The municipality’s transition to year-round shelter is a change advocates are hopeful will be reflected in the data generated by this year’s point-in-time count.
Anchorage homelessness service providers anticipate lower number of unhoused people from annual count The municipality’s transition to year-round shelter is a change advocates are hopeful will be reflected in the data generated by this year’s point-in-time count.
Jessica Parks, interim executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, speaks with a person resting on an F Street bench on Tuesday. Jordan Fitka sat on the sidewalk on Fourth Avenue beneath an awning that sheltered him from the snow accumulating in downtown Anchorage. It was 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and the temperature hovered around 12 degrees. He didn’t wear gloves. He said he’s often stayed at homeless shelters, but lately they’ve been full. When the cold starts stinging his body, he roams, seeking the warmer pockets of town. Sometimes he gravitates to restaurants with fans that blow clouds of warm air outside. If one tries to count down the long hours of the night, it will only trick the body into becoming colder, he said.Jordan Fitka looks through a bag of items, including gloves and snacks, distributed by a team from the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. A team from the coalition and the Anchorage Downtown Partnership walked the streets of downtown to participate in the point-in-time count, a nationwide effort to survey homeless people. Mac Lyons, of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, enters information into a device after talking to a person sheltering in a Fifth Avenue doorway. A team led by the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness had stopped by to ask Fitka a series of questions as part of the annual point-in-time count. The group, consisting of staff from the coalition and volunteers from the Anchorage Downtown Partnership, traversed downtown with the goal of contacting people who had spent the night outside. Data from the federally mandated count, conducted in cities across the United States in January each year, is passed on to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal housing agency uses the estimates to determine how much federal funding to distribute to aid communities’ homelessness response. Teams, split by ZIP code, moved across Anchorage starting on Monday. While the coalition conducted the count over the course of three days, all unhoused residents surveyed were asked where they spent the night of Jan. 26. As a record-breaking winter storm blew in, some members searched for camps in waist-high snow, said coalition spokesperson Lisa Demer. Snow collects on the covering of a person resting on Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage. in Anchorage since the pandemic struck in 2020. However, this figure stabilized in 2023 and began to fall slightly. Last year,. The organization anticipates a lower number of people who are unsheltered, Demer said. It follows a year of shifts in the municipality’s homelessness response system, and providers’ efforts to build an outreach and shelter network that can support higher numbers that followed the pandemic.In 2025, the municipality stepped away from a seasonal shelter model where the number of beds surged during the winter months, and dissipated in the summer. With this model, akin to what coalition Interim Director Jessica Parks called an “emergency room,” it’s hard to maintain relationships with unhoused residents who only stay for a short period of time. It was also a challenge to maintain staff, she said. “You have this bouncing back and forth,” Parks said. “You’re not building the relationships and not making meaningful connections to new resources because you’re in this kind of chaos.” Jessica Parks, interim executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, speaks with a man during the point-in-time count in downtown Anchorage. A man who had been taking shelter in the doorway of a business takes cover from a snowfall on Fourth Avenue. is a change Parks is hopeful will be reflected in the data generated by this year’s point-in-time count. Anytime providers can offer more stable services, the better off residents in need will be, she said. “ know that that resource is available to them, and it doesn’t have to do with what time of year it is,” she said. Preliminary reports from the count suggest fewer people slept outside in established camps, Demer said Wednesday. Yet, Parks noted more people sleeping when they can in Midtown and downtown and moving along, she said.in Anchorage, according to Anchorage Police Department data. This is slightly lower than in 2023 and 2024, when 50 outdoor deaths were recorded each year. Outdoor deaths, the data has shown, peak in summer months and in October.Without a tent to return to, people only bring with them what they can carry in a suitcase, cart or sled, and it’s harder to hang on to winter gear like sleeping bags, she said. “They call it sleeping rough, where you carry everything you own with you, and when you’re too tired, you find a corner and curl up and sleep for a little bit until someone says it’s time to move,” Parks said.Mac Lyons, of Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, center, talks with several people who had been sleeping on a sidewalk along Fourth Avenue downtown. When the group conducting the downtown point-in-time count arrived at the covered walkways of the Sunshine Plaza downtown, Ray Gilkey helped distribute care packages filled with gloves, socks, hand warmers and snacks such as protein shakes and jerky sticks. Five people, their heads and bodies completely covered in tarps and blankets, lay on the concrete. Gilkey is a member of the Anchorage Downtown Partnership’s Safety Ambassadors team, and he said some residents know him by name or call him by one inspired by the his neon yellow vest: “Mr. Security.” For four years, Gilkey has conducted welfare checks and connected people experiencing homelessness with emergency services as he walked his 8- to 10-mile route through downtown. This past year, the Safety Ambassadors began coordinating with trained outreach providers through the coalition and the Anchorage Police Department’s HOPE Team, said Partnership Communications Manager Erin Gallagher, who accompanied the counters on Tuesday morning.Through programs like this, and a new multi-agency messaging group that allows service providers to quickly determine when and where beds are available, the Anchorage homelessness support network is becoming more connected. But this winter, it’s still been short on space. After the shift to year-round shelter, the municipality lost beds this winter. When a cold snap arrived in mid-December, many of Anchorage homelessness shelters wereFrom the coalition’s initial review of this point-in-time survey, the most common reason people gave for not sleeping in a shelter was that no beds were available, Demer said. Mac Lyons, systems integration director for the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, talks with a man lying on a Fourth Avenue sidewalk. Brendan Russell warms up in the entryway of City Hall. Russell said he spent the previous night on the street near the Dena’ina Convention Center. Between the three municipally run shelters, 450 beds were in place as of Thursday. According to its 2026 budget, the Health Department planned to spend roughly $9 million on housing and homelessness this year, an amount similar to 2025. It’s a figure more than double what was spent in 2024. The city did not open a formal warming center this winter, and people seeking shelter at night have been directed to the Anchorage Safety Center in Fairview when beds are full. During a cold snap in late December, the Safety Center ran out of space and service providers opened the downtown transit center for a couple of weeks to catch overflow. This temporary setup is no longer active. As snow fell on Tuesday, roughly 10 people sat inside the transit center, and another two in a heated vestibule at City Hall. A poster taped to the wall above one man’s head listed places to go to “get warm.”It has been difficult for providers to find the money, the space and the staffing necessary to keep warming centers consistently open, Parks said. This spring, she said Anchorage providers will begin look at ways to better equip the system to handle the wintertime need for extra beds and warming centers. The coalition’s count wrapped up on Wednesday. Results from the point-in-time count typically become available by late spring. Mac Lyons, of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, pulls a wagon filled with bags to distribute to unsheltered homeless people in downtown Anchorage. Bella Biondini is a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News covering city government and general assignments. She was previously the editor of the Gunnison Country Times and has also reported for High Country News, in addition to working as a photojournalist. Contact her at bbiondini@adn.com.
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