Washington Post
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
WASHINGTON — Halfway into an ambitious five-year campaign to end homelessness among veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it has made enough progress that the goal is within reach, even as a new generation of veterans returns from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Making aggressive use of a voucher program, Veterans Affairs has housed more than 33,000 veterans in the past 2½ years. It did so by changing its longtime policy of requiring homeless veterans to be successfully treated for substance abuse and mental ailments before being given apartments.
The shift in approach means that there is "a better opportunity to end veterans' homelessness by 2015 than at any time in the past," said Susan Angell, VA's director of homeless initiatives.
Though many agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, have adopted a housing-first strategy, Veterans Affairs had resisted. "Folks were initially concerned about the safety aspects of it," Angell said. "We wanted to make sure they were clean and sober."
VA and HUD want enough funds to issue 60,000 vouchers at the rate of 10,000 a year through 2014.
The effort comes as tens of thousands of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are leaving military service and entering an often-bleak job market. Angell's agency estimates that more than 20,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been homeless at some point during the past five years, and that their numbers are rising.
Many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at risk of homelessness keep a low profile.
"They'd rather be off in the shadows," said Freddy Cordova, a former Army paratrooper who deployed four times to Iraq and now works with a National Veterans Foundation "street team" that helps homeless veterans in California.
The key to dealing with the Iraq-Afghanistan generation will be keeping veterans off the street in the first place. "People don't become homeless immediately," said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor and authority in the field. "It takes a few years. So we have time to prepare."
A VA prevention program begun in 2011 is awarding $160 million in grants to nonprofit community agencies, with the goals of preventing low-income families from falling into homelessness or rapidly returning them to stable housing. "We've learned we can't end homelessness by street rescues alone," said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
The most effective remedy, advocates say, is the joint voucher program, HUD-VASH, which provides permanent supportive housing to needy homeless veterans. Veterans pay 30 percent of their income to rent, and the voucher covers the remainder. Each voucher costs the government on average $6,500 a year, plus $4,148 in case management services — much less than the costs of staying in jails, hospitals or emergency shelters, advocates say.
"It literally saved me," said Mickiela Montoya, who served with the Army National Guard in Iraq and received a voucher last year for an Orange County, Calif., apartment where she lives with her 4-year-old daughter.
The vouchers are distributed to public housing authorities around the country based on need. "The problem is there are always new people coming into the system, and there aren't that many vouchers to give out," said Kathy Sibert, executive director of Arlington Street People's Assistance Network, or A-SPAN.
Veterans are waiting for vouchers in all jurisdictions around the country, VA officials say.
"In some cases, (vouchers) are going to people that are easiest to house, and not to the person who's been on the street the longest and has the most issues," said Jake McGuire, a spokesman for Community Solutions, an advocacy group for the homeless.
VA officials acknowledge the concern and have reminded field offices that the vouchers are meant primarily for chronically homeless veterans with mental health or substance-abuse problems. But the vouchers are generally given to any qualifying homeless veteran on a first-come, first-served basis.
Those selected often must wait four months to a year for housing, depending on the amount of paperwork required by the jurisdiction, said Becky Kanis, who directs a homeless project run by Community Solutions.
In addition, it has been difficult to gauge the problem and measure progress. For years, the VA used what one researcher called "wacky counting" of homeless veterans. Addressing the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans in June, Shinseki said that the number of homeless veterans had been reduced in two years from 131,000 to 76,500. VA officials now acknowledge the numbers were not comparable.
Culhane, who also is director of research for VA's National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, said the data have become much more accurate, with a 2011 count of homeless veterans on a given night conducted by teams in 432 communities nationwide.
VA and HUD officials hailed the new figures this month, showing a 12 percent drop in the one-night count of homeless veterans, from 76,329 on a single night in January 2010 to 67,495 in January 2011.
But even if all homeless veterans could be counted, there are doubts that all could be housed.
"I don't know if we'll ever get all of them," said David Treadwell, a retired Army officer who fought in Vietnam and now directs Central Union Mission, an organization that cares for the homeless in Washington. "You meet guys who are dedicated to being on the street."