White House works to end homelessness among vets

The Obama administration is making progress in its push to end homelessness among veterans by 2015.

With one year to go until the deadline, the number of homeless veterans has plummeted, and new programs and funding are ramping up, raising hopes among advocates that the goal is within reach.

{mosads}“It’s one of the real quiet success stories,” said Tom Murphy, a staff member at Miriam’s Kitchen, which provides meals and support services for homeless people in Washington.

The number of veterans without homes has fallen each year since 2010, when the tally was 76,329. The total fell to 57,849 in 2013, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which amounted to a 24 percent drop in just three years.

One of the programs behind that success is HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH), a joint effort between the Department of Veterans Affairs and HUD. It sets up homeless veterans in privately owned apartments with rent subsidized by the government. A case manager from the VA then works with the person on possible issues, such as substance abuse or mental health problems.

The number of HUD-VASH vouchers has increased from around 10,000 in 2008 to 58,000 in 2013. The number of new vouchers issued each year is approaching 10,000.

“That is phenomenal really,” said John Driscoll, president of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “That would represent essentially the end of chronic veteran homelessness.”

Until this year, Jeff Gilliam, who served in the Navy from 1978-1982, was one of the homeless veterans. He lived under an overpass in Washington, until a staffer from the local organization Community Connections found him an apartment.

“He did all the work,” Gilliam said. “He drove around looking for places.”

After an error had him scheduled to move in on Martin Luther King Day, when government offices he needed were closed, he endured one more snowstorm before moving into a place on Massachusetts Avenue. “It was comforting to know I had a roof over my head,” he said.
 
Waiting until people are homeless to help them is not the ideal strategy. One of the best ways to end homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place. That is the goal of the VA’s Supportive Services for Veterans Families (SSVF) program.

The SSVF, which has expanded rapidly since starting in 2011 as a pilot program, provides grants to local nonprofit organizations to help low-income veterans who are in danger of losing their homes or who have recently become homeless.

Eighty-six percent of people enrolled in the program have found permanent housing.

“That’s probably one of the most significant results ever reported for any homeless assistance program,” said Driscoll of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
The program benefited more than 35,000 veterans and their families in 2011, and it had expanded to reach more than 60,000 people by 2013.

Funding for the SSVF skyrocketed from $60 million in 2011 to $300 million this year.

And it’s not just the SSVF program that has seen an influx of dollars. At a time when most government programs are taking a hit from sequestration, programs for homeless veterans are seeing budget increases.

Funding for HUD-VASH vouchers increased from $50 million-$75 million in the last three years.

“The issue of homeless veterans is one of the most unifying issues in the nation’s capital,” Driscoll said.

Still, not every homeless person needs the level of support that comes from the HUD-VASH program.

“In the beginning, you had a lot of communities where those very intensive vouchers were going to people who happened to walk in the door, instead of people who really needed it,” said Jake Maguire, communications director for the 100,000 Homes Campaign, which brings together local organizations to secure homes for people.

To find those who particularly need the support, the 100,000 Homes Campaign gathers as many as 200-300 volunteers to comb a city in the middle of the night, seeking out homeless people, waking them up and assessing their level of need.

“Especially among veterans, we suspect there may be a sort of learned culture of self-reliance,” Maguire said. “Veterans are actually more likely to be homeless for longer periods of time.”

The campaign then brings together agencies in the area to work out bureaucratic problems and improve efficiency.

But there is a surprisingly simple plan of action for helping homeless people: Give them homes.

The idea is known as “housing first,” a policy first adopted under the George W. Bush administration.

“The science is clear; the data is clear, so we were better able to use resources to achieve the goals,” said Vince Kane, director of the VA’s National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans.

In contrast to past programs that tried to address problems such as substance abuse and joblessness before finding people homes, the new approach works on those issues after getting a roof over people’s heads.

“Unless you do housing at the beginning, you don’t really accomplish anything else either,” Maguire said.

To those accustomed to a secure place to which to return at the end of the day, it’s hard to realize the basic obstacles presented by the lack of a home, said Murphy, of Miriam’s Place.

“It’s incredibly hard to get sober if you don’t have the stability of a door that’s locked,” he said. “You can’t take insulin if you don’t have a refrigerator.”

The 57,849 veterans who were homeless in 2013 is still a long way from zero. But the political will and funding, combined with the success of the housing first approach, has put the goal within reach, advocates say.

“We really know what to do to end homelessness,” Maguire said. “It’s permanent housing with some basic supportive services.”

Driscoll said it’s impossible to ensure that veterans never become homeless.

What is possible, he said, is to ensure that “any veteran who loses his home will have a door that he, or she, can immediately walk into.”