Search the site...

SOL DE MEDIANOCHE
  • MARCH 2023
  • FEBRUARY 2023
  • JANUARY 2023
  • DECEMBER 2022
  • NOVEMBER 2022
  • OCTOBER 2022
  • SEPTEMBER 2022
  • AUGUST 2022
  • JULY 2022
  • JUNE 2022
  • MAY 2022
  • APRIL 2022
  • MARCH 2022
  • FEBRUARY 2022
  • JANUARY 2022
  • DECEMBER 2021
  • NOVEMBER 2021
  • OCTOBER 2021
  • SEPTEMBER 2021
  • AUGUST 2021
  • JULY 2021
  • JUNE 2021
  • MAY 2021
  • APRIL 2021
  • MARCH 2021
  • FEBRUARY 2021
  • JANUARY 2021
  • DECEMBER 2020
  • NOVEMBER 2020
  • Advertise with us!
  • OCTOBER 2020
  • SEPTEMBER 2020
  • AUGUST 2020
  • JULY 2020
  • JUNE 2020
  • MAY 2020
  • MAR - APR 2020
  • JAN - FEB 2020
  • NOVEMBER 2019
  • SEPTEMBER 2019
  • JULY 2019
  • MAY 2019
  • MARCH 2019
  • FEBRUARY 2019
  • NOVEMBER 2018
  • SEPTEMBER 2018
    • Yes on Salmon
    • Become a citizen
  • JUNE 2018
  • APRIL 2018
  • FEBRUARY 2018
  • DECEMBER 2017
  • SEPTEMBER 2017
  • JULY 2017
  • MAY 2017
  • Spring 2017 - No. 5
  • Winter 2016 - No. 4
  • Fall 2016 - No. 3
  • Summer 2016 - No. 2
  • Spring 2016 - No. 1
  • Contact
  • MARCH 2023
  • FEBRUARY 2023
  • JANUARY 2023
  • DECEMBER 2022
  • NOVEMBER 2022
  • OCTOBER 2022
  • SEPTEMBER 2022
  • AUGUST 2022
  • JULY 2022
  • JUNE 2022
  • MAY 2022
  • APRIL 2022
  • MARCH 2022
  • FEBRUARY 2022
  • JANUARY 2022
  • DECEMBER 2021
  • NOVEMBER 2021
  • OCTOBER 2021
  • SEPTEMBER 2021
  • AUGUST 2021
  • JULY 2021
  • JUNE 2021
  • MAY 2021
  • APRIL 2021
  • MARCH 2021
  • FEBRUARY 2021
  • JANUARY 2021
  • DECEMBER 2020
  • NOVEMBER 2020
  • Advertise with us!
  • OCTOBER 2020
  • SEPTEMBER 2020
  • AUGUST 2020
  • JULY 2020
  • JUNE 2020
  • MAY 2020
  • MAR - APR 2020
  • JAN - FEB 2020
  • NOVEMBER 2019
  • SEPTEMBER 2019
  • JULY 2019
  • MAY 2019
  • MARCH 2019
  • FEBRUARY 2019
  • NOVEMBER 2018
  • SEPTEMBER 2018
    • Yes on Salmon
    • Become a citizen
  • JUNE 2018
  • APRIL 2018
  • FEBRUARY 2018
  • DECEMBER 2017
  • SEPTEMBER 2017
  • JULY 2017
  • MAY 2017
  • Spring 2017 - No. 5
  • Winter 2016 - No. 4
  • Fall 2016 - No. 3
  • Summer 2016 - No. 2
  • Spring 2016 - No. 1
  • Contact

Christmas Eve Breakfast at the Sullivan Arena
Party for Socialism and
Liberation Anchorage were the hosts

by austin reynolds

Picture

On Christmas Eve morning, PSL Anchorage partnered with local organizations to serve breakfast to over 500 people sheltered in the Sullivan Arena, the largest homeless shelter in the United States. While breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided to residents daily, fresh, hot food remains a rarity at the Sullivan, and because of this, the reaction from the residents was overwhelmingly positive.

Local organizations that partnered with PSL for the breakfast included Sol de Medianoche, The Business Boutique and 99+1.  The food was catered for the event by local restaurants (Waffles and Whatnot, French Oven Bakery and Paris Bakery), who generously prepared more than enough food for the event.

