Housing

Brianna McCourt had a bad feeling when she walked outside the Bergmann Hotel and saw state troopers and police with their mobile command center at her doorstep.

“The mobile command center showed up and we’re like, ‘What’s really going on here,’” said McCourt, who works security at the Bergmann for a company called CPR Services that recently took over building management.

McCourt said when she got word the police were heading to the building, she thought the worst.

“It’s the Bergmann. I mean it’s been known for its riffraff and its drugs,” McCourt said.

Juneau police descended on the downtown housing development last Friday, but they didn’t come to make arrests. They wanted to help.

It’s not unusual for the police to be called to the hotel, but this time was different.

McCourt said the police weren’t alone.

“They came with the Department of Health and Social Services,” she said. “I believe that they had Front Street Clinic, and drug and alcohol treatment (officials to) speak with the residents that lived here.”

Residents got information on programs that could help them find work and opportunities to get counseling for substance abuse and mental health.

Service providers passed out sharps containers for safe disposal of used needles, and they gave her McCourts of Narcan – a medication that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.

“Having sharp boxes in the bathroom and knowing that we have stuff to help people if we do run into an overdose is very helpful,” she said.

Lt. Kris Sell with Juneau Police Department said their outreach to the hotel was part of a strategy to, once a month, give special attention to issues they’re especially worried about in Juneau.

“Part of the chief’s instruction for me is once a month he wants to know, ‘OK, what can we go do that’s a focused approach to some area or some problem?’” Sell explained.

The department has gotten a lot of complaints from people in the Bergmann’s neighborhood, Sell said.

“People that lived up there and people that worked up there were unhappy with noise and finding needles in the area,” Sell said.

She said not all of these problems were tied directly to the hotel, but it was the place people most often associated their complaints with.

So Sell said JPD had a choice. They could have focused on one option: finding lawbreakers and arresting them, but they didn’t want to.

“Really, modern policing is also about, ‘How do you apply positive pressure so that you can work with the people that are having challenges and get them on a more law-abiding path so they can get along with their neighbors?’” Sell explained.

She said most of the residents were suspicious at first.

When they offered one guy help, he hesitated but eventually said he wanted a job.

“He probably asked two or three times before we introduced him with the gentleman from the job service if we were tricking him or if this was some sort of trap,” Sell said.

Some people turned them down flat, but most were receptive after they got over their surprise.

Brianna McCourt said it goes a long way when people from the community show up and say, “We want to help you.”

“I do sympathize with what the police and the community did today, with the outreach program,” she said. “It kind of shows people that there is help out there if you ask for it. A lot of problems a lot of times with being a recovering addict is you’re afraid to ask for that help.”

McCourt knows what she’s talking about.

She is in recovery right now for the second time.

She was sober for eight years before she relapsed. She said her drug of choice was methamphetamine.

She didn’t decide to get clean until she had a near fatal car accident this summer.

“I didn’t want to ask for help. I didn’t want to admit that it was indeed a problem,” McCourt said.

She admitted that it can be hard to help other people, especially addicts because they need to want to help themselves first.

But she said people shouldn’t turn anyone away if they do make the decision to help themselves.

The Juneau Assembly is one step closer to a housing plan for the city.

During its work session Monday evening, the assembly voted to create an ordinance that would add the city’s housing action plan to its comprehensive plan, but not without heavy disagreement among assembly members.

The comprehensive plan outlines the city’s goals and policies. Although the plan addresses housing, the housing action plan is a more detailed and expansive document with specific suggestions for how to implement the solutions.

The Affordable Housing Commission received $75,000 of city funding to draft the plan a few years ago, and worked with city officials and housing specialists to complete it.

Assembly member Norton Gregory formerly served on the Affordable Housing Commission when the plan was being developed and supported its adoption.

“I feel like it’s important that the CBJ take action, and one thing that we learned from this plan is that we have to make some changes on how we do business,” Gregory said, “and change is often times not easy, and I think that this plan will help guide us through that.”

Assembly member Loren Jones was conflicted about adopting the plan.

He said he recognized its significance, but there were some items that lacked clarification.

“There’s issues in here about whether or not a developer should do 20 (percent) or 30 percent of their development at low-income and then we’ll give them some kind of develop bonus but it doesn’t say what that develop bonus is,” he said.

All of the assembly members agreed the plan was a good step forward. But some members disagreed on whether it was the right step to take.

Assembly members Mary Becker and Debbie White worried that adopting the plan would make its recommendations binding.

Becker said she’d prefer something more flexible, like a resolution, which doesn’t carry as much weight.

