Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness: A Comprehensive Guide to AKCH2’s Mission to End Homelessness Through Advocacy, Coordinated Care Systems, and Youth-Led Solutions Across America’s Largest Geographic Continuum

1. What is AKCH2? (Organization Overview)

The Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, commonly known as AKCH2, represents the primary statewide advocacy and coordination body addressing homelessness and affordable housing challenges across Alaska. Unlike traditional direct service providers, AKCH2 operates as a systems-level organization that builds infrastructure, coordinates resources, advocates for policy changes, and ensures that Alaska’s homeless assistance programs work together efficiently and effectively.

The organization manages what is geographically the largest Continuum of Care in the entire United States. A Continuum of Care is a regional or local planning body that coordinates housing and services funding for homeless families and individuals, and AKCH2’s territory covers the entire state of Alaska except for the Municipality of Anchorage. This means AKCH2 coordinates homeless services across an area larger than Texas, spanning from the Arctic coast to the Southeast panhandle, encompassing rural villages accessible only by plane or boat, regional hubs like Fairbanks and Juneau, and everything in between.

The Scope of AKCH2’s Territory

Managing homelessness services across Alaska presents challenges unlike anywhere else in America. The state contains communities separated by hundreds of miles of wilderness, weather conditions that can prevent travel for days or weeks at a time, and cost structures that make everything from construction to service delivery exponentially more expensive than in the Lower 48. A housing unit that might cost $250,000 to build in Seattle could cost $500,000 or more in rural Alaska communities where materials must be barged or flown in during brief summer windows.

AKCH2’s service area includes Alaska Native villages where traditional subsistence lifestyles intersect with modern housing challenges, military communities like those near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, tourist-dependent economies in Southeast Alaska, resource extraction communities in the North Slope, and everything in between. Each region faces distinct housing challenges shaped by local economies, climate conditions, cultural factors, and infrastructure limitations.

What AKCH2 Does

AKCH2’s work falls into three primary categories that work synergistically to address homelessness at the systems level. First, the organization provides strategic advocacy for policies and funding that address affordable housing and homelessness. This includes working with state legislators, federal agencies, Alaska Native organizations, and local governments to advance policies that increase housing supply, protect vulnerable populations, and allocate resources effectively.

Second, AKCH2 manages the administrative infrastructure that makes coordinated homeless services possible. This includes managing federal Continuum of Care funding, operating the Alaska Homeless Management Information System (AKHMIS) that tracks service utilization and outcomes, implementing the Coordinated Entry system that matches people experiencing homelessness with appropriate resources, and providing technical assistance to service providers across the state.

Third, the organization serves as a convener and capacity builder, bringing together diverse stakeholders to share knowledge, coordinate strategies, and build collective capacity. The annual Alaska Housing Summit exemplifies this role, gathering housing advocates, service providers, policymakers, Alaska Native organizations, and people with lived experience of homelessness to learn from each other and coordinate statewide efforts.

Governance Structure

AKCH2 is governed by a 15-member board of directors elected from across Alaska. Board members represent diverse sectors including public housing authorities, municipal and state government agencies, and nonprofit organizations providing direct services to people experiencing homelessness. This diverse representation ensures that AKCH2’s strategies and priorities reflect the realities facing different communities and populations across Alaska’s vast geography.

Board meetings occur every other month and are open to the public, reflecting AKCH2’s commitment to transparency and inclusive governance. This open meeting structure allows service providers, advocates, and community members to observe decision-making processes and provide input on organizational priorities and strategies.

2. Mission, History, and Evolution

Understanding AKCH2’s origins and evolution provides crucial context for appreciating both the organization’s current work and the systemic nature of Alaska’s housing challenges. The coalition emerged from grassroots organizing in the late 1980s when housing advocates, faith communities, and service providers recognized that isolated efforts couldn’t adequately address the complex, interconnected factors driving homelessness across Alaska.

The Mission

AKCH2’s mission statement is deceptively simple but profoundly ambitious: “Increase affordable housing and end homelessness in Alaska.” This dual focus on both creating more affordable housing and ending homelessness reflects the organization’s understanding that these challenges are deeply interconnected. You cannot meaningfully address homelessness without increasing the supply of affordable housing, and affordable housing initiatives must be accompanied by supportive services and systemic reforms to truly prevent and end homelessness.

