Housing homeless vets yields strategy to end all homelessness

In August 2016, the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count showed us that veteran homelessness has dropped nearly 50 percent since 2010. This means that, across the country on a given night, fewer than 40,000 veterans were experiencing homelessness.

Veteran homelessness dropped precipitously in the last year (a 17.3 percent decrease from 2015), with large decreases in the numbers of unsheltered veterans sleeping on our nation’s streets. At the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV), we hailed this progress as an indication that investments in ending veteran homelessness were working, but that we still had a lot of work to do, and we need all hands on deck.

For over 26 years, NCHV has been the only national agency solely dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness for those who served our country. Across the country, our community organizations and partners are stepping in with a hand up to good jobs, safe homes and opportunities for real connection for the most vulnerable veterans.

NCHV offers community education, advocacy and direct technical assistance to service providers in our network and works closely with our member organizations and corporate, nonprofit and government partners on the national, state and local levels.

Each year, NCHV eagerly awaits the results of the PIT count — it serves as an annual checkup, a guidepost to analyze efforts in our shared goal to end homelessness for each veteran experiencing it. Are we still making progress?

The momentum now is on the side of rapid change, and we are closer than ever to achieving our mission of effectively ending veteran homelessness in every community. This change happens on the local level, with local county officials playing a critical role in marshalling resources and facilitating coordination.

Every year, NCHV supports more than 9,000 organizations working tirelessly to transform the lives of individual veterans and to build the systems that respond to their changing needs. Communities that have built these systems have reached a “functional end” to veteran homelessness, meaning that the local community is able to rapidly assist every veteran experiencing homelessness in that community so homelessness is brief, rare and nonrecurring.

So far, 33 local jurisdictions and three states have reached a functional end to veteran homelessness. In Montgomery County, Md. partners announced a functional end to veteran homelessness in December 2015 after committing to a multi-year effort to prioritize veterans in affordable housing. The county set clear goals with specific targets, communicated their progress with the wider community on a regular basis, and, critically, had dedicated county-level staff to oversee and manage this effort.

In early 2015, Flagler County, Fla. reached a functional end to veteran homelessness by thinking outside the box. They used a “battle buddy” and other peer support models to support veterans navigating the housing process and developed a coordinated list of veterans, by name, so no veterans fell through the cracks.

In Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs dedicated staff to the effort, a needed step to get all partners at the same table to build out an operations system that rapidly increased permanent housing placements.

As NCHV has grown and developed in this effort, it has learned that the collective effort to end homelessness for veterans has begun to set up models for change to end all homelessness. NCHV’s network of community agencies and local advocates can serve a vital role in supporting local county officials looking to identify gaps in services and to build common community goals. And they need your help to end and maintain an end to all homelessness, including veteran homelessness, across the country.

To learn more about NCHV and its network of community agencies, visit www.nchv.org or call 202.546.1969.