“I don’t think it’s ready for that kind of firm interpretation and I could not vote for that,” Becker said. “I could vote for it as a resolution, but I don’t think it’s ready to be something you can’t do anything about — you just have to do whatever it says or whatever it’s interpreted to say.”

Assembly member Jesse Kiehl disagreed.

“You know, the comprehensive plan is explicit, it says it’s aspirational,” Kiehl said. “We are not, in fact, required to do each and every little thing in the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan, among its implanting actions, at one point, says we’ll build a performing arts center. You’ll notice we have not yet appropriated 10-15 million bucks for a performing arts center.”

After more than an hour of discussion, the assembly voted 5-3 to draft an ordinance. If passed, it will adopt the housing action plan into the already existing comprehensive plan.

The ordinance will be introduced at the Nov. 21 assembly meeting.

San Francisco has made headlines as a hub for technology — giants like Facebook, Apple and Google are headquartered nearby, as are a plethora of tech startups. At the same time, residents complain that those same tech companies are part of the cause of the city’s astronomical cost of living — and in turn, contributing to the city’s big homeless problem.

Homelessness in the city is a problem well reported — the San Francisco Chronicle even ran a front page editorial earlier this year calling the “level and pervasiveness of homelessness in San Francisco” a “civic disgrace.”

Measuring the number of homeless people in San Francisco is hard; one estimate gathered by a group of volunteers over one night counted 6,686 adults. The city’s Department of Public Health counts homeless people using city services over a year and counted 9,975.

San Francisco doesn’t lead the country in per-capita homelessness. But the reason San Francisco’s homeless problem is much more visible than other large cities is because the city has more per-capita unsheltered homeless people: “511 people on the streets for every 100,000 residents,” as noted by the Chronicle.

Naturally, someone in San Francisco had an idea to use technology to help alleviate one of the symptoms of homelessness: falling out of touch with one’s family.

That’s the mission of Miracle Messages, an organization started by Kevin Adler in 2014. Volunteers record video messages from homeless people to their loved ones, who they have often not seen for many years. The organization then uses social media to publicize the videos in hope of contacting that person’s family.

Dave Adams lived on the streets in San Francisco for 20 years. He tells NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly that he lost touch with his family and couldn’t figure out how to make contact — “I ain’t computer smart,” he says.

That changed after he recorded a video message with a Miracle Messages volunteer. Adams learned he had a half sister named Dorothy, who had been looking for him for years. Adams says she started crying the first time he called her.

It’s one of the success stories for founder and CEO Kevin Adler, who says in about 90 percent of the cases that messages reach the family they are positively received. Many people are hesitant to participate at first, though.

“They’ve said, ‘Well, I don’t know how the family is going to respond, I feel like a burden, I feel ashamed, I’m embarrassed,’ ” Adler tells NPR. “Trying to get past that — doing something very simple, with what we call a video postcard is a very helpful first step for basically saying who you love, who you want to reconnect with, whatever kind of message you want to leave. And we’ll do our best to deliver it.”

The mission is personal for Adler. It has to do with empathy and understanding people as more than just the label “homeless,” including his own family.

“My uncle Mark had been homeless for about 30 years,” Adler says. “He suffered from schizophrenia, lived on and off the streets. I never saw him as a homeless man. He’s my beloved uncle.”

“I ain’t homeless, I’m houseless,” Adams interrupts.

“Exactly — houseless,” Adler says. “And so when we walk down the street and we see someone who is without a house, it’s easy to define them by that. And we want to live in a world where we walk down the street and we don’t see Homeless Joe or Jane … but we see someone’s loved one.”

“Homelessness is a state of mind,” Adams says. “Houseless is like how I think about it. Where you lay your head at night and lay down and go to sleep. Whether it’s in a mansion, whether it’s in a jail cell, or a car, or school bus, or a doorway — one thing about it is, that’s home.”

Adler’s goal for Miracle Messages is ambitious.

“We want to reunite 1 million people by 2021,” he says. “That’s 1 percent of the world’s homeless population — houseless population. So yeah, if we’re really going to move the needle in ending homelessness and using social media for social good, we figure we need to set the goal at least at a million, and then hopefully exceed it.”

For his part, Adams is headed to work and live at his sister’s farm in Tennessee. She’s going to pick him up at the bus stop, he says.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

In 2015, Juneau gained more young people and seniors, cost of living fell slightly, unemployment remained steady and the housing market was still tight.

Those are highlights from a report compiled by the Juneau Economic Development Council on changes to Juneau’s economy between 2014 and 2015.

