Author: alaskaadmin

Before he was known to Alaskans as “Uncle Ted,” Ted Stevens was a decorated war hero, making dangerous missions behind enemy lines as part of the Flying Tigers, a group of American pilots who fought the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II.

Stevens represented Alaska as one of the longest-serving U.S. senators in history, and is now being honored by the U.S. Navy with a namesake warship.

The USS Ted Stevens is a brand-new, state-of-the-art guided-missile destroyer, a missile-equipped ship that can conduct warfare at levels ranging from the air to the depths of the sea.

The ship is set to be commissioned in Whittier on Saturday, an event that is expected to draw 3,000 people to the tiny and quirky Prince William Sound town that is home to about 250 people.

The event is filled to capacity, according to the host committee. Those with tickets will travel by train or bus; regular traffic in the single-lane tunnel that connects Whittier to the road system will be halted for the duration of the ceremony. Those without tickets can watch events on a livestream link.

Even though modern Whittier is a military legacy, established to support the World War II effort and defense of Alaska, the USS Ted Stevens is the first Navy warship to visit the town in 80 years, according to military officials.

But it is an appropriate spot for Saturday’s ceremony, said Captain Mary Katey Hays, the ship’s commanding officer.

Doing the commissioning in Alaska was considered a must, Hayes said at a media briefing on Thursday. And Whittier, a deepwater port and transportation hub, was chosen for its proximity to Anchorage and its abundant support facilities, she said.

Before the ship arrived in Whittier on Sept. 27, she and the other senior officials had to prepare the Norfolk, Virginia-based crew of 380 for Alaska conditions, which on Thursday featured a blustery rain-snow mix.

“We had a lot of talks with the crew about bringing all of their gloves, their hats, their winter clothing,” she said.

Despite the weather, the reception in Whittier has been warm, Hayes said.

“Everyone’s so friendly, everyone’s so kind and welcoming, the community has been wonderful,” she said.

During the tour, officers proudly described the attributes of the ship, which measures over 500 feet in length. Those attributes include its 100,000-horsepower engine system, its efficient equipment for hooking up to shoreside electrical power, its accommodations for air crews, its systems for receiving supplies and fuel at sea and its battery gun that can fire off 20 rounds in a minute.

There was plenty of evidence of the ship’s Alaska connection on board.

Alaska flags were draped or displayed at strategic spots. The two small shipboard boats on the USS Ted Stevens are named Denali and Kodiak.

And, most prominently, Stevens’ widow Catherine and two daughters, Susan Stevens Covich and Lily Stevens Becker, are “sponsors” of the ship. That means “they’re kind of like the godmothers of the ship,” Hayes said. “They help bring the ship to life.”

Commander Stephen Roman, the ship’s executive officer, lauded the Steven women’s work.

“The Stevens family has been just phenomenal sponsors,” Roman said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better set of sponsors for the ship. The love and care they’ve shown the crew has been amazing.”

The younger daughter, Lily Stevens Becker, who leads a foundation named after her father, came aboard the ship when it was stopping in San Diego on the way to Alaska, he said.

Stevens, who died in a 2010 plane crash, left a big legacy in Alaska.

He played key roles in the statehood battle, approval of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and other milestones. He was known for securing federal funds for important infrastructure projects and programs, such as the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute, the Denali Commission and transportation facilities throughout the state — a record that earned him the affectionate “Uncle Ted” nickname. The main federal law governing fisheries, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, bears his name, as does the international airport in Anchorage.

He was also instrumental in major legislation with significance beyond Alaska, such as the Title IX antidiscrimination law, the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Roman, as he concluded the tour, admitted that he did not know much about Stevens before being assigned to the ship. Now he is reading about and hearing about the legacy, he said.

“It has been an absolute pleasure and honor to learn more about the man and the things that he did,” said Roman, who grew up in Colorado and found Alaska to be a bit “like home for me.”

Following the Whittier ceremony, the USS Ted Stevens will sail to Juneau for a stop in the capital city, then return through the Panama Canal to its homeport of Norfolk.

The journey after that is yet to be determined.

“We’re just like every other ship in the Navy. We’re able to be deployed globally,” Hayes told reporters. And that will depend on world events, she said.

“Wherever the mission takes us, we’ll be there. Whether it’s here in the snowy part of Alaska or way down south. We can go anywhere and get the job done,” she said.

Alaska has roughly the population it had in 2013. What little growth the state has seen in the past three years came from residents over 65, while the working-age population shrank. A state that is not growing should not have a housing shortage.

It has one anyway.

