Anchorage to open 132 more winter shelter beds for homeless at Spenard hotel

Anchorage city officials are preparing to open another 132 emergency winter homeless shelter beds at the Alex Hotel and Suites in Spenard.

On Tuesday, the Anchorage Assembly narrowly approved a $2.3 million contract with MASH Property Management to operate the additional shelter beds.

The property management company is owned by former U.S. Sen. and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich and by Sheldon Fisher, a former state revenue commissioner. During the pandemic, the company sheltered homeless residents in the former Aviator Hotel in a previous agreement with the city.

At the end of last month, the city opened 200 beds in hotel rooms, including 100 at the Alex Hotel, under a contract with local nonprofit Henning Inc. The beds were filled in about a week and have remained full nightly, service providers say. Henning is also operating 58 beds at the Merrill Field Inn in Mountain View and 42 at the Henry House in downtown Anchorage.

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Another 200 beds at the city’s year-round, walk-in mass shelter on East 56th Avenue have been full on most nights since the city opened the shelter last fall. Privately run shelters have also largely been at capacity.

Hundreds of people are living unsheltered around the city, staying in encampments, on the streets, living in vehicles and other places not meant for human habitation. At a meeting last week, the city’s contractor for third-party oversight of the shelters emphasized the urgent need for more shelter beds.

“The temperature is dropping, and with snow on the ground, it is critically important that we open the additional beds,” said Farina Brown, special assistant in homelessness and health to Mayor Suzanne LaFrance.

However, several Assembly members pushed back on the contract, and it passed in a 7-4 vote of the 12-member Assembly — receiving the minimum number of votes required for approval. Assembly Vice Chair Meg Zaletel, who is the executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, recused herself from the vote.

Several Assembly members balked at MASH’s per-bed pricing, at $125 per day, which is more expensive than Henning’s roughly $98 daily cost per bed. Assembly member Karen Bronga said she was shocked by the price difference.

LaFrance’s administration in September had announced plans to open 400 beds under a previously proposed $9.2 million contract with Henning. But several Assembly members raised concerns about Henning’s previous shelter management, and and about Henning becoming the sole organization to handle winter shelter. Members at the time said that if the winter’s operations went sideways under Henning, the city would have little recourse to change contractors. The administration then halved the proposal.

“That decision, if we approve this, is going to cost us an additional $107,000 per month,” Assembly member Randy Sulte said.

He voted against the contract along with members Bronga, Mark Littlefield and Scott Myers.

LaFrance on Tuesday urged Assembly members to approve the contract with MASH.

“Significant concerns were raised with Henning and the risk of having just one vendor. That is why we are here,” LaFrance said.

“The bottom line is, we need these beds,” she added.

MASH and Henning were the only two organizations to put in bids for the city’s sheltering contract, which the administration had intended to award only to Henning. After the change in plans, MASH could only come up with 132 beds in the shortened timeframe, Brown said.

That leaves the city with 332 emergency winter shelter beds, instead of 400 as planned. With the 56th Avenue shelter, that’s a total of 532 city shelter beds for single adults.

Brown said that the city is working to find an organization to open a warming area, which will add more capacity to the stressed system.

The city is also preparing to direct several million dollars to “rapid rehousing” programs, which will move homeless residents out of city shelters and into permanent housing.

“We also want to focus on movement in the system, ensuring that we don’t have 300-plus people that are just decompressing out of shelter without somewhere to go” in the spring, Brown said.