Category: Veterans

Veteran Homelessness

This veteran homelessness fact sheet presents information on the number of of veterans experiencing homelessness, the demographics of the population, causes of homelessness among veterans, and federal programs that address the issue.

Here’s One Way You Can Show Support for Ending Veteran Homelessness

Have you heard of the #WithTheseHands campaign? It’s part of a national initiative to raise awareness of the issue of veteran homelessness and the fight to end it. (The campaign takes its name from the final verse of the Bruce Springsteen song, “My City of Ruins.”)

The people behind the campaign are Give US Your Poor, which is a group dedicated to bringing together homeless organizations, celebrity advocates, and people like you to end homelessness. With this latest campaign, they’re using music and art to dispel myths, show support, and foster action on veteran homelessness.

Ending Veteran Homelessness Step One: Creating a Master List

In order to house your homeless veterans in your community, you need to know who they are. That’s why creating a master list of homeless veterans in your community is step one on our Five Steps to Ending Veteran Homelessness. Creating a comprehensive list of homeless veterans in your community may sound daunting, but it could be easier than you think.

With coordinated assessment, regular and continuous outreach, and working with all your partners, your Continuum of Care should be able to create and maintain a list of veterans in your community who need to be housed. Here’s what we say in the 5 Steps.

Here are the 3 Components Every Rapid Re-Housing Program Should Have

Rapid re-housing isn't easy, but it is simple. And it's bringing us closer and closer to ending veteran homelessness by the end of this year. The Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) grants to community organizations across the country have taken the rapid re-housing intervention to a scale previously unseen, and the impact on veteran homelessness has been astonishing.

It isn’t easy. People experiencing homelessness often face numerous barriers to getting into and retaining stable, permanent housing. Data from Fiscal Year 2013 shows that more than half of the veterans participating in SSVF services had a disabling condition; 44 percent had a substance use disorder; and nearly a third had no income at the time of program entry. Yet 84 percent of participants exited the program to permanent housing with a median length of 90 days of services.

How has SSVF managed to achieve such dramatic outcomes?

Here are 5 Steps Communities Must Take to End Veteran Homelessness

At the Alliance, we’ve been talking a lot about the push to end veteran homelessness by the end of 2015. And we’re not the only ones (see: the departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, the President and First Lady, and the list goes on…). Of course, telling you, “you need to end veteran homelessness this year” is much easier said than done. We recognize that. That’s why the Alliance will be providing as much guidance to communities as possible throughout the year.

Recently, several policy experts at the Alliance put their heads together to examine communities that have made real progress on ending veteran homelessness (and overall homelessness) to see how they are doing it. We’ve distilled that knowledge into this document, “Five Steps to End Veteran Homelessness,” which, as the title suggests, outlines the five major steps that communities must take to get the job done.

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