Homeless Refugees In Anchorage! + Comment

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/anchorage/story/803063.html

City uses stimulus money to curb homelessness

GROWING PROBLEM: Big jump in people forced to live with friends, family.

 

By LISA DEMER

ldemer@adn.com

 

Published: May 20th, 2009 10:54 PM

Last Modified: May 20th, 2009 10:54 PM

 

A string of four homeless deaths in 10 days this month. Dramatically rising numbers of Anchorage families doubling up in cramped apartments. More people in shelters. More children with no home to call their own.

 

 

Officials say the homeless problem in Anchorage is big and growing and they are directing $775,000 in federal stimulus money to do something about it. The city is hiring a full-time coordinator to address homelessness, and four private agencies are getting funding to hire a worker each, acting Mayor Matt Claman announced on Wednesday.

 

In January 2008, 2,199 Anchorage residents were homeless, according to city and state calculations. This January, the number had jumped to 2,962.

 

"I recognize the number of deaths in the camps and basically finding bodies in the parks is unusual," Claman said. But as evidenced by the growing numbers, "homelessness is not unusual," he said. In Anchorage, it's "a very, very serious problem."

 

Much of the increase shows up in one subgroup: people staying with families or friends. Last year, 998 Anchorage adults and children were doubling up. This year, it's 1,612. Many are children and parents packed into someone else's apartment or cramped home.

 

"It is absolutely overwhelming," said Janet Levin, homeless education specialist for the Anchorage School District. In the past, the district served about 2,800 homeless or nearly homeless children over the course of a year. This school year the number jumped by 500 to 3,300, she said. Among other things, the district provides tutoring and helps these children stay in their original school, sending a cab if necessary.

 

 

"From last spring to last fall, food prices went up incredibly. Fuel prices went up incredibly. If you have huge increases in a short period of time, folks who don't have that much money are going to fall over the edge that much more quickly," Levin said.

 

Though many of those counted as homeless aren't literally on the streets, their situation is unstable and their living conditions potentially unhealthy, said Kris Duncan, the state's homeless coordinator and a planner with Alaska Housing Finance Corp. People crowded in on someone else's lease often can't stay long.

 

Duncan helps oversee the twice-yearly statewide count of the homeless and said comparable methods were used in 2008 and 2009, including reaching out to people who were attending Project Homeless Connect, a kind of indoors street fair of services.

 

A funding crunch for subsidized housing helps explain the big increase, she said. Congress didn't put new money into a housing voucher program even as the national economy tanked. Those who used the vouchers to subsidize their housing couldn't contribute as much, which meant the government had to pay more, which meant new people couldn't get into the program for months on end, Duncan said.

 

"That created sort of a backlog," she said.

 

Still, not many in Anchorage are ending up homeless as a result of losing their homes to foreclosure, officials said.

 

In the last two years, just five families came to the Salvation Army's McKinnell House, a nearly new family shelter in Midtown, because of foreclosure, said Jessyca Elgart, the organization's homeless services director. For three of them, it was their landlord who was foreclosed upon, she said.

 

Of the 27 adults staying in the shelter as of Wednesday, 18 were working, and four couldn't work because of disabilities. The others were looking for jobs, Elgart said.

 

All sorts end up there, she said: cooks and janitors and delivery workers, and sometimes nurses and mechanics and construction workers.

 

"It's not the alcoholics. It's not the people who can't get a job," she said.

 

Few of those counted as Anchorage homeless actually sleep in the streets or the woods. Just 157 people, as of the January count, were "unsheltered." About 1,025 were in shelters or transitional programs like Homeward Bound, for chronic homeless alcoholics. Another 168 were in motels, including many waiting to get into a shelter.

 

In the summer, the number in camps is sure to go up, Claman said. Some homeless people moved from shelters into camps early this year because of the beautiful spring weather. Nights have remained chilly, though, and police wonder whether hypothermia played a role in the recent deaths. The cause of the deaths is still under investigation.

 

Since Homeward Bound opened in 1997, about 130 of Anchorage's hard-core homeless have gotten stable housing, said Melinda Freemon, its director.

 

Still, the problems that lead people to that life are deep-rooted.

 

At least two of the four homeless men who died this month had been in the Homeward Bound program at one point or another, she said.

 

Despite the deaths, there's no plan to start cleaning out homeless camps, Claman said.

 

Police would have to shift priorities to do that work, and the homeless from the camps would need a place to stay, he said.

 

Social service agencies have been adding apartments for the recently homeless. Officials say more are needed.

 

The new positions at nonprofits include a life skills trainer, traveling case managers, and a central intake specialist to connect the homeless with services.

 

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.

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http://www.ktva.com/ci_12415171

Anchorage homeless numbers nearly double Matthew Simon Updated: 05/20/2009 06:33:07 PM AKDT   New city numbers reveal Anchorage's homeless rate has nearly doubled over the past few years. Officials, however, say the homeless population jump is not all due to more people on the streets. Rather, it is more a product of a new way the city classifies if a person is homeless.   It appears the increase may have to do with the way the original homeless plan was initiated.   When the Begich administration put the homeless coalition in place in 2005 the plan appeared to include plenty of capital funding to build homeless facilities. The plan, however, lacked how to pay for operating the facilities.   Today, with increasing homeless numbers, there are long waiting lists for help.   The list Salvation Army Homeless Services Director Captain Jessyca Elgart holds tells the story of the many Anchorage two parent families, and single fathers, she has to turn away from the transitional shelter.   "And consistently for the last year we've had more than 60 separate families each month waiting to get into the shelter," Elgart says.   The Salvation Army McKinnell House only has 16 rooms.   Showing off one of the rooms Elgart says, "We use the bunk beds to utilize space. A family of 8 can live in this room "   Before 2009, McKinnell House residents were not considered homeless. Now, city officials say they are counting more than the people living in outside areas, like around Campbell Creek.   Muni Heath and Social Services Director Diane Ingle says, "While we may see a very visible problem with homelessness here in this and other locations around town, the average age of a homeless person in Anchorage is nine years old."   The 2009 Muni numbers say all together Anchorage has 2,962 homeless. Only 157 are what most typically picture as homeless. 1612 are staying with family and friends. 1025 are in emergency and transitional shelters. And the rest, 157, are in motels.   While the city's long term homeless plan seems to have more money to build more rooms, there is no money to take care of the operating costs like utilities.   Anchorage Acting Mayor Matt Claman says, "In terms of the past I can't speak to the past. I know what we've got is some capital money to use for housing first. And the $750,000 in stimulus funds will go more toward operations."   The acting mayor says stimulus dollars will create a city homeless coordination system with more caseworkers. But that money is only expected to last for two years.   "So what were doing in moving forward is trying to address the need to provide housing, and the need to provide services to connect the homeless population," Claman says.   Since it appears there was no long term operating costs planning, there likely will not be any more rooms, no matter how long the waiting list.   This is the story across town. Catholic Social Services runs the Clare House women's shelter. They also have a waiting list.   At the Salvation Army 20-percent of their homeless are actually families coming up from the Lower 48. They have heard Alaska's economic situation here is better, but are not finding jobs.

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Comment: We should re-define the homeless in the United States as displaced refugees, they have lost their homes, their places, their sanctuaries. What is more terrifying than not even having a home to 'go home' to for the ordinary American citizen!?

How many of you reading these words could survive existing in the streets for any length of time and keep your sober sanity together? If you have a home, try to just imagine the horror of waking up homeless without your personal belongings around you, not being in your bed, not seeing your bedroom, not having a place where you can just be!!!

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

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