Rental vacancy in March was 4.9% in Anchorage, 3.5% in Mat-Su and 4.1% in Juneau, according to the Department of Labor’s spring survey. Affordable housing from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation had a statewide median rent that reached $1,450 a month, up about 30% over the past 7 years, and a two-bedroom in Anchorage, utilities included, now runs $1,720. It took 1.37 average Alaska wage earners to afford a median-value home last year, close to the record high. If population is not driving the squeeze, something else is, and at a Commonwealth North forum on August 27, six practitioners spent an afternoon exploring the causes.

Four explanations came through clearly.

The first is interest rates. Anyone who bought or refinanced in 2020 or 2021 locked in a mortgage near 3%. Moving today means trading that for 6.25%, last year’s median, or closer to 6.7%, where national rates stood in July. So the retiree who might downsize and the family that might trade up stay put. The house exists. It just never comes to market. The state’s figures show the freeze: a typical new mortgage payment in Alaska is $2,044 a month, 84% higher than in 2019, and new mortgages have fallen 21% statewide and 25% in Anchorage. Daniel Delfino, Director of Planning and Program Development at the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, called it an open question whether the thin inventory is a real estate problem or a rate-lock problem.

The second is what it costs to build. Utility economist Mark Foster put construction at roughly $300 to $450 per square foot in urban Alaska and as high as $2,500 in rural multi-unit projects. A 2×4 costs about $13 by the time it reaches a village. The ground itself charges a premium: Anchorage water lines sit ten feet down to stay below frost, which means digging twelve.

The third is how we live. Thirty-nine percent of Alaska renters now live alone, up from about 34% in the 2010s. The same number of people needs more doors. Nobody at the forum raised this one. The Department of Labor did, in its September report.

The fourth is newer, and Delfino was careful to present it as arithmetic rather than accusation. Short-term rentals in the surveyed markets swing from about 1,500 occupied units in slow months to more than 5,000 at peak tourism, earning anywhere from $1,200 to $5,100 a month. Against a $1,450 long-term rent, a unit can earn three times as much housing a tourist in July as it earns housing a neighbor all year. The revenue is volatile and dips below a lease in winter. But for some owners the spreadsheet decides, and thousands of units now sit on that fence. “The numbers are pointing them in certain directions,” Delfino observed.

Add the costs no one in Alaska sets. Congress has not reauthorized the federal law governing tribal housing since 2008, and the Indian Housing Block Grant has lost more than 30% of its purchasing power since 2000. Rate-regulated utilities cannot bank reserves to extend water and sewer, and Alaska never inherited the infrastructure older states got for free. Heating oil costs more than 30% more than it did a year ago, and Tyler Robinson of Cook Inlet Housing Authority, which sponsored the forum and also sat on the panel, told the room he is not sure his affordable portfolio can absorb the natural gas prices ahead: “I don’t know that we’re going to be in this business.”

That is the inherited column. It is long. What follows is more encouraging than most Alaskans probably expect.

What has been done

There are things outside our control, but in Anchorage we’ve seen how municipal code and utility tariffs can spur an increase to housing. Bob Doehl, who runs Anchorage’s Office of Community and Economic Development, brought a ledger. Anchorage’s land use, development and zoning laws, known collectively as Title 21, are shrinking for the first time. A multifamily tax incentive, expanded in 2025 to run longer and reach more of the city, lets projects pencil out that otherwise would not. A design mandate that applied to apartments but not hotels is paused, with a possible return in 2028. Builder Shaun Debenham of Debenham LLC estimates it added about 15% to construction cost. A rebuilt Title 23 allows single-stair buildings up to six stories.

The list runs past city hall. Enstar now credits new customers half the cost of a typical service line, and the Interior Gas Utility credits 90%. Rural housing authorities went after logistics instead: a 2024 military training airlift moved 39 tons of building material to the North Slope and saved roughly a million dollars.

The effect

Permitted dwellings in Anchorage grew 33% from 2024 to 2025, and 2026 passed last year’s total by August. The state’s count agrees. Anchorage permitted 234 multifamily units last year, the most in eight years, and Alaska as a whole recorded 2,261 new homes, the most since 2016. Doehl credits the multifamily incentive with 386 units in two years. Robinson said two Cook Inlet Housing Association developments are underway a year early because of the design-mandate pause. Block 96 became the first market-rate apartment building downtown in more than 15 years.

One detail worth pausing on. A city official, a nonprofit and a private builder each independently named tax abatement as the tool that made their projects feasible. Abatement was the one response all three said is working.

