Housing

About 200 kids and teenagers in Juneau are homeless. There are students without adequate or regular housing in every school in the district.

This past weekend, high school students slept out in the cold to raise awareness of the mostly invisible issue.

Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, temperatures dropped to the low to mid-30s. Two dozen high school students participating in the sleep-out were prepared with sleeping bags, big winter coats, blankets and extra layers.

Reilly Walsh, 17, is a senior at Juneau-Douglas High School. She and other students built makeshift shelters out of cardboard boxes and duct tape under the outdoor covered area at Riverbend Elementary School. The goal was to bring attention to their friends and fellow students who are homeless.

“Because it’s something that you can’t really tell always if someone is struggling with homelessness, so we’re just trying to spread the word that it does occur and you might not be aware of it.”

The cardboard structures are largely symbolic. Kids in Juneau who don’t have permanent housing aren’t typically sleeping outside. Gabi Kito, a 16-year-old junior, said they’re more likely to be hopping from couch to couch.

“People – when they think of homeless(ness) – they think of them sleeping outside and in boxes rather than sleeping in a house and different houses each night.”

Some homeless youth stay with families at shelters through St. Vincent de Paul or AWARE. Others turn to Juneau Youth Services, which offers a 10-bed emergency shelter at Cornerstone Residential Facility.

JYS offers counseling for mental health, substance abuse and family reunification.

The organization plans to reopen its transitional living program early next year, executive director Walter Majoros said. It’ll house six individuals ages 16-21.

Majoros said some kids and teens are homeless due to family discord and instability.

“There may be family violence going on. There may be sexual abuse. There may be alcoholism or drug abuse in the family. There may be a single-parent family that creates some instability. Oftentimes there’s a parent that is incarcerated.”

Another resource is the Zach Gordon Youth Center in downtown Juneau. It’s open every day except Sunday. Manager Jorden Nigro said homeless kids come regularly.

“We have showers here so they can take showers, and we help connect them to resources and we feed a lot of kids here,” Nigro said. “We have kids that come and get their after-school snack here and lots of kids who stay for dinner.”

Besides offering activities and services — such as basketball, tutoring and arts and crafts — Nigro said staff members work hard to build relationships.

“If kids have meaningful connections with adults, they do better in every aspect of their life and that impacts kids whether they’re homeless, whether they’re not homeless and also can help kids who are on the cusp,” Nigro said.

At school, homeless students are offered help with transportation, free meals and snacks, clothing and shoes, toiletries and assistance with activities fees.

Dixie Weiss is the faculty adviser of the service club Interact at Juneau-Douglas High School. Interact has helped organize the annual sleep-out since 2004. Besides raising awareness, the sleep-out also raises money. Weiss has seen first-hand how the funds help.

“Time and time again these kids are giving you these big bear hugs because they never imagined they’d get that yearbook or that senior hoodie or the support,” Weiss said.

The sleep-out also teaches an important lesson, “that sitting next to them in a class, day in and day out, there’s this kid that is, against all odds, making it; that they have courageous peers and this is a way to support that courage,” Weiss said.

So far, the students have raised about $3,000 and are accepting donations through the end of November. Half of the proceeds will go to the school district and the other half to the Zach Gordon Youth Center.

Anchorage’s new homelessness action plan aims to provide 300 permanent housing units in the next three years for adults who are living on the street and in camps.

Anchorage’s Mayor Ethan Berkowitz announced the plan Tuesday. He said the first step is coordinating with resource providers, landlords, and people who need housing to find and fill available units across the city and eventually to build more. The effort will mirror successful plans from places like Utah. It includes a list of names of individuals to make sure people are getting the help they need. Berkowitz said that list also humanizes the problem.

“It’s very easy when you deal with policy to be anonymous and statistical and speak in abstraction,” he said during a press conference, surrounded by service providers. “But when you identify individuals by name it becomes more intimate and more personal and it does that very quickly. If we’re looking for a house for the name of someone we know, it’s going to make it easier for that to happen.”

The municipality will also have a landlord liaison who will work directly with private landlords in case there are any problems with the tenants who are placed there.

Berkowitz did not provide any specific mechanisms for funding the plan or a budget but he said he wants to use money from agencies like the Alaska Housing Finance Corp. He also emphasized that housing people saves money because they are no longer using resources like emergency services. Berkowitz said it’s not just a money issue, it’s a moral issue.

“It’s also important for the psyche of our city. If we want to be a city that’s vibrant and vital, we want to make sure everyone who lives here in safe and secure.”

This is not the first plan to end homelessness in Anchorage, but Mental Health Trust Authority CEO Jeff Jessee said this one is different.

“Plans are no better than the people charged with carrying them out,” Jessee said. “And perhaps the most important thing about this effort is the leadership the municipality is showing in pulling together the funders, the providers, and as the mayor says, the entire community to find ways to address this issue.”

Two elements of the plan are already in play. A municipal grant helped RurAL CAP open 56 new housing first units near Merrill Field at Sitka Place, formerly called Safe Harbor-Merrill Field. The Downtown Soup Kitchen will open at night as an emergency shelter for women starting at the end of the month.

