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.
Reactivate the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and send these nitwits who squat in our parks there. At least they would be off the streets, out of sight, out of mind, have a roof over their heads, warm meals, a bed and most importantly, treatment by professionals.
Any time a situation is created by government, whereby tax money is distributed under the label of “solving” a problem created by the choices of those NOT paying the taxes, that situation becomes a load on the taxpayers that increases and enriches a few. The “problem” always remains but the tax bill continues to grow and the enrichment of the same people and groups continues. What has happened in Anchorage amounts to a criminal defrauding of the home owner and the collusion of a few developers with the assembly to increase the wealth of those participating in the racketeering.
Do not feed the bears.
There is far too much money in the homeless industrial complex.
You cannot ignore the problem, but feeding it will not make it go away.
The problem is the leftists on the Assembly will not look at this and say the plan was flawed. Nope, like the toddlers they actually are, they will declare everyone and everything other than the plan (and their spending) are at fault.
Classic picture. I hate when I see tourists downtown walking around people on the street sleeping.
The Assembly and Mayor are members of the Non Profit Agencies benefiting from the homeless situation. My question is simple. Why should we fix the problem when we are benefiting from it monetarily?
It’s Anchorage’s main growth industry.
Glad Senator Mark Begich is making money on this.
I was worried about his income after we laid him off.
This is real “Progess”(ive)
Robert Rubey almost had it right. The Realtors Bankers and the assembly are not totally innocent on this problem the codes need to change have more R5 zoning open more land up for development out by 100th would be a good place to start. Have more hostel or dorm style housing with a common cooking area and bathrooms give someone a small wage and room to run it. Have more trailers courts.if you point this reality out you realize how corrupt the whole situation really is. If the capitalist system was allowed to flourish all of these problems would be solved.
Realtors want to sell you a million dollar house why because this lazy people want commissions a million dollar house instead of a bunch of small real estate parcels.
The city likes million dollar houses because it increases their tax base better and more efficiently.
Your logic may be valid, but no. No dorms. No hostels. No, do not open up areas to development of that type of housing for the vagrants. Nope.
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The less we feed the bears, the less bears we will get.
All the land out by 100th was cut into hundreds of pieces years ago and sold to individuals. Someone would have to get hold of all that land to build on any of it. There are no roads or utilities. You blame Realtors but we only sell the homes that are on the market. We have no control of the price ranges. There is a great need for affordable homes and we are probably more aware of it than you are.
Homelessness is not a lack of places to live problem. Rather, it is a mental health / addiction issue. When you expend any resources solving the former, you completely ignore the latter, which is why there is not solution. That is not a bug. It is a feature the keeps the spigot on the free $$$ fire hose open to the Homeless Industrial Complex. Cheers –
Give AHFC what’s left of your PFD so they can do their job properly. “THE CHILDREN”
Homelessness has significantly spiked since 2009 because of the saturation of prescription drugs like Oxycontin from the pharmaceutical cartel and illegal drugs like toxic meth and fentanyl from the Chinese/Mexican cartels.
The onslaught of these highly addictive drugs was difficult, if not impossible to predict in 2009. Sam Quinones book “The Least of Us” details the introduction of the new toxic chemical based meth into the US after 2009 and its propensity to render users homeless within a year. His book wasn’t even published until 2021.
Do not make apologies for the mismanagement and waste that is the homeless industrial complex. There is billions to be made by “helping the homeless” and they are milking it for everything they can get. And, not every homeless is drug addicted. Blaming oxy and fentynal is giving the politicians abusing the taxpayers an out.
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Want to see vagrancy go down? Cut the funding to zero. You will be surprised how quickly these addicts find somewhere else to go.
Its going about as well as a typical Soviet 5-year plan,only slower and more expensively
Blaming the drugs, both legal and illegal for people’s choices is like blaming guns for the evil that men do. A drug, like a gun, can save a life or take a life, it all depends on the person using it. Try another argument that makes more sense.