The Municipality of Anchorage, United Way of Anchorage, and the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness signed a partnership agreement in 2016, with the stated objective of aligning work to end homelessness in Anchorage. Their work seeks not only to prevent and end homelessness, but also to assist the homeless is their journey to achieve the highest and best version of themselves. Part of our work is to assist them in mastering essential life skills, with job training and financial management. The request is for $30,000.
The Anchorage Work Ready program that we are proposing allows high functioning/performing clients from the general shelter to move the overflow shelter facilities of Beans Café and Downtown Soup Kitchen. These shelters are attempting to take people from the general shelter population (i.e. Brother Francis Shelter) and through workforce training (following the model established in Seattle WA), and train them in a job and some economic self-sufficiency to enable them to compete for jobs and housing. Often times the jobs that are appropriate for them do not allow them to pay the totality of their bills, but do allow them to contribute to their housing costs, thereby increasing and sustain permanent supported housing; but in many cases, this effort leads to a path to full economic self sufficiency.
The grant would allow us to undertake that work with our community partners as we work on mayor Berkowitz’s “Anchorage Plan to End Homelessness.”