Where is the Golden Heart for the most vulnerable left freezing in the cold?

“So the estimated 50 to 100 unsheltered people who live in Fairbanks find ways to survive. They walk all night in bunny boots, trying to stave off frostbite. They crowd into motel rooms 10 at a time. They build forested encampments and dig snow caves. They squat in abandoned houses and sleep in cars.”

If you haven’t done so, read the investigation of homelessness in Fairbanks in the winter by one of Alaska’s top reporters, Michelle Theriault Boots of the Anchorage Daily News.

The Golden Heart City has a problem.

She talked to one man who sometimes tunnels under the snow and uses a PVC pipe to create a vent, burning a candle for warmth. Or he nurses a cup of coffee at the only all-night diner. Another told her he walks all night and rides the bus during the day. Several people told her they sleep in abandoned houses. For all of them, frostbite is a daily threat and the margin between life and death is barely there.

There is no secure place in Fairbanks in the winter for many homeless people who are drinking and on drugs. In December, Charles Ahkiviana froze to death amid the spruce trees within shouting distance of the West Fred Meyer parking lot on a 32-below day.

He was 55, had been homeless for years, suffered from mental illness and had long abused drugs and alcohol.

His family wrote in his obituary, ”Charles was known to his friends and family as "Charlie." He was known and will always be remembered for his funny and quick wit, his ready smile, his boyish mischievousness, his fiercely independent and adventurous spirit, and his love of the outdoors. He took great pride in knowing how to hunt, fish and live off the land, in his traditional Inupiaq way of life.”

The Associated Press picked up the Daily News story prompted by Ahkiviana’s death and spread it across the country, a burst of publicity about the giant hole in the safety net in Fairbanks.

The Fairbanks Rescue Mission, which does a lot of good work, has a key entrance requirement—sobriety. This means that some of the people who need shelter the most can’t get in. It also means that the mission can be kept safer for women, children and dozens of men fighting to stay sober.

The mission is led now by former Sens. Pete Kelly and John Coghill.

“Under their leadership, the shelter runs with a tight set of rules: To enter, prospective guests must pass a breathalyzer test and submit to a urinalysis for drugs. Clients are expected to move through a structured program toward self-sufficiency,” Boots wrote.

“If you’re willing to help yourself, we’re willing to help you,” Kelly said.

“The rules are in place because the shelter needs to be an orderly, secure place, especially for people who are newly in recovery, Kelly and Coghill say. Women and families with children also stay there.”

“The mission can’t help everyone, they say.”

“We have been criticized because there’s a level of mental illness that we just can’t take care of,” Kelly said.

It may be that the rescue mission standards are entirely appropriate, as Theriault Boots was told by some in Fairbanks. This is a difficult issue.

But her reporting on Charlie Ahkiviana’s death should be a call for action about getting people out of the cold. There is a “sobering center” in Fairbanks, which is open only to those who are drunk. And the rescue mission is open only to those who are sober.

“So a few people pointed that out to us, that those are the two options. And we really saw a lot of different attempts being made to provide safe shelter for people, but the system just isn’t developed enough to have, I guess, fully what’s needed,” Theriault Boots told Alaska Public Media this week about her reporting.

“Ahkiviana’s death may have momentarily raised community consciousness about the dearth of shelter, said Matt Davis, a longtime cook at the Stone Soup Cafe. But he wondered if it would be long-lasting enough for action. The suffering was everywhere if you noticed it. Look around, he said: Lots of the guests eating breakfast were missing fingers due to frostbite,” Boots wrote.

“We bring (concerns about adequacy of shelter) to the attention of our local governments. And every time we do, it’s, ‘Well, we have a rescue mission,’” Davis told her.

Having a rescue mission is not enough. There are still dozens of people in the cold.

As Jennifer Jolis wrote in a column in early January published in the News-Miner:

“We do have a model on how to work together as a community to assess and address such a challenge. Many years ago, a group, comprising representatives from the military, from the health community the hospital, the schools, child protection agencies, the Public Health Center, the ministry, and law enforcement agencies, came together to address the challenge of child abuse in our community. Each of these was seeing or trying to address some aspect of child abuse in the community. It took time and it took them working together but today there is the Resource Center for Parents and Children and knowledge about the stresses and challenges of child abuse. Let us come together again. It may take time but I think we need to act.”