In the housing market, prices rose and turnaround times for single-family homes and condominiums were still quick. According to the JEDC, home sales went up 10 percent last year.

Juneau City Manager Rorie Watt is concerned there aren’t enough vacancies for residents to shop around and find the homes they want.

“The general comment is that our housing market is stuck and we’re not seeing enough investment to keep our housing stock up to a good standard,” Watt said. “We’re not seeing enough investment to bring enough housing onto the market.”

He’s also concerned with the availability of good jobs in town and the ability for workers to find appropriate housing.

He couldn’t say how many new housing units were actually built last year. The number of new homes built in Southeast in 2015 was down by more than 38 percent.

Watt said this is a sign of concern for the region’s future.

“But then I would also point out that in Juneau, we had a pretty good year last year for new housing permits, and I think that’s probably a reflection of our ability to diversify our economy over the years,” he said.

Watt said Juneau’s economy is more balanced and less dependent on the state. He said the city’s role in addressing the problem will be selling city property and starting programs to encourage housing development.

“Our first step six months ago was hiring our housing officer, Scott Ciambor,” he said.

“I can tell you, his phone is ringing off the hook because there are a zillion things people want to talk to the city about with regards to housing.”

In population trends, JEDC reported Juneau grew slightly between 2014 and 2015. It’s grown steadily for the last 10 years.

Last year, the number of people aged 20 to 39 grew and people aged 40 to 59 shrank. The number of people 60 and older also grew.

Watt said the increase in seniors is no surprise. He pointed out there’s also been a strong increase in school-aged children and says he isn’t sure what the increase in young adults will mean for Juneau.

“I think that’s good because one of our overriding concerns is that younger people, and their ability to find employment, and to be able to afford to live here … is one of our concerns,” he said.

“So, I’m happy to see a little bit of growth in that sector.”

The cost of living in Juneau has been decreasing for at least two years. In 2015 the cost of living was 28 percent higher than the national average. Watt saw no surprises there.

As recently as 2012, U.S. News & World Report identified Juneau as the 10th most expensive U.S. city to live in.

The JEDC report shows unemployment fell slightly to 4 percent. But, there was also a 4 percent drop in state employment — the largest decrease in a decade.

Watt said that was expected.

The report predicts an even bigger loss in state jobs this year.

The life-size wooden figure intended to raise awareness of homelessness stolen from outside Juneau’s City Hall has been replaced.

The theft happened last month. Organizers of the nationwide project in Charleston, South Carolina, sent the replacement figure.

Before the original was stolen from outside City Hall, Juneau’s Chief Housing Officer Scott Ciambor had submitted a picture to the project organizers. Their goal was to have a picture with the figure from the city halls of every state capital.

For security reasons, Ciambor says he is going to keep the replacement in his office. He said he’d be happy to discuss homelessness with anyone interested.

As fears are confirmed about the extent of the damage Hurricane Matthew inflicted on Haiti — with a government agency saying 470 people died in one district alone — USAID is airlifting more than 480 metric tons of relief supplies to the small nation.

An official in Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency tells the AP that in addition to the 470 deaths he’s confirmed in one district, “The death toll is sure to go up.”

The U.S. aid agency says it’s sending supplies that could help up to 100,000 people, including 40,000 blankets, 20,000 hygiene kits, and nearly 18,700 kitchen sets. Some of the aid will be delivered by the U.S. Navy.

From Port au Prince, NPR’s Jason Beaubien reports for our Newscast unit:

“Tens of thousands of people remain in shelters after the storm. The USAID shipments includes rolls of plastic sheeting to help people temporarily replace roofs that were ripped away by the Category 4 hurricane.

“The U.S. Navy amphibious transport ship Mesa Verde is also expected to arrive off the coast with 700 sailors and Marines aboard. The Navy plans to use helicopters and landing craft to ferry relief supplies ashore.”

The U.S. Department of Defense’s role in the aid effort comes after Hurricane Matthew crippled access to southwest Haiti and other hard-hit areas, washing out bridges and roads.

The immediate need for food and shelter could mushroom into other needs in the near future. As Jason reported yesterday, “Hundreds of thousands of people had their homes partially or totally destroyed. Crops have been wiped out.”

And as NPR’s Rebecca Hersher reported for the Two-Way this week, “Amidst the flooding, the specter of a spike in cholera cases has aid organizations worried that the physical destruction of buildings could be just the beginning of Matthew’s deadly effects in Haiti.”

Rebecca also noted that Hurricane Matthew has forced another delay in Haiti’s already-delayed presidential election.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.