The mission’s emphasis on “increasing” affordable housing rather than merely “maintaining” or “preserving” reflects AKCH2’s recognition that Alaska faces a severe shortage of affordable units. The mission’s commitment to “ending” rather than merely “reducing” homelessness reflects an ambitious, outcomes-focused approach grounded in the belief that homelessness is a solvable problem when communities marshal adequate resources and implement evidence-based strategies.

Historical Foundations

The Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness was founded in 1989 as an informal coalition of faith-based organizations and community groups concerned about growing homelessness across Alaska. During the late 1980s, Alaska experienced economic disruptions following the oil boom of the previous decade, and communities throughout the state saw increasing numbers of residents losing housing stability. The founding organizations recognized that effective advocacy required collective action rather than isolated efforts.

In 1991, the coalition formalized its structure by incorporating as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. This formalization enabled AKCH2 to receive federal funding, enter into contracts with government agencies, and establish the administrative infrastructure necessary for sustained advocacy and program management. Over time, the organization evolved from primarily an advocacy coalition into a systems management entity as it took on responsibility for coordinating Alaska’s Continuum of Care.

Evolution as a Continuum of Care Lead Agency

A crucial turning point in AKCH2’s evolution came when the organization assumed responsibility for managing the Alaska Balance of State Continuum of Care. The Continuum of Care program, authorized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), requires each geographic region to coordinate homeless services, compete for federal funding, and implement data systems to track outcomes. Rather than allowing this coordination responsibility to fall to a government agency, Alaska’s homeless service providers and advocates designated AKCH2 as the lead agency for the Balance of State CoC.

This designation transformed AKCH2 from a pure advocacy organization into a hybrid entity that combines advocacy with systems management. The organization now manages millions of dollars in federal funding annually, operates complex data systems, provides technical assistance to dozens of service providers, and maintains the administrative infrastructure that makes coordinated homeless services possible across Alaska’s vast geography.

Consultation and Partnership with State Agencies

Over its three decades of operation, AKCH2 has become the primary entity that state government consults on homelessness policy and planning. The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, which manages many state housing programs, regularly partners with AKCH2 on planning initiatives and policy development. When Alaska developed its Plan to End Long-Term Homelessness, AKCH2 played a central coordinating role in the planning process, bringing together stakeholders from across the state to develop strategies and set goals.

This consultative relationship reflects AKCH2’s accumulated expertise and its position as a trusted intermediary between government agencies, service providers, and people with lived experience of homelessness. The organization can speak credibly about what’s working and what’s not working on the ground across Alaska’s diverse communities, making it an invaluable resource for policymakers seeking to develop evidence-informed strategies.

3. Understanding Alaska’s Housing and Homelessness Crisis

Alaska faces housing and homelessness challenges unlike anywhere else in the United States. Understanding these unique challenges is essential for appreciating why AKCH2’s work matters and why solutions that work elsewhere must be adapted for Alaska’s specific context. The state’s housing crisis stems from a complex interaction of geographic, economic, climatic, and demographic factors that create both supply constraints and affordability challenges.

The Numbers: Alaska’s Homelessness at Record Highs

The 2024 Point-in-Time count, an annual census of people experiencing homelessness conducted in January across the United States, revealed alarming trends in Alaska. The count identified 2,684 individuals experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness across the state—representing the highest number recorded in the past 13 years. This count included 1,740 individuals utilizing emergency shelter, with the remainder living in transitional housing programs or unsheltered on the streets, in vehicles, or in other locations not meant for human habitation.

Importantly, Point-in-Time counts are known to undercount homelessness because they capture only a single night’s snapshot, miss people who are “hidden homeless” (staying temporarily with friends or family), and face particular challenges in rural areas where people experiencing homelessness may be widely dispersed and difficult to locate. The true number of Alaskans experiencing homelessness over the course of a year is certainly much higher than the Point-in-Time figure suggests.

Throughout 2024, data from Alaska’s Homeless Management Information System showed that 4,976 individuals entered into homelessness during the year, while 1,374 were permanently housed. This gap between entries into homelessness and exits to permanent housing illustrates the fundamental challenge facing Alaska’s homeless response system: even as providers successfully house hundreds of people, thousands more lose their housing, resulting in a net increase in the homeless population.

The Affordable Housing Shortage

Underlying Alaska’s homelessness crisis is a severe shortage of affordable rental housing, particularly for extremely low-income households. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s analysis, Alaska needs approximately 14,000 more affordable rental homes to meet current demand. For every 100 extremely low-income renter households in Alaska, only 36 affordable and available rental units exist. This means nearly two-thirds of Alaska’s poorest renter households are competing for housing that doesn’t exist or paying more than they can afford for housing that does exist.

