Homeless Funding
Dear Editor: This is an informational letter from the Sitka Homeless Coalition to make known in the community that, after almost four years of supporting the unsheltered men on the street and working through the initial planning report with the Anchorage-based, technical assistance agency Agnew::Beck, (with appreciation for funding from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority), the SHC is ready to seek the Sitka community’s assistance.
The beginning of the search to meet the needs of about 15 local men who continue to live outside, was to locate building space for a winter night shelter. That was in 2017. When no space was available, the Laundry and Showers program sprang up in late 2018. This program was to show support for and stand in for the Coalition’s inability to locate any shelter space during winter months. It wasn’t shelter but it was sure fine to see so many men cleaned up and able to stay spiffed with the L&S program, continuing now to operate twice weekly.
Along the way the SHC embraced the need to do more than shelter people in the winter night.
Keeping to the rally call of “Enough, not more than what is needed,” SHC presently envisions small, unattached bedrooms/dry cabins for individual men with a multi-utility building and an on-site, live-in staff person. Request to lease the Mental Health Trust land at the top of Jarvis Street was made and two acres have been made available.
One necessary step is needed to move forward: an organization or a small collaboration of organizations to work together in order to build and manage the tiny neighborhood.
In Juneau, the group that manages the Housing First apartments includes people representing the Glory Hall, Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes, Bartlett Regional Hospital, Juneau Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and City and Borough of Juneau. The burden does not fall onto any single organization.
In Sitka, when we form our own collaboration to build/operate a supportive housing neighborhood, it need not be elaborate. Although the initial report is quite complete, picture something more like this: “a campground-type situation with a live-in campground host.” It is possible to take a very complete plan and modify it for Sitkans. Or think of it this way: there is a fairly large gap in between living on the street and renting in low-cost housing. To get more people off the street and moving toward low-cost housing, we place an intermediate step – supportive housing in between. When that step is created in between homelessness and lowcost housing, we now have formed the road forward. Don’t forget we are not speaking about tiny houses which are defined by ordinance in Sitka. Rather these small buildings will be “unattached bedrooms” clustered around a centralize services building. “Dry” but wired for electricity and each occupant will be responsible for their own electric bill.
This is not too hard for us. Neighboring communities are willing to help us. An architect was here to work with us this past weekend; an engineer from Juneau is coming in a couple of weeks. Winter 2021 is fast approaching. We see videos of homeless people from other communities, other states. These pictures are not the pictures of Sitkans who live out. Sitka’s unsheltered men, in general, do a lot of taking care of themselves. Even in the last 18 months of caring and supporting this group, more than one man has gotten sober; another is in treatment and several are working now. Showing that people care seems to activate the men.
This project is about taking care of our own. Let’s do it well – one time. That is the desire of the Sitka Homeless Coalition. Thank you!
Gayle Young for
Sitka Homeless Coalition
