By PEDRO GONZALEZ
Between 2020 and 2024, Anchorage appropriated nearly $190 million toward fighting homelessness, according to a document published by the municipality.
Those funds, derived from federal pandemic relief dollars and a new alcohol tax, have been allocated for major investments in housing.
What do the results look like? Mixed, mostly, with the biggest winners being those who profit from what seems to be a perennial problem.
Last year, Linda Burke, the owner of Wild Starr Creations and Coffee House, complained about the growing homeless population in Anchorage to KTUU. She said it was hurting her bottom line. “When you have people outside passed out, smoking weed and drinking alcohol, there is no business,” Burke told reporters. “If it keeps happening, people will never come back, and with the police presence not visible, it makes it even harder.”
Survey data shows that, even as the city threw money at the problem, homelessness rose 54 percent between January 2019 and 2024, mirroring statewide trends. There was a short period of decline, but it was followed by the number of homeless shooting up again at the tail end of last year. As of this January, there are more people experiencing homelessness compared to November 2023, according to data from the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness.
In 2022, the Anchorage Assembly greenlit nearly $12 million in federal relief funds to the Rasmuson Foundation for a low-income and supportive housing project. That was the biggest slice of an over $51 million federal relief pie. It happened around the time that there were 65 other similar projects, often hotels and inns being converted toward the same use by other nonprofits, like the Anchorage Affordable Housing and Land Trust.
The land trust is illustrative of how these nonprofits work. According to its website, its mission is “acquiring, creating, operating, and preserving permanently affordable housing for low and extremely low-income residents.”
It’s a public-private model that is further sustained by an influx of homeless individuals from the villages and rising costs of rent and living that sometimes contribute to people being pushed into homelessness for the first time.
A kind of complex emerges: nonprofits and other entities make a business out of developing housing projects, as they are almost guaranteed a steady stream of funding, and the demand is maintained by a seemingly endless stream of the newly unhoused and those who are perpetually so—both of which have a good chance of becoming dependent on this system for support. The model is also reinforced by the addition of migrants. In 2023, the head of the National Alliance to End Homelessness told Alaska Public Media that there had been a “surge” of these people seeking resources.
Right now, whether the issue actually ever gets solved might be beside the point. Establishing permanent ghettos doesn’t seem like a good solution to anyone but the people collecting tax dollars to develop the projects.
