By CODY HAXBY
In 2009, Alaska Housing Finance Corporation released a 10-year plan for how to address homelessness. This plan defined how taxes would be used to reduce homelessness by 50% in a 10-year period. Overall, the plan was estimated to cost about $300 million over 10 years. The plan also included evaluations of metrics each year to determine if the plan was in fact working as intended.
Here we are in 2025, having essentially followed AHFC’s spending plan as precisely as possible. However, we did not follow the guidance of the plan in terms of evaluating metrics to determine if the plan was working.
In fact, instead of a 50% decrease in homelessness over 10 years as the plan stated was the goal, we have a 50% increase in homelessness, while spending almost exactly as the plan originally laid out. So instead of halving homelessness in 10 years, we almost doubled it in five years.
AHFC is designated as the entity which is supposed to find and report this data to the governor. The agency laid out a plan in 2009, and now when the plan is failing us it is silent. Prior to implementing this spending plan, Anchorage spent far less on homelessness each year with similar results as we have now. Arguably, the results were better then. When will we accept reality and lay out a plan that we actually stick to? Why continue spending money on a plan that hasn’t worked out even a little bit?
The author is an Alaskan-grown small business owner/operator with a background in software engineering. Experience includes work at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state and contract work for GCI, ConocoPhillips, and Alaska DOT.