The shortage is even more severe when examining specific household types. Families with children, people with disabilities requiring accessible units, and Alaska Native households in rural areas face particularly acute shortages. The shortfall isn’t evenly distributed across the state—some communities face virtually no availability of affordable housing while others have slightly better conditions, though nowhere in Alaska has an adequate supply of housing affordable to extremely low-income households.

Why Housing is So Expensive in Alaska

Several interrelated factors drive Alaska’s extraordinarily high housing costs. First, construction costs in Alaska far exceed those in the contiguous United States. Building materials must be shipped long distances, often by barge during brief summer seasons or by air to remote communities. Labor costs are higher due to the specialized skills required for building in extreme climates and the need to attract workers to remote locations. According to recent estimates, Alaska needs approximately 27,500 new housing units over the next decade to meet demand, but high construction costs make it difficult to build these units at price points affordable to low-income households.

Second, energy costs in Alaska are among the nation’s highest, making both construction and ongoing occupancy more expensive. Heating a home in Fairbanks, where winter temperatures routinely drop below -20°F, requires far more energy than heating a home in the Lower 48. Rural communities not connected to natural gas pipelines or electrical grids face even higher energy costs. These high operating costs flow through to rents—landlords must charge more to cover their energy bills, and renters must dedicate more of their income to utilities, leaving less available for rent.

Third, geographic isolation limits housing supply in many Alaska communities. Unlike Lower 48 cities where workers can commute from surrounding suburbs when urban housing is scarce, many Alaska communities are isolated—there’s nowhere to commute from. If housing isn’t available in Bethel or Nome or Barrow, there’s no neighboring community where workers can find more affordable options. This creates particularly severe housing shortages in smaller hub communities that serve as economic and service centers for surrounding regions.

Disproportionate Impact on Alaska Native Populations

Alaska Native people experience homelessness at disproportionately high rates compared to their representation in Alaska’s population. This disparity reflects historical and ongoing factors including the disruption of traditional land-based economies, the legacy of federal boarding school policies that severed intergenerational connections, limited economic opportunities in rural Alaska Native villages, and ongoing discrimination in housing markets. Alaska Native people also face unique challenges when experiencing homelessness, as cultural connections to land and subsistence activities make urban shelter systems particularly alienating and disconnected from traditional support systems.

Addressing Alaska Native homelessness requires culturally responsive approaches that recognize the connection between historical trauma, contemporary economic marginalization, and housing instability. AKCH2 works to ensure that Continuum of Care funding supports culturally appropriate services and that Alaska Native organizations have meaningful voice in planning and decision-making processes.

4. Balance of State Continuum of Care Management

AKCH2’s role as the lead agency for the Alaska Balance of State Continuum of Care represents the organization’s most significant systems-management responsibility. Understanding what a Continuum of Care is, why it matters, and what AKCH2’s management entails is essential for appreciating the organization’s impact on Alaska’s homeless response system.

What is a Continuum of Care?

The Continuum of Care program, authorized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), provides federal funding for homeless services and permanent supportive housing programs. Rather than distributing funding directly to individual service providers, HUD requires each geographic region to organize itself into a Continuum of Care—a collaborative body that plans strategies, sets priorities, coordinates services, and competes for federal funding on behalf of the entire region.

The Continuum of Care approach reflects HUD’s recognition that homelessness is a systems-level problem requiring coordinated solutions. Individual service providers operating in isolation, even if they do excellent work, cannot solve homelessness because people need access to a full continuum of services and housing options. Someone experiencing chronic homelessness might need emergency shelter tonight, substance use treatment next month, permanent supportive housing next year, and ongoing case management indefinitely. Coordinating these services requires systems-level planning and coordination—exactly what Continuums of Care are designed to provide.

The Alaska Balance of State CoC: America’s Largest

Most Continuums of Care cover a single city or county. The Alaska Balance of State Continuum of Care, managed by AKCH2, covers an area larger than any other CoC in the United States—the entire state of Alaska except for the Municipality of Anchorage, which operates its own separate Continuum. This means AKCH2 coordinates homeless services across over 570,000 square miles containing dozens of distinct communities ranging from Juneau (Alaska’s capital with about 32,000 residents) to villages with populations under 100.

