly, the Mayor hasn’t answered.
.
Could the “10 years” bit mean the Mayor’s confident this’ll happen because election and grand-jury systems are just too FUBAR’d to stop it?
.
So let’s ask the quiet part out louder:
.
Are residents being conditioned to accept they can’t do anything about bum camps and bum-started fires that could jump to a Palisades/Millers Reach/McHugh Creek fire big enough to burn them out, kill them, cause private property to be condemned and taken by City officials for later conversion to bum housing?
.
City and community councils already work together to seize private property for public trails that provide plenty of fuel for bum-camp fires, so is it outrageous to wonder what stops them from using bum-started fires as an excuse to gain control of private property for public bum housing?
.
And, wouldn’t you know, the Mayor still hasn’t answered.
The problem isn’t housing for the homeless (street people), the problem is they destroyed every place they’ve lived in, that’s why no one will rent to them. The other issue is those who are tasked with dealing with homeless make money money off of the issue, ain’t that right Meg, as long as they get paid by the head there is no incentive fix the problem. The other is by providing with services and money is do only enabling the homeless (street people) to keep on living on the streets, making not bad enough to make the changes they need in order to be at least semi-productive. We need to cut them off cold turkey, if they break the law put them in jail, there they can access treatment and programs to get off the street. What is being done now is clearly not working and has only gotten worse since we were forced into Mail In voting.
How many of these units will be built by a company owned, at least in part, by Mark Begich?
Ranked Choice Voting advocates are the people to look at. They are the Murkowski LaFrance Constant and all other big brother big government high tax LGTBQ advocates.
I didn’t work my ass off my whole life to have these asses redistribute my property. Leftist foolishness at least and intentional evil at most.
Warped brains or no brains, you decide.
“The philosophy behind LaFrance’s initiative echoes another massive government experiment: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, a sweeping federal program launched in the 1960s with the aim of eradicating poverty and racial inequality. ”
Lyndon Baines Johnson was justly criticized for escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War. He took on his role as Commander in Chief and flamed the cinders of war to a point that consumed his presidency. Johnson knew how to start a war but failed to ever end it. The same is true on his War on Poverty.
The US has sunk over $22 trillion into ending poverty in our country and to any rational observer, this was Johnson’s domestic Vietnam. Since 1964, Johnson’s efforts have never moved the poverty meter down one iota. In a quick summery, it was a total failure. It only seems appropriate that our fine mayor should follow suit. This is the problem with the progressive mind. The cliff is never too high, and the edge is never too close. It is the epitome of the Democrat mindset; failure that breeds failure only needs to be redefined as success.
Watch out property owners, wallet season is about to begin with no concern of limits.
“The cliff is never too high, and the edge is never too close. ”
.
Like it!
There is nothing mysterious about what is going on here.
It’s quite plain that LaFrance’s intentions are to finish turning Anchorage into a Communist ghetto hellhole while driving out private sector business and privately owned single family homes.
.
Her Communist ghetto will of course be entirely funded with your tax dollars.
The picture from this article is of a homeless camp in my neighborhood that my neighbor and I helped take down. The people inside were very aggressive and one of them came out and threatened us with a machete. The cops came and took care of business and arrested the one guy that threatened us.
The the Communists believe every problem can solved with bigger governmrnt and less freedom. But if that does not solve the problem then at least they will have grown government and cut freedom so a win any way you look at it.
It’ll only create a bigger problem. Giving people “free stuff” isn’t the answer!
Where is WhidbeytheDog?