Southcentral Foundation aims to open a two-story, 44,178-square-foot intensive case management center called Quyana Qenq’a, or “thank you house” in the Yup’ik and Dena’ina Athabascan languages, in summer 2028 near East Third Avenue and Eagle Street. (Rendering provided by Southcentral Foundation)
Anchorage leaders, mental health experts and homeless advocates say they’re encouraged by new projects in the works to address Alaska’s severe shortage of psychiatric and behavioral health services, particularly for chronically homeless people.
Two crisis stabilization centers are set to open in the next few months, both in Anchorage’s University-Medical District. Crisis stabilization centers are places where police or clinicians can take someone voluntarily or involuntarily to get emergency psychiatric treatment during acute mental health episodes.
At the same time, Southcentral Foundation is planning to vastly expand its downtown Quyana Clubhouse on Eagle Street and East Third Avenue, which provides primary care, behavioral health services and wellness programs to people with severe mental illness.
Thea Agnew Bemben, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s special assistant on homelessness and community safety, spoke about the projects during a recent Downtown Community Council meeting and again the next day at a meeting of the Third Avenue Radicals, a grassroots group that seeks to curb homelessness, particularly on the eastern edge of downtown.
“I can’t wait for it to happen,” Agnew Bemben said at the Third Avenue Radicals meeting on Sept. 3. “Both Providence and Southcentral Foundation will be opening crisis stabilization centers this winter.”
She was referring to Providence Alaska, the state’s largest hospital, and Southcentral Foundation, the regional healthcare organization that serves about 73,000 Alaska Natives in Anchorage, Mat-Su and 55 rural villages.
Alaska enhanced its mental health infrastructure in 2022 with passage of HB 172 and its companion bill, SB 124, to allow for the creation and licensing of crisis stabilization centers, Agnew Bemben said.
Sponsored by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the legislation was intended to improve mental health services and take some of the burden off first responders, according to the sponsor statement. In essence, it allowed Alaska to move forward with the Crisis Now model of mental healthcare.
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Providence Alaska is building a crisis stabilization center scheduled to open before year’s end, spokeswoman Laura Mullican said by email on Friday.
Located in the Providence Region Building on Piper Street, the facility will include a behavioral health walk-in clinic for adults and adolescents who need same-day but not emergency-level treatment. It will also house a 23-hour crisis stabilization program for up to 14 patients intended to divert them from hospital emergency rooms.
The Providence facility will also provide a 12-bed residential space for longer-term stabilization for patients in crisis. The intended length of stay is four to seven days, Mullican said.
She said the construction cost for the center and walk-in clinic is $17.3 million, and Providence anticipates about 9,000 visits each year across the various programs offered.
Southcentral Foundation is also building a crisis stabilization center at the corner of Tudor and Elmore roads.
Once completed, the 100,000-square-foot facility will offer crisis stabilization, expanded withdrawal management, and outpatient behavioral health services to all members of the community, not only Alaska Native residents. The facility is expected to open in the first quarter of 2027, according to foundation spokesperson Sharon Leighow.
In addition to the two new crisis stabilization centers, the $60 million Quyana Clubhouse expansion project involves constructing a new two-story building adjacent to the clubhouse where intensive case management and an array of multidisciplinary medical, mental health and social services to tribal members will be provided.
Construction of the 44,178-square-foot building is scheduled to begin once Congress passes a bill to transfer a little over three acres of federal land at Eagle Street to Southcentral Foundation. The Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act of 2025 passed the House of Representatives last December and is awaiting Senate approval. The Alaska congressional delegation sponsored the legislation.
Southcentral Foundation hopes to finish construction of the new facility in summer 2028. It will be called Quyana Qenq’a, or “thank you house,” in the Yup’ik and Dena’ina Athabascan languages.
The building’s architecture, the design and delivery of services and many other components of the programming and intensive case management will be rooted in Alaska Native and American Indian culture, said Brian McCutcheon, vice president of behavioral services at Southcentral Foundation.
“The whole building is designed around teaching and independence and because we serve Alaska Native and American Indian people primarily, it’s meant to incorporate the culture,” McCutcheon said.
The new facility’s medical teams will employ a recovery treatment model developed in the Netherlands called flexible assertive community treatment.
A hallmark of the model, McCutcheon said, is that as acute patients become stable and improve their mental health, they stay with the same multidisciplinary treatment team to work on life skills or other aspects of their recovery, rather than be discharged and referred to a different program or facility.
The model provides “some level of stability and handoff,” he said.
“You might come once every three weeks or four weeks or four months for an outpatient visit, and we won’t discharge you. We don’t compel you to go make another connection with another agency,” McCutcheon said. “We hold you the whole time.”