The vast geographic scope creates unique challenges for CoC management. Service providers in Southeast Alaska operate in a rainforest climate where ferry service connects communities along the Inside Passage. Providers in the Interior work in a subarctic climate where winter temperatures can reach -60°F. North Slope providers serve communities above the Arctic Circle accessible only by plane. Coordinating services across this geographic and climatic diversity requires flexible approaches that recognize that one-size-fits-all strategies simply don’t work in Alaska.

AKCH2’s CoC Management Responsibilities

As the lead agency for the Balance of State CoC, AKCH2 manages multiple complex responsibilities. First, the organization coordinates the annual CoC funding competition. Each year, HUD announces available funding and invites Continuums of Care to submit competitive applications. AKCH2 manages the process by which service providers across Alaska apply for funding, evaluates applications according to HUD standards and local priorities, selects which projects to include in the CoC’s consolidated application, and submits the application to HUD. This process involves distributing millions of dollars in federal funding and making strategic decisions about which projects and approaches to prioritize.

Second, AKCH2 maintains CoC governance structures including regular board meetings, committees focused on specific issues like youth homelessness or data quality, and engagement mechanisms that allow service providers and people with lived experience to participate in decision-making. These governance structures ensure that CoC priorities reflect input from diverse stakeholders rather than being determined unilaterally by AKCH2 staff or board.

Third, the organization provides technical assistance to service providers across the state. This includes training on HUD requirements and best practices, assistance with data entry and reporting, guidance on implementing evidence-based models like Housing First, and troubleshooting when providers encounter challenges. Because many Alaska service providers are small organizations without large administrative staffs, this technical assistance is crucial for ensuring that they can effectively utilize federal funding and meet HUD’s performance standards.

Fourth, AKCH2 manages the Alaska Homeless Management Information System (AKHMIS), the database that tracks service utilization and outcomes across the CoC. We’ll explore AKHMIS in more detail in the next section, but its management represents a significant ongoing responsibility involving data system administration, user training, data quality monitoring, and reporting to HUD.

Recent Funding Successes

AKCH2’s management of the Balance of State CoC has resulted in significant federal funding flowing to Alaska service providers. In fiscal year 2024, the Balance of State CoC secured substantial funding from HUD to support emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and rapid re-housing programs across Alaska. The organization has also successfully competed for special initiative funding including Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project (YHDP) funding in Round 3, which provides resources specifically dedicated to preventing and ending youth homelessness.

These funding successes demonstrate AKCH2’s competence in navigating complex federal application processes and making strategic decisions about priorities and project design. HUD’s competitive funding processes reward Continuums that demonstrate strong performance data, strategic planning, coordination among providers, and compliance with federal requirements—all areas where AKCH2 has built substantial expertise over years of CoC management.

5. Key Programs and Initiatives

Beyond its core responsibility of managing the Balance of State Continuum of Care, AKCH2 operates several specific programs and initiatives designed to address particular aspects of Alaska’s homelessness crisis or build capacity among specific stakeholder groups. These programs reflect AKCH2’s strategic approach to systems change—identifying gaps or barriers in the homeless response system and developing targeted initiatives to address them.

Alaska Homeless Management Information System (AKHMIS)

The Alaska Homeless Management Information System, known as AKHMIS, represents one of AKCH2’s most critical infrastructure investments. AKHMIS is a secure, centralized database that tracks information about individuals and families experiencing homelessness and the services they receive from programs across Alaska. Service providers including emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, permanent supportive housing projects, and outreach teams enter data into AKHMIS each time someone accesses services.

This centralized data system serves multiple essential functions. First, it enables coordinated service delivery. When someone experiencing homelessness in Fairbanks moves to Juneau, providers in Juneau can see their service history and understand what interventions have already been tried, what worked, and what didn’t. This prevents people from having to retell their stories repeatedly and ensures continuity of care across geographic moves.

Second, AKHMIS generates the performance data that HUD requires for Continuum of Care funding. HUD evaluates Continuums partly based on outcome measures like the percentage of people who successfully exit to permanent housing and don’t return to homelessness within a year. AKHMIS makes it possible to calculate these measures accurately and identify which programs are performing well and which need improvement.

Third, the system supports strategic planning by revealing patterns in who experiences homelessness, why people become homeless, what barriers they face to housing stability, and what services are most effective. This data informs decisions about where to focus resources, what types of programs to expand, and which populations need targeted interventions.

