Anchorage opens new homeless program that pairs tiny homes with
addiction treatment
[April 09, 2026]
By HANNAH FLOR/Alaska Public Media
Homeless numbers have remained roughly the same in Anchorage for the
last few years and city officials say many people who have been homeless
for a long time need addiction treatment or behavioral health care. Now
a new muni-owned treatment center is getting some people that care,
while housing them in their own individual microunits. The transitional
living program is a new municipal approach to solving long-term
homelessness in the city.
Summer Bond is in charge of getting people settled in at the addiction
treatment program, called Willow Commons. On a sunny spring day in early
April, just a week after the program launched, Bond showed off a roughly
100-square-foot home. It was the last empty unit, and Bond said someone
was moving in the next day.
“You get a bed, towel, set, hygiene kit, a fridge, a microwave, and then
it’s not in here yet, but we plan to add a TV,” she said.
City officials say if you’re homeless, it can be hard to consistently
show up for outpatient care. But now, people without housing can live in
one of the units and get behavioral health care during the day.
Thea Agnew Bemben is excited about the program. She’s a special
assistant to Anchorage mayor Suzanne LaFrance, and has been working on
the program for more than a year. Behavioral health care is a key piece
of the city’s homeless response, Agnew Bemben said.
“What we find is that when people remain unsheltered for a very extended
period, oftentimes having a behavioral health issue is part of what’s
keeping them unsheltered,” she said.
Bond is with Anchorage Recovery Center, a drug and alcohol rehab
organization that is contracting with the municipality to run the
program. The program isn’t hard to get into, she said. Participants must
be unhoused and need addiction treatment. If there are units available,
people get in the same day. When the program opened in late March, Bond
said all 32 units were spoken for almost immediately, but right now,
there’s only one person on the waitlist.
Each participant goes to individual and group therapy, is assigned a
caseworker and gets life skills lessons.
There are fewer rules than a residential treatment center, Bond said.
For instance, there’s no curfew. But Willow Commons is a closed campus,
which means residents can’t leave until a certain stage in their
treatment. No visitors are allowed either, and the same goes for drugs
and alcohol.
The site is staffed 24 hours a day. That’s partly because when people
all live together in close proximity, sometimes things can get a little
complicated, Bond said. That happens at the other programs Anchorage
Recovery Center runs too.
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“We’ve been able to solve most of the issues and it just comes with the
new territory,” she said. “Change is hard. Recovery is hard.”
The program is voluntary, and the timeline depends on the needs of each
resident. Once someone is ready to graduate from the program Anchorage
Recovery Center makes sure they transition into safe housing and have
stable income. But it doesn’t stop there, Bond said.
“We check in on them after they’ve discharged,” she said. ‘How are you
doing? Where are you at?’ Relapse is a part of recovery, so we always
have our doors open.”
The city funded the development of the project with more than a million
dollars left over from an opioid settlement, which it used to build the
first two dozen microunits. The city received grant funding to build the
final eight.
Anchorage Recovery Center will also contract with the municipality to
provide outpatient services at the recently renamed Golden Lion Hotel,
now called “Alder Place.” That will open once the city completes
renovations. The city’s contract with Anchorage Recovery Center allows
for the possibility of care at other city facilities as well.
The microunits are built to city code, so Agnew Bemben said they should
be warm enough in the winter. But she said there will be a lot to keep
tabs on, like how well the microunit designs function and whether there
needs to be tweaks to the site, with its shared bathrooms and showers,
and large common area.
“From the human dimension, we’ll be learning (about) client
satisfaction, how well is treatment going? Are people graduating? All
those kinds of things,” Agnew Bemben said.
It’s a test case, Agnew Bemben said. They’ll be learning from the
project. She hopes other organizations learn from it too, and then build
their own version.
“I would love lots of different types of organizations here in Anchorage
to decide, ‘Hey, we could chip in and this is doable, and we’ll take the
plunge,”’ she said.
To help house and support Anchorage’s homeless population, it’s going to
take all different approaches from the community – not just the mayor’s
office, Agnew Bemben said.
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