Two caveats. Mat-Su built 949 homes last year to Anchorage’s 404, and it is Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula, the two boroughs still gaining people, where rents jumped 13% and 11% this spring while Anchorage rose 2%. Statewide the picture is flat. The pressure is moving to wherever Alaskans are moving. And inventory has not caught up anywhere. Spokane, a regional hub Anchorage used to outpace in listings, now has 1,375 more homes on the market than we do. The pipeline improved. The shortage has not yet.

What presenters said could be done

Debenham asked for a setback analysis of Title 21 and a fire code review benchmarked against cities that do not require 38- and 44-foot fire lanes. On his 58-unit South Anchorage project, the fire lane alone consumed 7,520 square feet of asphalt. By his count, that is 15 homes.

Foster proposed extending a pricing rule Alaska already allows for industrial customers to houses: credit a new home, up front, for the fixed costs it will pay the utility over its first seven years. His preliminary math puts the combined water, sewer, electric and gas credit near $13,800 per home, roughly the effect of cutting a mortgage rate by three points. None of it needs the Legislature. Enstar did it with a tariff filing to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska in 2025; water, sewer and electric could follow the same route.

Debenham, whose last permit took nine months, wants the review outsourced to local professionals. Doehl’s answer is a new municipal permit system arriving in the first quarter of next year, plus a proposal to let the planning director resolve trivial variances without a hearing.

Each carries a tradeoff. Narrower fire lanes are a fire safety question. Hookup credits shift initial costs to existing ratepayers or the utility. The forum resolved none of them, and Commonwealth North does not endorse a specific policy.

What it established is a map. Rates, freight, frost and Congress will stay where they are. Local code and utility tariffs are ours, and the last two years show that rewriting them produces buildings.

Debenham, who has built in Anchorage for twenty years, told the room what changed for him. For most of that time, when a project hit a wall at the municipality, there was no one to call. Now there is. He called it revolutionary, which is a big word for a returned phone call, and a fair measure of where the bar had been.

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Vice President J.D. Vance will hold a campaign event on Monday in Fairbanks to boost Republican candidates in this year’s general election, and President Donald Trump is expected to visit Alaska later this month on a similar mission.

The vice-president’s visit was officially announced Friday by the Trump 47 Committee, an operation of the Republican National Committee and Trump’s Save America PAC.

The President’s visit has not yet been formally announced, but an official with Republican governor candidate Dave Bronson’s campaign said on Friday that they expect Trump to visit Alaska on Oct. 16 at a to-be-announced location and have been filling out paperwork before Bronson meets Trump in person.

Members of other campaigns either declined to confirm that date or said they believed a visit could happen on another date.

Trump and Vance have each been making campaign stops across the country in an attempt to boost Republican candidates ahead of the November election.

Vance visited Florida this week and was in Kansas last month on campaign stops. Trump was in Alabama on Friday and plans to be in Nebraska at the same time Vance is in Fairbanks. He’s also visited Texas and Oklahoma to boost Republican candidates there.

According to a preliminary schedule provided by the Trump 47 Committee, Vance is expected to land Monday afternoon at Fairbanks International Airport, where the rally will take place.

Doors open at 3 p.m., the event begins at 5 p.m. and Vance is expected to begin speaking at 6:20 p.m.

The Fairbanks weather forecast for Monday calls for a 20% chance of snow before 10 a.m., with a high of 43 degrees, dropping to 28 at night. 

Trump has repeatedly said he intends to visit Alaska, particularly to help the campaign of incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is in a close race against Democratic challenger Mary Peltola.

The Beacon has asked Sullivan’s campaign whether he will attend the Vance and Trump events but has not yet received a response.

U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III said by text message that he will be in Fairbanks on Monday for the Vance event. 

Begich’s lead challenger is independent candidate Bill Hill, a former schools superintendent from Bristol Bay. 

The governor’s race includes Democratic candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and three Republicans — Bernadette Wilson, Bronson and Treg Taylor. Kreiss-Tomkins is currently favored in statewide polling.

Wilson said by text message that she will be in Fairbanks for the Vance event; she did not say whether she would attend the Trump event. Bronson’s campaign confirmed attendance at both.

Taylor’s campaign has not yet responded to questions about his attendance. 

Sullivan, Begich and incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy all appeared alongside the President in Washington, D.C. this week at an event about the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline.

Trump and administration officials said at the event that the nation of Korea was investing in the project, but that was a lie — Korea has only committed to reviews that could lead to an investment of some kind. Korean officials have since protested the administration’s statements at the event.

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