AKCH2 manages AKHMIS by contracting with a software vendor, training service providers to use the system, monitoring data quality to ensure accuracy and completeness, generating reports for HUD and other stakeholders, and maintaining security protocols to protect the sensitive personal information the system contains. This management responsibility requires ongoing staff time and technical expertise, representing a significant portion of AKCH2’s operational budget and capacity.

Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project (YHDP)

In Round 3 of HUD’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project funding competition, the Alaska Balance of State CoC secured dedicated funding to prevent and end youth homelessness. This competitive grant provides resources specifically for developing innovative approaches to serve young people ages 24 and under who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Youth homelessness requires different intervention strategies than adult homelessness because young people face distinct developmental needs, legal barriers (particularly for unaccompanied minors), and pathways into homelessness (including LGBTQ youth rejected by families and young people aging out of foster care).

The YHDP grant enabled AKCH2 to launch Regional Youth Action Boards across Alaska, which we’ll explore in detail in the next section. The project also supports the development of youth-specific housing programs, coordinated entry processes tailored to youth needs, and prevention strategies that keep young people from becoming homeless in the first place. Nearly all YHDP communities assign staff members specifically to youth homelessness, recognizing that ending youth homelessness requires dedicated focus rather than trying to address it as an afterthought within adult-oriented systems.

Statewide Advocacy and Policy Work

While much of AKCH2’s work involves managing systems and programs, the organization maintains its original advocacy mission. AKCH2 advocates at the state level for increased funding for affordable housing development, protection of tenant rights, adequate staffing for homeless services, and policies that address root causes of homelessness like wage stagnation and healthcare access. The organization testifies before legislative committees, produces policy briefs analyzing proposed legislation, and mobilizes service providers and people with lived experience to communicate with policymakers.

At the federal level, AKCH2 advocates for adequate HUD funding, fair allocation formulas that account for Alaska’s high costs, and regulatory changes that give Continuums more flexibility to address unique geographic challenges. The organization partners with national organizations like the National Low Income Housing Coalition and National Alliance to End Homelessness to amplify Alaska’s voice in federal policy discussions.

Training and Technical Assistance

AKCH2 provides ongoing training and technical assistance to service providers across Alaska on topics including Housing First principles and implementation, trauma-informed care approaches, motivational interviewing techniques, HUD regulatory requirements, data quality and HMIS usage, coordinated entry implementation, and performance measurement and continuous quality improvement. These trainings help ensure that Alaska’s homeless service providers are implementing evidence-based practices and meeting federal standards while adapting approaches to Alaska’s unique context.

6. Youth Action Boards and Youth-Led Solutions

One of AKCH2’s most innovative and impactful initiatives is the establishment of Regional Youth Action Boards (YABs) across Alaska. These boards represent a fundamental shift in how homeless services approach youth engagement—moving from treating young people as passive recipients of services to recognizing them as experts with valuable insights and active participants in system design and improvement.

What Are Youth Action Boards?

Youth Action Boards are paid leadership bodies composed of young people ages 16 to 24 who have lived experience with homelessness or housing instability. YAB members work alongside local service providers, government agencies, and community organizations to strengthen Alaska’s homelessness response system specifically for youth. Critically, YAB members are compensated for their time at $30.00 per hour, recognizing that their expertise and participation have real value and that young people experiencing housing instability cannot afford to volunteer their time.

The paid structure addresses a common problem in youth engagement efforts: programs often ask young people with lived experience to share their stories and insights without compensation, effectively extracting knowledge and labor from the most economically vulnerable while paying the professionals who work with them. AKCH2’s approach treats youth expertise with the same respect accorded to professional consultants, providing meaningful income that can help young people meet immediate needs while building skills and experience.

YAB Structure and Responsibilities

AKCH2 has established Regional Youth Action Boards in multiple communities across Alaska, with each board focusing on the specific needs and priorities of their region. YAB members commit up to 10 hours per week to their work, which includes attending regular meetings, participating in training sessions, conducting community outreach, reviewing funding proposals and program designs, and providing input on policies and procedures affecting youth experiencing homelessness.

Each Regional YAB focuses on several core areas of work. First, boards identify local priorities based on young people’s lived experiences. What works for youth in Juneau might not work for youth in Nome or Bethel, so Regional YABs ensure that youth homelessness strategies are responsive to local contexts rather than imposing one-size-fits-all approaches.

Second, YABs develop their own bylaws and governance structures, creating sustainable organizations that will continue beyond the initial grant period. This capacity building ensures that youth voice becomes a permanent feature of Alaska’s homeless response system rather than a temporary project.

