Homeless services in Alaska face uncertain future as state cuts back.
Allan Lamprey had been homeless for almost all his adult life. Struggling with substance and alcohol use, he moved around the country, from his home state of Virginia, to Maryland and then out to California. Eventually, he made his way up to Alaska in 2008.
Lamprey started as a cook, became a shelter manager, and now directs the recycling center the mission runs to help homeless people get job experience.Allan Lamprey directs Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility, the recycling center the Mission runs to help homeless people get work experience.But stories of rehabilitation and success, like Lamprey’s, might soon become increasingly rare in Alaska, advocates for the homeless warn.
Initially, Dunleavy proposed to cut $7.2 million from the Homeless Assistance Program, which was later scaled back to $3.6 million, but advocates are worried that these cuts will not only impact current services but also reverse the progress made to Alaska’s vulnerable homelessness infrastructure. Teens come to The Door for a variety of reasons, some are homeless and others are seeking to leave a dangerous living situation. But in a region that has towns like Fort Yukon with a population of about 540, where the only way to Fairbanks is a one-way flight whose fare hovers around $140, it’s difficult to have access to help.“In the winter, the youth often just hunker down and put up with what's going on,” Bates said.
“I’m not sure how much more the community can dig in their pockets,” she said. “We can’t cut bread and milk.” “Alaska is turning its back on the most vulnerable,” Gaskins said. “There already isn’t enough treatment in Fairbanks.”In Anchorage, a similar situation is unfolding on a much larger scale. Long-term, homeless service providers are unsure what their already delicate future will look like. The Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness said of the 1,111 people experiencing homelessness in the city earlier this year, 1,014 were sheltered and an additional 7,300 people were kept off the streets in Anchorage thanks to the city’s housing and transition services.
“In rural Alaska, homelessness is not manifested as people on the street,” Chris Kolerok, the former president and CEO of the Bering Straits Regional Housing Authority, said. “In Arctic communities, instead of allowing your cousins to die, people will bring in other people who have no place to go.” Galen G. Huntsman and Arianne Swihart with their three children, Azriel, 4, Galen T., 3, and Aurora, 2 months, in a studio apartment they rent at Safe Harbor on July 18, 2019. The family signed a lease in late April and pay $550 per month.“In a severely overcrowded home, like 20 people in a house, people have to sleep in shifts because there are not enough surfaces,” Kolerok said of people living in the Bering Straits, on Alaska’s northwest coast.
“You see it in house after house,” Wilson said. “Overcrowding doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the U.S. to this scale.”
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