At the September 26 Assembly Meeting, the Assembly’s Legislative Services Office released a new tool for the public to track municipal appropriations on Housing and Homelessness. The tool can be found on the Assembly’s Homelessness Focus webpage.
“Anchorage is in the midst of a housing shortage crisis and the Municipality’s efforts to address it are a source of interest for many in the community,” said Legislative Services Director Clare Ross. “One of our office’s core values is transparency, so we created this tool so members of the public can see for themselves how the Municipality’s spending on preventing and solving homeless has been directed.”
The report highlights that the Municipality made grants to nonprofit partners to purchase and renovate 15 facilities with over 600 new units of housing, keep over 18,000 individuals housed during the pandemic through rental and mortgage assistance, and invest in programs to prevent homelessness and provide supportive housing for our neighbors.
Upon receiving the report, Assembly Chair Christopher Constant remarked, “the influx of federal funding for COVID recovery efforts and the new alcohol tax enabled the Municipality for the first time to make major investments in housing and homelessness. This data goes to show that the Municipality has been very astute in taking advantage of these funding opportunities to address our housing crisis without cutting into the other critical operations and services of the municipality. These investments will serve our community for many years to come.”
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