City data shows shelters at capacity; officials say third ERA tranche and Home ARP funds will be used to move people into housing

Miss Parks, a staff member who presented the Coalition's monthly data snapshot, told the Anchorage Municipality committee that most people counted in the system are in shelter or transitional housing and that shelters are running at or near capacity.

“The shelters run at capacity,” Miss Parks said. She outlined the data method used by the continuum of care: start with last month’s total, then add inflow (new to the system, returns from housing, and returns from inactivity) and subtract outflow (exits to housing or exits to inactivity).

Why it matters: A high shelter census with slow exits to permanent housing keeps system capacity constrained and raises the number of people who must rely on temporary shelter. Miss Parks and other staff said the primary driver of new homelessness is eviction and inability to pay rent, while housing program capacity remains full.

The data snapshot included these program highlights: 46 percent of people in the month of December met the program’s chronic homelessness measure (one year continuously homeless or four episodes in three years); 43 percent had been homeless more than two years; and a sizeable share of exits were recorded without a destination, limiting the ability to verify housing outcomes.

On funding, municipal officials described a near-term plan to use federal rental assistance and longer-lived Home ARP funds together. Kimberly Rasch of the Anchorage Health Department said the municipality has satisfied the ERA drawdown threshold and can pull a third tranche: “Thanks to Kim Rash and others, in finance, we managed to realize, oh, great. We're at 88%, so we can pull down our third tranche,” she said, adding that ERA-supported rental assistance must end by Sept. 30 under program rules. Rasch summarized the local funding mix: “There is about 3,380,000.00 from the ERA 2 tranche 3 funding and 1.5 from Home ARP funding, which is HUD funding.”

Officials said they plan to pair short-window ERA payments with Home ARP-funded case management and housing services that can be used through 2026, to reduce the risk that short-term rental assistance simply delays future homelessness. Miss Parks said some municipal grant and contract awards tied to those funds were expected to appear before the assembly on April 8 (intent-to-award documents were posted on the purchasing website).

What remains uncertain: presenters cautioned that ERA has per-person caps and sunset rules that limit how much assistance an individual can receive over the life of the program, and that some shelter providers do not participate in the HMIS data system, which complicates measuring year-over-year usage for the full system.

Ending: Staff asked the committee to watch the RFP and intent-to-award postings and said they expect new rental assistance and supportive-service contracts to start producing housing exits within weeks to months rather than years. Miss Parks said she was hopeful that the next snapshot would show improved exits once new funds begin to flow.