The burned out Gastineau Apartments are supposed to be demolished in April, but a last-minute deal could restore the downtown dwelling. Three years after the fire, the owner has a purchase agreement with a Seattle developer. It’s on Monday’s Assembly agenda.

Will Muldoon lived at the Gastineau Apartments for about five years. He says the street was always bustling with activity: bars letting out after last call, the occasional smell of acetone from the nail salon below.

And he says sure, sometimes it could be uncomfortable.

“Part of living downtown is one time, I stepped out the shower and my neighbor saw me so I had to go over and say ‘I’m sorry’ to them. But it’s part of the fun of living downtown in such close quarters,” Muldoon said.

That neighbor was working at the doll museum across the street. Still, he says he loved living in Gastineau in a small one bedroom.

Muldoon paid around $950 a month for rent. He worked two jobs. The location gave him the flexibility to walk to work in the day, then come home and do information technology work at night.

“It was kinda neat,” Muldoon said. “My life was pretty localized and I liked it that way.”

Then three years ago this month, his life changed. Clanging fire alarms woke him up, but he rolled back over and went to sleep.

“The way Beck was knocking, Officer Beck was knocking, I could tell it wasn’t just like a ‘hey, let’s chat kinda thing.’ It wasn’t no ‘hello, I’m trying to sell something.’ Or anything like that,” he said.

Muldoon escaped with a pair of XTRATUFS and his dog. Even the clothes on his back had to be thrown away from smoke damage. But all of the other tenants, minus one pet cat, made it out.

Gastineau’s owner, James Barrett, repeatedly missed city deadlines for repairs or demolition. And the building caught fire again. It’s been a huge eyesore, even declared a safety concern. So the city put together a bid package for Gastineau to be torn down.

The contract was supposed to be finalized with CBC Construction at the end of last month.

“Well, the Barrett family has now relinquished control of the property to us,” said Jim Hurley, a Seattle-based consultant.

The city is holding the notice to proceed for the demolition.

Private Public Partnership LLC and a local company, Coogan Alaska Construction, want to renovate the apartments. Not tear them down. The group has entered into a purchasing agreement with the Barretts. But haven’t bought the building yet. The Barretts couldn’t be reached for comment.

“We have a plan that could involve a construction cycle that could be completed in 18 months. If we had cooperation with the city,” Hurley said.

The Assembly would first have to cancel the bid it awarded to CBC Construction.

Hurley says it’s still in the development stage, but there are tentative plans to turn the apartments back into market-rate or subsidized housing. Of course, this would take longer than just tearing it down.

“Here’s the thing, I don’t know much about the history in terms of the politics of it,” Hurley said. “What I do know is there’s not much risk for the taxpayers to listen to what we have to say.”

But he says there are risks with the demolition. The city hoped to recoup over a million dollars from the Barretts; after demolition, Hurley estimates the land is only worth about $200,000.

“We’re fresh now and can bring our vision of an alternate plan to the city. And they can have an apples-and-oranges plan to what’s on the table,” Hurley said.

For Muldoon, the fire that destroyed his apartment seems like a lifetime ago.

“My life has changed. Now I live out in the valley, I have a state job and help raising kids and all these things,” Muldoon said.

He lost most of his possessions but says he was able to bounce-back with the help of his family and community.

Seeing the twinkle in his eye when he talks about living downtown, I have to ask if he would move back into the Gastineau Apartments if it was renovated.

“I would, I would,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ve got a really nice setup in the valley right now. But it would be hard not to. I had a lot of fun living there. It had a 100-year-old history. So I’m kinda excited to see if they can do the restoration, what Gastineau 2.0 will mean.”

The assembly will be discussing that possibility with the developers.

Full disclosure, Will Muldoon is a member of KTOO’s Board of Directors.

Gov. Bill Walker says he’d “love for Alaska to be the first state without homelessness.” With a little inspiration from the state of Utah, some are hopeful that could become reality.

In 10 years, the number of people who are chronically homeless in Utah dropped from 1,964 people to 178. Lloyd Pendleton, director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, was a guest at the meeting of Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness annual conference. He said the solution was relatively simple — Utah used the Housing First model.

If funding is the problem, Pendleton suggested that Alaska’s Permanent Fund dividends could be put to a higher use, which Corrections Commissioner Rob Taylor, and the audience, found amusing.

“You’re not talking about our checks are you?” Taylor asked.

“Yes he is!” yelled a woman in the audience.

“I guess that’s what you call them,” Pendleton replied. “So, you pay no sales tax, you pay no tax. The rest of us down in the Lower 48 do it without issue. I’m just saying, you have an opportunity to rethink your whole structure.”

Short of implementing new taxes or doing away with PFD checks, Pendleton noted that Alaska is still in a good spot to make progress on a housing initiative. He noted that state leadership and the coalition are actively working toward a solution.

In his address to the conference Wednesday, Walker said a recent visit to the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks opened his eyes to new technologies that can help residents mitigate expensive winter heating bills.

