Veteran’s Day is a time to honor the service and sacrifice of the many men and women who served in the United States military. The best way we at the Alliance believe we can do that is by ensuring that every single one of these men and women and their families have a warm and safe place to call home.
Five years ago, the White House and the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a challenge to the nation: end veteran homelessness. Since that day, the Obama administration, Congress, as well as local and community partners, and stakeholders like the Alliance have been hard at work to improve and invest in programs and system changes that will house our heroes. Nationally, we are seeing results. According to the 2014 Point-in-Time Count, the number of homeless veterans has dropped 33 percent since that challenge was issued.
This video is a recording of a webinar that originally streamed Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015, on improved employment services for homeless job seekers. During the webinar, speakers discussed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and introduced a WIOA Implementation Toolkit.
This resource is meant for mayors who have signed on to the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness by 2015. It lays out the five key tasks that mayors should undertake to achieve the goal of ending homelessness in their cities, and provides numerous links to helpful resources on the Alliance website and elsewhere.
As you have probably figured out, the CoC NOFA is very different this year. HUD has created the most competitive application process for CoC funds we have ever seen, with a strong emphasis on evaluating project and system performance and reallocating funds to effective programs that actually reduce homelessness.
The NOFA also focuses on the goals articulated in Opening Doors, including an end to veteran homelessness by the end of 2015. The application newly requires CoCs to report their actual progress toward this important goal. The exciting news is that we know this achievement is within reach for many CoCs across the country. Several communities have already announced that they have succeeded.
In the world of homelessness assistance, housing is the number one priority. As we like to say at the Alliance, housed people aren’t homeless.
But what happens after people exit homelessness to housing? In an ideal world, homelessness should be rare, brief, and non-recurring. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. People who have been housed through homeless programs sometimes fall back into homelessness. Fortunately, researchers are working to determine why some households remain stably housed and others don’t.
