Program areas at Lutheran Social Services of Alaska
Food pantry in fy23 we distributed 536,324 pounds of food to 9,654 households or 20,132 individuals. These numbers are tracked two ways. First we have a registration process that each time a client visits the food pantry we record the visit in a spreadsheet so we know the date that they visited and if there were any changes in the number living in the household. Secondly, we weigh each item that goes into the food box giving us total pounds of food and miscellaneous items distributed. The reason for numbers being down from prior years is first families had payout of p-ebt that the state was way behind in distributing and the decrease in pandemic increase in tefap government commodities. The lssa food pantry is open four days a week tuesday - friday for 3 hours each day. Mobile food pantry in fy 2023 our mobile food pantry distributed 224,850 pounds of food to 7,490 households from our distribution site in the parking lot of Lutheran church of hope located at 1847 west northern lights blvd here in anchorage. We operate this site every tuesday from 3:30pm to 6:00pm unless it is a holiday or if we were cancelled due to weather. We tracked the information by each household filling out a registration form and we then report to the food bank of Alaska (fba). Fba then add the pounds of food that they weigh each week before they deliver to our site. Each fiscal year we receive a report for fba with our statistics for the year. In fy 2023 we operated 47 weeks with three weeks closed for weather and two weeks for holidays.
Direct assistance we helped the following in our other direct assistance programs. Id's we helped 937 individuals with vouchers for either a state id, driver's license and/or birth certificates, prescriptions, rental, or utility assistance. Every individual fills out an application and then is tracked in an excel spreadsheet. Medical transportation anyone seeking transportation to and from a doctor's appointment, therapy session, and surgery can call us for a ride in our program with Alaska yellow cab. We provide 321 clients with more than 658 rides to and from their appointments. We track this information in an excel spreadsheet. Association for stranded rural alaskans we helped 23 alaskans needing transportation home after being medevacked to anchorage for medical treatment. You are only medevacked one way and if you are on medicaid you have transportation back home. For those not on medicaid we help provide that transportation home. We tracked this through an excel spreadsheet. We have applications that are filled out by the patient or Social workers at the various hospitals.
Roosevelt roosevelt is a housing unit that we operate for individuals with behavioral health issues located at 2300 roosevelt drive in anchorage. The housing unit consist of two separate building that contain 3 apartments each on the same lot. During fy23 we had all apartments occupied with 1 person per unit. We have operated this program since 1994. We have an application and a file that we keep on each resident. Transitional living program (tlp) tlp has been a program of lssa since 1994 also. This is a four apartment building located at 804 w. 16th avenue in anchorage. It is a program for single homeless men. We have a resident manager who lives in one unit and the other three one bedroom units houses two men. However, during covid 19 we reduced the occupancy to one per unit, so we housed three individuals during fy 23. We have an application and a file on each resident.