Anchorage lands on Henning as likely operator for winter homeless shelters in hotels

Sep. 21—Anchorage is preparing to open emergency winter homeless shelters late next month, and this week the city Purchasing Department noticed its intent to award Henning Inc. a contract worth about $9.2 million to operate them.

The selection comes after several Assembly members in recent months have raised concerns about Henning, which currently operates the city's 200-bed mass shelter. Some had voiced opposition to using the organization as a shelter operator.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's administration is planning to open 500 "non-congregate" shelter beds, such as in hotel rooms, in addition to the mass shelter, which is in a former Solid Waste Services administrative building on 56th Avenue.

The organization came under intense scrutiny in May after screenshots of text messages between then-city homeless coordinator Alexis Johnson and Henning staff were leaked to the Anchorage Assembly.

In a Friday statement, the mayor's office said "winter shelter is a matter of life and death" and that LaFrance is "focused on delivering shelter to keep hundreds of residents off the streets and out of the cold."

Johnson, who worked under the former Bronson administration, took a leadership position with Henning as its director of strategy after LaFrance assumed office.

Johnson said Henning proposed sheltering 246 people in the Spenard-area Alex Hotel; another 60 at the Chelsea Inn Hotel, also in Spenard; 58 people at the Merrill Field Inn in Mountain View; and 136 at the Henry House in downtown.

The city has been going through a request for proposals process for sheltering this winter, and only two organizations responded, according to an emailed statement from the mayor's office.

"The reality is that only so many organizations provide shelter services in Anchorage," the mayor's office said in the statement. "... Henning has a history of providing these critical services in Anchorage, and has advanced through a standard RFP process."

Henning, a nonprofit founded in 2021 by Shawn Hays, has been the city's go-to emergency winter shelter operator for the last two years.

For the previous two winters, Henning also ran the Alex Hotel shelter in Spenard, and provided case management and housing navigation services at the former Aviator Hotel shelter in downtown. It also operated the former mass shelter at Sullivan Arena for one winter.

Since July of 2022, the city has paid Henning at least $11.3 million, including in "pass through" federal funds, according to the city's online checkbook.

After Henning's leaked text messages became public, the Assembly ordered an investigation, saying the texts raised questions about unprofessional and potentially unethical or illegal conduct and Henning's oversight of vulnerable homeless residents. Among the text messages were references to weapons and what appeared to be plans to incentivize homeless shelter clients to vote for then-Mayor Dave Bronson's reelection campaign.

At the time, Henning executives said the texts were taken out of context and denied doing anything unethical or illegal, though they acknowledged the texts were "unprofessional."

Assembly Chair Christopher Constant was vocal about his concerns about Henning and pushed for the investigation.

"There are a ton of questions about the potential award to Henning, at this point, based on past performance," he said on Friday. "I'm looking forward to the administration providing a rationale if this is the path they're going to choose to propose."

Johnson on Friday said that the leaked texts "are not a good reflection of what Henning does in this community."

"We've always been transparent, and I think part of the transparency is accountability, and I and Henning take full accountability for those text messages," Johnson said. "And so I think it's important to one learn to hold accountability for yourself, and then really just continue to do good work and allow that good work to be the reflection of our organization. So I'm not dismissing the text messages. I don't want to dismiss, you know, if people are upset about it, they can always come to us and talk about it, and we can communicate. We want to be transparent. We feel like we do good work for the city."

A report from the Anchorage Health Department, completed in the final days of the Bronson administration, largely found Henning employees had done nothing wrong.

Then the LaFrance administration, in an August memo, said that the department's investigation was flawed and inadequate but that it won't pursue a new investigation — in part because Henning's contract to operate the 56th Avenue shelter is slated to end next month, and because Henning "publicly stated that it does not plan to seek a new contract."

Hays, Henning's executive director, had said that excessive criticism and scrutiny discouraged the organization's interest in continuing to operate the 56th Avenue shelter.

The organization later changed course and is also a bidder for the mass shelter contract, which the city is currently considering.

"When we started talking to our clients and our partners — we have a lot of great partnerships going on right now — and we just felt like it would be a disservice to this community if we didn't continue the work," Johnson said. "I know that there was a little bit of rub between us and the city, and we're looking to move beyond that."

It had always planned to bid on the contract for non-congregate shelter, she added.

In addition to sheltering and case management, Henning has also been a key organization working on housing efforts led by the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. That effort has moved 177 people out of shelter and camps and into leased apartments since December.

Farina Brown, Mayor LaFrance's special assistant in homelessness and health, said the city will have a third party provide oversight of its emergency shelters.

"That is a critical component of ensuring that vendors are adhering to our expectations that were identified in the (contracting) process, and just ongoing oversight to ensure quality of service," Brown said.

The mayor's office said that it's implementing "additional contractual provisions" outlined in its previous memo and that, paired with third-party oversight, it is "confident" that will "ensure that the contracted services are delivered appropriately and respectfully."

In the recent past, the city has contracted with local organization Restorative Reentry Services to conduct shelter oversight.

Henning is open to the city continuing that type of supervision, Johnson said.

"We're happy to have that relationship with the city, because we feel like we do good work and we don't have anything to hide," she said.

The mayor's office said it expects the contract to be up for an Assembly vote at the Oct. 8 meeting.