Third, YABs lead youth-driven projects and systems mapping activities. Systems mapping involves documenting all the services, programs, and resources available to youth in a community, identifying gaps and barriers, and visualizing how different parts of the system do or don’t connect. When young people with lived experience conduct systems mapping, they identify gaps and barriers that professionals might miss—like a youth shelter with restrictive rules that make it unusable for LGBTQ youth or application processes that are impossible to navigate without stable housing.

Fourth, YAB members contribute to statewide data collection and evaluation, helping AKCH2 understand what’s working and what needs improvement across Alaska’s diverse communities. This involvement ensures that performance measurement reflects outcomes that matter to young people, not just outcomes that are easy to measure or that satisfy bureaucratic requirements.

The Youth Homelessness System Improvement Grant

The Youth Action Boards operate as part of AKCH2’s Youth Homelessness System Improvement (YHSI) grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This grant specifically supports efforts to redesign homeless service systems to better serve youth and young adults. A core principle of the YHSI grant is that youth with lived experience must be central to shaping funding, policy, and system redesign across the state.

This principle represents a significant departure from traditional approaches to social services, where professionals design programs and then deliver them to recipients. The YHSI model recognizes that the people most affected by systems are the experts on what those systems need to do differently. Young people who have navigated homelessness understand which services are accessible and which aren’t, which policies create unnecessary barriers, and which interventions actually help versus which look good on paper but don’t work in practice.

Building Sustainable Youth Leadership Infrastructure

The explicit goal of AKCH2’s Youth Action Board initiative is to build a youth-driven, sustainable system that lasts beyond the grant period. This sustainability focus reflects lessons learned from past youth engagement efforts that created temporary advisory groups that disappeared when grant funding ended. AKCH2 is intentionally building capacity, establishing governance structures, and integrating youth voice into permanent CoC decision-making processes so that youth leadership becomes institutionalized rather than project-dependent.

For young people who participate, YAB membership provides valuable leadership experience, professional references, skill development in areas like public speaking and policy analysis, and meaningful income. Several YAB members have leveraged their experience into employment in social services or related fields, demonstrating how youth leadership opportunities can serve as pathways to economic stability.

7. Coordinated Entry System

The Coordinated Entry system represents one of the most important innovations in homeless services in recent decades, and AKCH2’s implementation of Coordinated Entry across the Alaska Balance of State demonstrates how systems-level coordination can improve outcomes for people experiencing homelessness while making more efficient use of limited resources.

What is Coordinated Entry?

Before Coordinated Entry systems existed, accessing homeless services often worked on a first-come, first-served or “whoever knocks on our door” basis. Each program maintained its own waiting list, used its own eligibility criteria, and made its own decisions about who to serve. This fragmented approach created several problems. People experiencing homelessness had to navigate multiple systems, apply separately to multiple programs, and often faced long waiting lists at one program while other programs had vacancies. Programs serving people with the most severe needs often had long waiting lists while programs serving less intensive populations had vacancies.

Coordinated Entry addresses these problems by creating a single, coordinated process for assessing needs, prioritizing assistance, and matching people to appropriate resources. Rather than each program doing its own intake and maintaining separate waiting lists, communities implement a centralized assessment process. When someone experiencing homelessness seeks assistance, they complete a single standardized assessment at a Coordinated Entry Access Point. This assessment evaluates their housing needs, identifies barriers they face, and assigns a priority score based on factors like duration of homelessness, vulnerability, and need for services.

How Coordinated Entry Works in Alaska

AKCH2 has established Coordinated Entry Access Points across the Alaska Balance of State where people experiencing homelessness can complete the standardized assessment. These Access Points are typically located at existing service provider agencies that people experiencing homelessness already trust and access. The assessment can only be completed at these designated locations to ensure consistency and data quality, though some communities have mobile outreach teams that can conduct assessments in the field.

The assessment process involves a trained staff member conducting a structured interview that covers housing history, health and disability status, experiences with domestic violence or trafficking, income and benefits, support networks, and other factors relevant to housing needs and barriers. This information feeds into AKHMIS and generates a vulnerability score that helps prioritize access to scarce housing resources.

Once assessed, individuals are placed on a coordinated priority list. When housing or service opportunities become available, they’re matched to the people with the highest priority scores whose needs fit the program’s design. For example, when a permanent supportive housing unit with intensive mental health services becomes available, it’s offered to the person with the highest priority score who needs that level of support. This ensures that intensive resources go to people with the greatest needs rather than to whoever happened to apply first.