“It’s not any one particular region. It’s statewide. We need affordable housing. In some locations in our great state in the winter, multiple families move together to live in one house so they’re heating one house rather than four houses. (It’s) quite a challenge,” Walker said. “There’s no place else in the United States that does that, that people live in those conditions.”

The state will hold a housing summit in January, which Walker hopes will “identify what the state can do to help local communities address their housing needs.”

Several of Juneau’s homeless live at the city-run Thane Campground. For $25 a week, it may be the cheapest rent in town. Today, the campground closes for the winter, leaving some occupants wondering where to go.

Elliot Scott, 33, moved from his hometown of Bakersfield, California, to Juneau in April.

“It’s a good place to get a new start, to be able to better your life,” Scott said.

In 2004, Scott was arrested for a felony in California. After serving three years, he found himself in and out of jail more than 20 times for parole violations, “It just happens over and over and over and over and over, until you finally get out of the system.”

Scott got off parole in April. He took a job with Alaska Canopy Adventures and lived at the Prospector Hotel for an employer-subsidized rate of $450 a month. When the tourist season ended, so did the housing.

With a tent, a tarp and a sleeping bag, Scott moved to the Thane Campground about one and a half miles from downtown Juneau.

Scott works at Western Auto Marine, takes a marine transportation class at University of Alaska Southeast and wants to get his captain’s license. He’s paying out of pocket because the course doesn’t qualify for financial aid.

“Going back to school cost me $1,100 and being homeless,” Scott said.

On top of tuition, Scott is paying off criminal fines in California.

“If you add that into the equation of housing and gas and food, it’s like a house payment,” Scott said.

He does laundry and takes showers at the downtown laundromat.

“When I go to work, I’ll go take a shower and I get nice and cleaned up. Nobody ever knows,” Scott said.

At about $8 for a load of laundry and $2 a shower, “It adds up quick, but you got to do what you have to do.”

When the Thane Campground closes, Scott isn’t sure where he’ll live.

The City and Borough of Juneau leases the Thane Campground land from AJT Mining Properties, owned by Avista. According to the lease, the purpose of the campground is to provide campsites with proper facilities for seasonal housing during the temperate months of the year. Its primary goal is to provide housing, not recreation.

“It’s kind of a placement for those that don’t really have anywhere else to go. Just somewhere that they can stay temporary where they know that if they’re able to follow the rules that they can stay at a relatively good price,” said Chris Day, administrative assistant for Juneau Parks & Recreation, which runs the campground.

On its last night before closing, seven of the 18 available camp spots were occupied. Day says three people have stayed at the campground the entire season. Others stay for one or two months. From mid-April to mid-October, he says the campground is usually more than 80 percent full.

Besides the Thane Campground, there aren’t other options in Juneau for long-term camping with facilities on public run land. State and federal campgrounds limit stays.

U.S. Forest Service Recreation Program Manager Ed Grossman said the campgrounds are not for permanent occupancy, “We’re in the recreation business. We’re not in the seasonal housing business, no matter what your situation, whether you’re homeless or low-income job or whatever.”

Mariya Lovishchuk, executive director of Juneau’s shelter and soup kitchen, gets worried when the Thane Campground closes. She says some who live there are considered at risk of dying prematurely, including a 65-year-old man she recently interviewed as part of a homeless survey.

“What closing the campground will mean is that he won’t be in one place. He’ll have to move several times because he’ll camp somewhere and then somebody will inevitably find the camp,” Lovishchuk said. “It’s so hard to set up a camp in the winter and to find stuff. In the summer, it’s less critical because you have more time and resources and body energy to survive the elements and in the winter, you really don’t.”

For Elliot Scott, he has a month left in his marine transportation course. If he doesn’t find proper housing by the time that ends, he may leave Juneau.

In the meantime, he’s looking for another place to camp.

Gov. Bill Walker announced Wednesday the creation of an 11-member tribal advisory council.

“We need to do things differently. We need to do things collaboratively. We need to have the vehicle to have a discussion and bring things to us, and so when we have an issue we have a mechanism to go out to the village leaders to solicit your input,” Walker said.

The council will advise on education, health care, subsistence, energy, public safety, justice, wildlife and fisheries, economic development, housing, language and culture and transportation. There will be one representative for each issue.

Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, said he was excited about the announcement. Of all the issues covered by the council, Peterson said energy should be a priority, but land into trust is also something he’d like to see addressed before too long. He thinks it’s an issue of the state recognizing the tribes’ rights.

“Obviously they recognize tribes and our importance, but there’s never been a formal recognition and I think that needs to take place,” Peterson said. “What I would hate is to have all this great forward movement under this administration and then another administration comes in and just ignores (it), and it’s back to the way it was previously when tribes didn’t have the impact that we have now.”

Walker made the announcement Wednesday at the Alaska Federation of Natives and National Congress of American Indians annual conference in Anchorage. Several cabinet members addressed the conference that morning. Walker said he’d like for the meeting with AFN and NCAI to become an annual event for his administration.