As temperatures drop, agencies seek solutions to alleviate homelessness in Nome

As bone-chilling temperatures settle in across the region and daily life, activities and festivities move indoors, Nome’s most vulnerable populations remain out in the cold.

“There’s a pretty good portion of us that are still sleeping outside,” explained Brian Ayek, one of Nome’s unhoused residents. “I’ve slept outside in below zero temperatures before. It’s not fun.”

Ayek is 29, and has been homeless in the community for several years. He is one of almost 30 chronically unhoused residents in the city where limited housing and high rents contribute to a growing homeless population.

Nome’s Community Center, though, is working towards solutions to the homelessness crisis in Nome. The center currently hosts several projects designed to alleviate homelessness, rents a couple of apartments across the city and operates NEST.

NEST, an emergency overnight shelter, typically begins operations on November 1 each year, but this year opened up several days early following a particularly cool season.

“We did open a day early because of the cold and the temperature drops,” said NCC’s Housing Coordinator Liz Johnson. “That was when we were having really strong winds.”

Almost 30 individuals slept in the shelter during its first two weeks of operations as the windchill regularly dipped temperatures below zero.

NEST, though, is just a band aid on a much bigger wound. It provides temporary shelter at night during Alaska’s toughest months, but is not operational year-round, and the community needs long-term housing options that so far remain unavailable and unaffordable.

“Nome is in a housing crunch, and we definitely feel it,” Johnson said. “Our housing crisis is about our lack of affordable housing, and that’s how folks end up homeless.” Johnson said part of her job at NCC is organization. She and NEST’s Director Shoni Evans are working on a system that tracks who is relying on the services.

“We have 55 and older folks [that rely on services],” Johnson said. “We have one homeless person that is going in and out for cancer treatments. Those are the kinds of conversations we’re having all the time.”

NCC is exploring other ventures to support Nome’s most vulnerable populations, including a Housing First project and smaller rentals. The Housing First project, a 15-unit studio apartment building with built-in medical facilities and a 24-hour building manager, is “a project to house chronic homeless folks that need supportive services in order to be successful in housing,” NCC executive director Rhonda Schneider told Nome’s housing coalition during a meeting last week.

The housing coalition, a small group comprised of community members, Norton Sound Health Corporation employees, city staff and others involved in the housing crisis discussions, has met several times this year to explore solutions to the homelessness crisis. Most recently, the group met on Tuesday, November 16, where they discussed ongoing efforts to combat homelessness throughout the winter.

The next step in the project, Schneider told the group, is to find land suitable for the construction.

“If we don’t have a place, we don’t have a project, so we’re working hard to turn that around,” she said. “We have some community partners that are having conversations with us.”

The project is in the design phase while architects and the NCC work out cost estimates, sizes and community needs. Pre-COVID-19 pandemic cost estimates put the project around $5.9 million, though ongoing labor shortages, supply chain issues and high costs of lumber and construction materials will likely impact budgets.

Johnson says community groups, including NSHC, have expressed support for the project, though the center received some pushback during the recent housing coalition meeting. Several participants in the meeting questioned the use of funds for the project, arguing putting those dollars towards other community issues would be more valuable.

“It’s shocking that the emphasis is on the homeless when we have so many needs in the community,” said one participant. “Our youth need a safe place to go to.”

Other meeting participants agreed that a discussion about youth services was warranted, but unrelated to the topic at hand.

Many Nomeites have the impression that the visibly homeless, including those who spend time along Front Street, are not from Nome, but from the surrounding villages. A majority of those experiencing homeless in the city, though, have lived in Nome for years, if not their entire lives.

“All [community members] see is what they see on Front Street,” Johnson said. “Nobody talks about the couch surfers or the ones that are piled up, multiple families in one apartment.”

During the meeting, one participant suggested “sending [homeless individuals] back” to their home communities, including several of the villages in the region, but that, too, is a band aid on a bullet hole, and often not an option, as many of Nome’s chronic homeless are from here. Several of the villages in the region are even more strapped for housing than Nome, with families occupying homes and units not large enough to house them.

“Nobody wants to go back to a place where they don’t have a place to live,” Johnson said.

Ayek, who was born and raised in Nome before spending time in Anchorage, returned to the community because it was closer to his family and his support system, but often feels ignored.

“People really look down on us,” he told the Nugget. “It’s not always our fault that we’re in this situation.”

Access to alcohol also came up throughout the Tuesday meeting.

Over the summer, AC’s Quick Stop store, located on Front Street in Nome, instituted a one-bottle-perday policy, a move that has been celebrated by city leadership.

“[Quick Stop] has reduced the alcohol allowed to be purchased at one time to one bottle,” Nome City Manager Glenn Steckman told the Public Safety Advisory Commission, another group that discusses homelessness, in August. “This has resulted in a substantial drop in police calls down here to unresponsive persons on Front Street.”

Others were concerned, though, that Hanson’s new liquor store, opened earlier this fall, would contribute to additional alcohol availability.

“I keep hearing about the reduced one bottle a day, but I don’t know if it really makes an impact on homelessness,” Johnson said. “Regardless of if they’re drunk or not, they’re still homeless.”

In addition to the Housing First project, NCC is tackling smaller housing projects, including the Shoemaker House project. The Shoemaker House, a building willed to NCC by a former resident, has been undergoing refurbishment and remodeling for the last couple of months as NCC prepares it to house two individuals.

Johnson says ending the homeless crisis requires the entire community’s support.

“Regardless of how or what, we still have a homeless problem at the end of the day,” Johnson told the Nugget. “We all live in Nome. We’re all citizens of Nome, regardless of what tribe we belong to. It’s a community issue that needs to be solved as a community. It’s going to take a collaborative effort of multiple providers, landlords, social service providers and the Nome Community Center. It’s not just one agency. It’s all of us.”

NCC representatives will present on their Housing First project at the next Public Safety Advisory Commission meeting on December 6 at 6 p.m.