Benefits of Coordinated Entry

For individuals experiencing homelessness, Coordinated Entry provides several important benefits. They complete one comprehensive assessment rather than repeating their story to multiple agencies, reducing trauma and paperwork burden. They’re placed on a single prioritized list rather than separate waiting lists at each program, eliminating the need to constantly check in with multiple agencies. And the system ensures that priority goes to those with greatest needs rather than to those who are most persistent or best at navigating bureaucracy.

For service providers, Coordinated Entry creates more efficient resource allocation. Programs receive appropriate referrals matched to their capacity and expertise rather than applications from everyone regardless of fit. The system generates data on unmet needs, revealing gaps in the service system that need to be filled. And coordination reduces competition between providers, fostering collaboration toward shared goals.

For the overall homeless response system, Coordinated Entry enables performance measurement by tracking how long people wait between assessment and housing placement and whether high-need individuals are actually accessing appropriate resources. The system also supports strategic planning by revealing patterns in who needs help and what types of housing and services are in shortest supply.

Challenges in Alaska’s Geographic Context

Implementing Coordinated Entry across Alaska’s vast geography presents unique challenges. A person assessed in Bethel might need housing in Fairbanks, requiring coordination across hundreds of miles. Some rural communities have only one or two service providers, making “coordination” more about connecting to resources in regional hubs than choosing among local options. Weather conditions can prevent travel for weeks, complicating efforts to connect people with resources in other communities.

AKCH2 addresses these challenges through flexible implementation that adapts to local contexts while maintaining core principles. The organization provides training and technical assistance to ensure Access Points implement consistent processes while allowing for regional variation where necessary. This balance between standardization and flexibility reflects the broader challenge of implementing any statewide system in Alaska—principles must be consistent, but implementation must be adaptable.

8. Annual Alaska Housing Summit

Each year, AKCH2 hosts the Alaska Housing Summit, a multi-day convening that brings together housing advocates, service providers, policymakers, Alaska Native organizations, people with lived experience of homelessness, and other stakeholders from across the state. The Housing Summit represents a crucial component of AKCH2’s work as a convener and capacity builder, creating space for learning, networking, strategy development, and collective action.

Summit Structure and Content

The Alaska Housing Summit typically spans two days and features a mix of plenary sessions, panel discussions, regional spotlights, skill-building workshops, and networking opportunities. Recent summits have drawn participants from across Alaska, with both in-person attendance in Anchorage and virtual participation options for those who cannot travel. The virtual option is particularly important for Alaska, where travel costs and logistical challenges can prevent participation by rural service providers and advocates.

Summit content addresses the full spectrum of issues related to housing and homelessness. Sessions might cover federal and state policy developments affecting housing funding, innovative program models being tested in Alaska or elsewhere, data trends and what they reveal about emerging needs, cultural competence and trauma-informed approaches, housing development financing strategies, and legislative priorities for the upcoming session. The summit also provides space for Regional Youth Action Boards and other constituent groups to share their work and perspectives.

Recent Summit Highlights

The 2025 Alaska Housing Summit, held in August, focused heavily on legislative priorities and system coordination. Sessions explored fiscal year 2026 policy priorities aimed at stabilizing existing systems and protecting proven prevention and housing tools. The summit featured presentations on cross-system connections, examining how homelessness intersects with child welfare, healthcare, criminal justice, and education systems. Participants also explored Alaska’s role in national conversations about housing policy and learned about federal initiatives that could benefit Alaska communities.

One particularly impactful component of recent summits has been “regional spotlights” where representatives from different parts of Alaska share what’s happening in their communities. These spotlights reveal both the diversity of Alaska’s housing challenges and the innovative solutions being developed in different contexts. A solution that works in Southeast Alaska might inspire adaptation in the Interior or North Slope, while challenges faced in one region might prompt preventive action in others.

The Summit’s Role in Statewide Coordination

The annual Housing Summit serves several crucial functions beyond simple information sharing. First, it creates networking opportunities that would otherwise be difficult in Alaska’s geography. A service provider in Nome might never meet their counterpart in Ketchikan without the Summit, yet they face similar challenges and could learn from each other’s strategies. The Summit facilitates these connections that continue throughout the year.

