After 30 years of widespread veteran homelessness, communities around the country are racing to end it by the end of this year. Some communities like Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, Houston, and Las Cruces, New Mexico have already announced that they’ve reached the goal.
How has the country suddenly gotten so close to bringing an end to veteran homelessness? We get this question a lot. The truth of course is that there’s nothing sudden about it. People have been working behind the scenes at the national, state and local levels for years to make this happen. Since 2009, they have reduced the number of veterans who experience homelessness on a given day by 33 percent. Here’s a look at how we got here.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that homelessness has been steadily declining in America since 2007. The bad news is that the number of people most likely to become homelessness has been steadily rising—and it doesn’t show signs of stopping any time soon.
There are a lot of reasons for the increase in the number of vulnerable people. Some of these include low minimum wages and a lack of affordable housing in major cities and for low-income renters. Unfortunately, a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Enterprise Community partners shows that this trend is unlikely to reverse in the next decade.
As many readers of this blog are no doubt already know, last week the Department of Housing and Urban Development Continuum finally released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Continuum of Care (CoC) Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA). If you’re applying for funds through the NOFA, you should pay close attention not just to the big picture, but to all the details. That’s why over the next few weeks, we will be releasing more detailed information on the NOFA.
For now, though, here is a quick look at the NOFA’s three big-picture trends just to get you started.
This data snapshot provides an overview of 2015 research into the effectiveness of rapid re-housing, including data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Short-term Impacts from the Family Options Study and the Department of Veterans Affairs Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) FY 2014 Annual Report.
Suddenly it’s everywhere: Congressional hearings, daily news stories, a pledge from hundreds of mayors. Community leaders and federal officials are talking about ending homelessness for veterans – not as some vague aspiration for the distant future, but by the end of this year, just a few months from now!
What’s going on?
