April 14, 2022Richard Brady and Rhonda Tate in their hotel room where they’ve stayed with six kids for the last two months. Tate says she’s been losing weight despite being five months pregnant because the room doesn’t have a kitchen.
For the past two months, the family of eight has lived out of two hotel rooms. There’s two queen beds and a bathroom in each room. There’s no living room. Instead of a kitchen, there’s just a table with a box of soda and some basic groceries. Cardboard boxes line the walls. The family keeps many of their belongings packed in case they have to leave with little notice. That’s happened a few times since they moved to Anchorage from Las Vegas about six months ago.
Before the pandemic, the city relied on church volunteers to open their doors each night to families during the winter months. But families had to leave during the day. Tate and Brady said while they’re thankful for all the help they’ve gotten so far, they’re eager to get out of the hotel. They qualify for federal housing vouchers, but they’ve been waiting about six months for an apartment to free up that’s big enough for their family.
“There’s a lot of miscommunication and misunderstandings and a lot of kind of passing the buck, and it is incredibly frustrating,” she said. It’s an uphill battle to find more units. Some landlords or hotel owners have had a bad experience renting to agencies that serve homeless people and have stopped contracting with them, said Denice Delgado, social services director for the Salvation Army in Anchorage.