The Kenai Peninsula Homelessness Coalition (KPHC) laid out the strategic plan framework to help individuals and families experiencing homelessness achieve stability. Through this past week, KPHC has held community discussions to help inform the strategic planning process. Thursday night’s presentation on Zoom marked the fourth and final discussion to be held this week.
During the presentation, homelessness was defined with four broad categories, including:
- Emergency shelter, transitional housing, places not meant for habitation.
- People who are losing their primary nighttime residence.
- Families who are unstably housed and likely to continue in that state.
- People who are fleeing or attempting to flee dangerous or violent situations.
According to Project Homeless Connect’s Final Report for the Kenai Peninsula in 2019, Other and Loss of Job were listed as the top two reasons for homelessness across the Kenai Peninsula with other defined as including landlord issues, problem with current housing, loss of benefits, lost home to fire, no work, home not habitable, death in family, property taxes, lack of funds, asked to move out, own choice, can’t find work, not enough summer work, and/or natural disaster.
Tim Navarre said plans are in the works for a homeless shelter on the Kenai Peninsula:
“Probably the middle of September, we heard about a facility, and we went to work, some of us, on trying to find funding and looking at it to see if it works. It ends up being almost a turnkey shelter. It’s in the Nikiski area. We haven’t heard from our final funder yet, we’re very positive about it, but we think we have the facility totally funded. We will be closing on it, maybe even by the end of this month, believe it or not, but for sure by the first part of December. It has, currently, 22 beds in it. that consists of 14 bedrooms. It has shared shower and bathrooms, seven of them, but it also has an area that can easily fit cold weather cots in a heated space and facilitate any kind of last minute or emergency kind of shelter. Our plan is to definitely include families with children.”
Stay up to date with the latest happenings/plans by logging onto www.kenaipeninsulahomeless.org.