Second, the Summit enables collective strategy development. When stakeholders from across the state gather, they can identify shared priorities for advocacy, coordinate funding applications to avoid duplication, and develop statewide approaches to emerging issues. This collective strategizing is particularly valuable when approaching state legislators or federal agencies—a unified statewide voice carries more weight than isolated local requests.

Third, the Summit provides capacity building for Alaska’s housing and homelessness workforce. Many Alaska service providers are small organizations without large training budgets. The Summit offers high-quality professional development that might otherwise be inaccessible, helping ensure that Alaska’s homeless services reflect best practices and evidence-based approaches.

Participation and Accessibility

AKCH2 works to make the Housing Summit accessible to diverse participants. Registration fees are kept affordable, with scholarships available for people with lived experience and representatives from small organizations. The hybrid format accommodates both in-person and virtual participation. Materials are provided in accessible formats, and sessions are designed to be relevant to participants with varying levels of technical knowledge—from frontline shelter staff to policy analysts to people with lived experience.

The Summit regularly sells out its in-person capacity, reflecting strong demand for this convening space. The sell-out attendance demonstrates that AKCH2 has successfully created an event that Alaska’s housing and homelessness stakeholders find valuable and essential to their work. For many participants, the Housing Summit is the annual touchpoint that keeps them connected to statewide efforts and informs their local work throughout the year.

9. How to Get Involved

There are multiple ways for individuals and organizations to support AKCH2’s mission of increasing affordable housing and ending homelessness in Alaska. Whether you’re a service provider, advocate, person with lived experience, policymaker, or concerned Alaskan, there are meaningful ways to contribute to this collective work.

Apply to Join a Youth Action Board

If you’re a young person ages 16 to 24 living in Alaska with lived experience of homelessness or housing instability, consider applying to join a Regional Youth Action Board. This paid leadership opportunity ($30 per hour, up to 10 hours per week) allows you to contribute your expertise to improving youth homelessness services while building valuable skills and earning meaningful income. Application information is available on AKCH2’s website, and Regional YABs operate in multiple communities across Alaska.

Attend the Alaska Housing Summit

The annual Alaska Housing Summit is open to anyone interested in housing and homelessness issues. Whether you’re a service provider seeking professional development, an advocate wanting to connect with statewide efforts, a policymaker seeking to understand challenges and solutions, or a person with lived experience wanting to share your perspective, the Summit offers valuable learning and networking opportunities. Registration typically opens several months before the August event, and both in-person and virtual participation options are available.

Participate in Continuum of Care Planning

AKCH2’s bimonthly board meetings are open to the public, providing opportunities to observe Continuum of Care decision-making and provide public comment. The organization also maintains committees focused on specific issues like data quality, youth homelessness, and performance measurement. Service providers, advocates, and people with lived experience are encouraged to participate in these committees, which help shape CoC policies and priorities.

Become a Service Provider Partner

Organizations providing housing or services to people experiencing homelessness can partner with AKCH2 in several ways. Service providers can participate in Coordinated Entry by becoming an Access Point where people can complete assessments, apply for Continuum of Care funding through the annual competition process, utilize AKHMIS to track service delivery and outcomes, participate in CoC planning and committees, and access training and technical assistance on best practices and HUD requirements.

Advocate for Housing and Homelessness Funding

Individuals and organizations can support AKCH2’s policy advocacy by contacting state legislators to support affordable housing appropriations and homelessness services funding, communicating with Alaska’s congressional delegation about federal HUD funding, participating in Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Days that AKCH2 coordinates, sharing personal stories about how housing instability has affected you or your community, and amplifying AKCH2’s policy communications through social media and personal networks.

Support Through Donations or Partnerships

As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, AKCH2 relies on a combination of government contracts and private contributions to support its work. Individuals can make tax-deductible donations to support AKCH2’s advocacy and coordination work. Foundations and corporations can explore partnership opportunities, sponsorship of the Housing Summit or other events, and funding for specific initiatives. Alaska Native organizations can partner on culturally responsive service development and advocacy.

Stay Informed and Spread Awareness

Sometimes the most valuable contribution is simply staying informed and helping educate others. You can follow AKCH2 on social media for updates on housing and homelessness issues, sign up for AKCH2’s newsletter to receive policy updates and event announcements, share AKCH2’s research and advocacy materials with your networks, help counter stigma and misinformation about homelessness in community conversations, and support coverage of housing and homelessness issues in local media by writing letters to the editor or engaging with journalists.

10. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)