The Next Step initiative, a program launched by the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, has moved 177 people into housing, and provides them a year of rent assistance and case management support.
Patricia Kohler recently moved into her own apartment in Mountain View with assistance through the Next Step program. Photographed on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024.
With a substantial homeless population, Anchorage has been grappling for years with a lack of shelter beds, and a lack of transitional and supportive housing options amid an ongoing housing crisis. Supporters of the Next Step initiative say that such programs can play a critical role in reducing homelessness in the city.For Patricia Kohler, the tiny apartment she’s renting with the help of Next Step is the chance she needed.
Kohler, who grew up in Aleknagik in Southwest Alaska, moved to Anchorage in 2017. She’d been homeless off and on since about 2018, sometimes couch surfing, sometimes staying in camps and in shelters, she said. She was struggling with depression, anxiety, substance misuse and finding a job, she said. That’s where she encountered Daryl Burse, a case manager in the Next Step program with local homeless services nonprofit Henning Inc. Burse was working at the Alex as a housing specialist and helped move Kohler into housing.
“The immediate success is that these folks aren’t experiencing homelessness,” said Zaletel, who is also the Assembly’s vice chair. The case management focuses on getting people ready to maintain their housing on their own, she said. They’re trying to set people up to have a “runway” of funds they can use to continue paying rent, so no one hits a “rent cliff,” she said.
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