Imagine you have no place to call home on a cold night in Anchorage. Even if you can take refuge at the Brother Francis Shelter or the Gospel Rescue Mission, there’s more to the cold than the ambient temperature. The shiver afflicts the spirit. Now imagine you have no place to call home on a […]
Challenge of Homelessness: Shelter for Tonight, Housing for Tomorrow
The Jan. 9 public meeting about Anchored Home, the city’s three-year plan to make homelessness rare and brief, offered a lesson in the contrast between long-range change and tonight’s needs. One man, who described himself as someone who does triage with the homeless, told those gathered at the Loussac Library’s Wilda Marston Theatre that he […]
Look Beyond the Labels and See Where You Can Make a Difference
As the 90% Graduation by 2020 community collaboration gets closer to its target date, we are focused on helping those students struggling the hardest to walk that graduation stage. And we know the students most likely to drop out are those facing difficulties outside of school that affect their ability to engage with school. For […]
Earthquake Recovery Update, December 9th, 2018
Now that we’ve all had a week to regain our bearings and assess damages after the November 30 earthquake, we’re gaining a better grasp of the recovery challenges ahead. The Foraker Group surveyed Anchorage and Mat-Su nonprofit agencies and found that some suffered significant damage and disruption, while others — like United Way’s 2-1-1 — were able […]
Earthquake Recovery Update
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I was in my office Friday at 8:29 a.m. when I was reminded – like all of us in Southcentral – of the amazing forces of nature that define the Alaska experience. But in the hours and days that followed, as neighbors reached out to neighbors, I was struck and inspired by the unique and […]
The Power of Back on Track: Someone Is There To Care
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Ten hours a day, four days a week, Pedro Aviles makes his living by going the extra mile. It’s still a shorter trip than many of his students have to make. Aviles, 26, is the wraparound services coordinator for a community collaboration called Back on Track that helps high school students who are seriously at […]
How We Plan to Solve Homelessness in Anchorage
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Co-authored by Michele Brown, Nancy Burke, Jasmine Khan, and Dr. Richard Mandsager. Anchored Home is Anchorage’s three-year plan to solve homelessness, and we’ve never tried anything like this before. Anchorage has had task forces, community plans, summits, forums and initiatives reaching back decades. And as you’re reading this, good people are at work helping some […]
Complexity Demands Adaptive Leadership Strategies
In Anchorage, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief in August when the news media described the likely beginning of economic recovery. Job losses are slowing. Oil prices are rising. Modest job growth is on the horizon. I’m reminded of the 1980s bumper sticker plea for one more oil boom. If we see our […]
Returning Home Through Rapid Rehousing
There’s a lot of discussion underway about the highly visible face of street homelessness in Anchorage. There’s another, more hidden and pernicious face; and that’s family homelessness. On Aug. 31 of this year, there were 87 known families with a combined 290 people on the Homeless Management Information System list. Sometimes a family becomes homeless […]
A Fighting Chance to Graduate
In 2005, the Anchorage High School graduation rate was 59 percent. Since then, the aim of 90% Graduation by 2020 has been to raise and sustain the graduation rate to 90 percent or better. By 2017, the graduation rate was 81.4 percent. We’re still waiting on 2018’s certified final numbers from the Anchorage School […]
