Anchorage has opened a new transitional housing and treatment program designed to connect people experiencing homelessness with addiction care and behavioral health services while they live in their own small units, according to city officials and the organization running the program. The effort, managed through the municipality with contracting support from Anchorage Recovery Center, pairs 32 city-owned microunits with a day treatment model at a site called Willow Commons.
The city’s approach reflects a premise that officials said has become clearer for people who have been homeless for long periods: many need addiction treatment or behavioral health care in order to consistently show up for outpatient services. Thea Agnew Bemben, a special assistant to Anchorage mayor Suzanne LaFrance, said behavioral health care is a key component of the city’s homeless response, adding that unsheltered living extended over time is often tied to behavioral health issues that keep people from getting services.
Willow Commons launched in late March, and Summer Bond said it filled quickly at the start. Bond, who is in charge of helping people get settled in the addiction treatment program, showed an example microunit in early April and said it was the last empty unit at that point, with someone scheduled to move in the next day. Bond said each resident gets a bed, towel, set, hygiene kit, a fridge and a microwave, and that the program planned to add a TV.
Under the program’s model, residents attend individual and group therapy and work with a caseworker while receiving life skills lessons, Bond said. City officials also said day treatment allows residents without housing to get behavioral health care during the day while staying in the program’s microunits. Bond said the program is voluntary and that timelines depend on each resident’s needs, with a transition to safe housing and stable income once residents are ready to graduate.
Bond said Willow Commons includes fewer rules than a traditional residential treatment center, citing as an example the lack of curfew. She also described a “closed campus” structure that residents cannot leave until they reach a certain stage of treatment, and she said no visitors are allowed. She added that the program has rules on drugs and alcohol, and that a closed campus approach and shared living arrangements are part of why the site is staffed 24 hours a day.
In addition to on-site treatment, Bond said Anchorage Recovery Center would provide follow-up after discharge. She said staff check in on residents after they leave the program, asking how they are doing and where they are at, and she said relapse is a part of recovery, so the organization keeps doors open. Bond said Anchorage Recovery Center expects to learn from the “test case,” including whether residents graduate and how treatment is going, and she said the city hopes other organizations in Anchorage will adapt the model.
The city financed development of Willow Commons using more than $1 million left over from an opioid settlement, officials said, building the first two dozen microunits. They said the city received grant funding to build the remaining eight. City officials also said the microunits are built to city code, and Agnew Bemben said they should be warm enough in winter, while officials plan to monitor design and site operations, including how shared bathrooms and showers and a large common area function in practice.
Anchorage Recovery Center is also expected to contract with the municipality to provide outpatient services at a hotel formerly known as the Golden Lion Hotel, now called “Alder Place.” Agnew Bemben said those outpatient services are planned to open once the city completes renovations, and she said the city’s contract allows for the possibility of care at other city facilities as well.
Note: This article was distributed from a partnership package that included Anchorage reporting originally published by Alaska Public Media and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.