Programs Help Reduce Homeless Veteran Numbers
Our nation’s Veterans provided a great service by helping protect our country. If anyone deserves to have someplace to call home, it’s these brave men and women. Through the assistance of certain federal grant programs, it appears this numbers of homeless Veterans may be headed in the right direction.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) last week unveiled preliminary data from the 2022 Point-in-Time Count, which resulted in an 11% decline in Veteran homelessness since early 2020, the biggest two-year drop in Veteran homelessness in more than five years. The Point-in-Time Count is an annual effort led by HUD to estimate the number of Americans, including Veterans, without safe, stable housing.
The data show on a single night in January 2022, there were 33,136 Veterans nationwide who were experiencing homelessness — down from 37,252 in 2020, the last time a full count was conducted. (A comprehensive Point-in-Time Count was not conducted in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) More importantly, the percentage of Veterans experiencing homelessness since 2010 has dropped by 55.3%.
“Not only did we lower the number of Veterans experiencing homelessness, but we made this progress during a global pandemic and economic crisis,” said USICH Executive Director Jeff Olivet. “This proves that, even under the most difficult circumstances, we can take care of each other and address homelessness.”
HUD, VA and USICH noted that the Point-in-Time Count results do not reflect additional efforts they have launched this year to address Veteran homelessness. For example, VA has taken steps to provide permanent housing for nearly 31,000 homeless Veterans this year. HUD, VA and USICH are making progress using the “Housing First” approach, which prioritizes getting a Veteran into housing, then provides him or her with the support needed to stay housed — including health care, job training, legal and education assistance and more.
With the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (Pub. L. 117-2), VA’s homeless programs received $481 million in additional funding to support Veterans — including funding to expand the Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program to address legal barriers to housing and transform congregate transitional housing spaces into individual rooms with bathrooms and more. Overall, the American Rescue Plan provided more than $5 billion to assist individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness, as well as more than $40 billion for housing provisions nationwide.
Here's to hoping the downward trend in Veteran homelessness continues.
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Federal Grants Forum | Dec. 7-9, 2022 | Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Nonprofit Legal, Finance, and Grants Conference | April 6-7, 2023 | Washington, D.C.