Homelessness in Anchorage
The Christmas Eve Breakfast marked the beginning of Anchorage’s Unity & Survival program, which was developed with the help of the Philadelphia PSL branch. The initial area of need that the Unity & Survival program aims to address is supporting Anchorage’s unhoused population.

Over the winter months, it is especially important that the needs of Anchorage’s disproportionately large homeless population are met — over 1,100 people are without homes on any given night. Anchorage, which has a population of a little over 293,000, has a larger per capita rate of homelessness than many lower-48 cities, including Portland, Las Vegas, and San Diego.

Every year, lifeless bodies are found frozen in the expanse of the city’s vast urban greenspace. In the absence of any housing options, people pitch tents and attempt to endure the bone-chilling winter cold. Anchorage has the coldest winters of any major city in the United States.

Despite the seriousness of the crisis, the municipal government has done very little to find a solution to the problem. Recently, Anchorage developed the Mass Care Exit Strategy — a plan that was developed after PSL Anchorage submitted a social housing proposal to the city’s former homeless coordinator John Morris.
The plan gradually moves people out of the Sullivan Arena and into five different types of permanent housing, including a “shelter and navigation center for adults, a ‘special population facility’ with a navigation center, a medical convalescence facility, substance misuse treatment with housing, and workforce and permanent supportive housing units.”
So far, however, the municipality has only given vague estimates as to when these sites will be available and has not released a plan for the construction of new housing units or increases in affordable housing availability.

The Sullivan Arena - A Temporary Solution to a Perpetual Housing Crisis
2022 will mark two years since the Sullivan Arena has been Anchorage’s primary and the nation’s largest homeless shelter. Conditions in the shelter are dismal, but the city is doing little to nothing to improve the conditions, with no plan or timetable for moving residents out of the “temporary” shelter in the sports arena.

Inside the Sullivan area, residents lack access to indoor bathrooms and even bunks and cots to sleep in. I spoke to a four-month-long resident of the shelter shortly after everyone was served on the morning of the 24th and asked him to describe life in the arena.
“Before you guys came here at the beginning of the month, at the end of last month there was like 400 plus people here … it was hectic,” he said.

When asked about the availability of bunks and cots, which are rationed with a waiting list, he described the process of accessing a place to sleep.
“On the waiting list sometimes, it takes longer than normal … Sometimes it takes a couple of days just to get a bunk. As long as you keep up with that, you’ll be okay, but others you see —” he gestured towards the people scattered up and down the hallway lying on the concrete floor “— those are the ones that are on the waiting list until they get down there.”

Another area of concern for residents was access to laundry. “Since I’ve been here, I haven’t even used it,” he said. A bystander added there was “at least a hundred bags of clothes down there [in the laundry area] waiting to be washed. And we don’t know, out of those bags, how many of those people have passed away or moved into hotels.”
​
The resident described the process of getting into hotels, stating anyone interested would have to “put in applications over here, give them your whole situation, … and then they’ll put you on a list.”
For his personal situation: “They’re trying to put me down for housing and I don’t know how long I’ll be here for that. I want to try to get into a hotel first and then move into housing after that.” He said placement happened in “hotels first, and once they have an opening for housing, they will let you know.”
When asked what he would do once he gets into housing, he stated that he would “come back down here and talk to some of the others and say ‘hey, if they did it for me, they can do it for you guys and help you move forward.’”
​
The many people receiving breakfast at the Sullivan Arena almost universally expressed the sentiment that the city was not doing enough to help the homeless population. “Housing is a human right” was a popular slogan among all. PSL Anchorage is demanding that the city work to turn this goal into a reality and ensure that no one in this community goes unhoused. The $51 million in American Rescue Plan funds that the city will be receiving by May should be allocated to both the purchase of existing, and construction of new permanent housing units for the homeless population. The fight will continue into the new year, and PSL Anchorage will not rest until the right to housing is guaranteed for all.

PROUDLY POWERED BY SOL DE MEDIANOCHE NEWS, LLC.
Sol de Medianoche is a monthly publication of the Latino community in Anchorage, Alaska