HUD secretary announces stimulus grants here

Donovan on Wednesday will join Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Energy Secretary Steven Chu on a flight to Alaska communities far more rural than Anchorage: Bethel, a southwest Alaska hub city of 5,600, and nearby Hooper Bay, a traditional Yu'pik Eskimo community of 1,160 whose residents live off commercial fishing and subsistence hunting and fishing.

Donovan announced that HUD is awarding 61 grants, totaling $132 million, to Native American and Native Alaska communities across the country to improve housing and stimulate community development. The figure includes more than $32 million in stimulus funds to tribal and native organizations in Alaska, Oregon and Washington state.

"Thanks to the Recovery Act, HUD has invested a half billion dollars in Native American and Alaska communities across the country," Donovan said. That includes both formula and competitive awards.

Five Alaska Native organizations will receive $13 million in stimulus funds. Seven tribal organizations in Washington state will receive nearly $17 million, and almost $3 million will go to one tribe in Oregon. The money will be used to improve housing and stimulate community development.

After the announcement, Donovan watched an excavator start demolishing a blighted seven-unit apartment complex in east Anchorage that will be replaced with duplex town homes paid for in part with HUD money.

Earlier, Donovan participated in a round-table discussion of Anchorage's efforts to help the homeless.

Carol Gore, president of Cook Inlet Housing Authority, said there's virtually no rental units available for low-income people trying to make a transition from homelessness to rental housing. Shortages also exist at other levels.

"If you don't have inventory available in each of those steps, then the family cannot move out," she said. "There has to be a tipping point out of the homeless shelter and into the rental housing and into home ownership. If there's no place for them to move to, then you're never going to fix the homeless problem."

According to Gore, on any given night, 3,500 Alaskans are homeless, some in emergency shelters and many on the street. In 2008 more than 14,000 Alaskans experienced homelessness, including 4,000 families with children.

Diane Kaplan of the Rasmuson Foundation, which makes grants to nonprofit organizations that improve life for Alaskans, said the perception of the homeless should be expanded.

"Most people think of someone walking around downtown Anchorage who is drunk," Kaplan said.

Children in families that depend on a minimum wage job also can be in need.

"All it takes is a problem with your car. That's a thousand-dollar bill you weren't expecting, or a health problem if you don't have insurance, and all of a sudden a family that was going along OK can find itself unable to afford the rent, and at a homeless shelter."

With the economic downturn, she said, there has been a huge increase in requests for food, rental assistance and utility assistance.

"It is all across the state, it's in unprecedented numbers, and in unprecedented numbers of people who have never sought assistance before," Kaplan said.

She told Donovan he should trust HUD officials in Alaska, who understand circumstances in the state that might not be clear to decision-makers in other states.