With four months to go until the end of the calendar year, the Department of Veterans Affairs is nearly 70% of the way to achieving a 2023 goal to provide permanent housing for 38,000 homeless veterans.
As of July 31, the VA had placed 26,470 veterans in permanent housing, with 97% of those remaining housed, according to Jill Albanese, director of clinical operations at the department.
The goal of 38,000 was the same in 2023 as it was in 2022, when the VA housed 40,041 people. But with 6% of those veterans having returned to the streets, the VA set a goal guaranteeing that at least 95% of this year's newly housed veterans would get the assistance and support they need to remain in a home.
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Albanese said that, so far, 97% of those provided housing this year remain housed, and the VA has worked toward rehousing roughly 680 of those who returned to homelessness. The department also is well on its way to meeting another goal for 2023 -- to engage with at least 28,000 unsheltered veterans to help them obtain housing and services, having reached 24,285 veterans.
"These goals do build on the VA's success in housing more than 40,000 veterans in ... 2022 and all these efforts are built around an evidence-based 'housing first' approach, which prioritizes getting veterans into housing and then assisting them with the wraparound services they need," Albanese said during a media roundtable Friday.
The Biden administration has made reducing homelessness a top priority, providing funding and grants to communities and organizations to get people, including veterans, off the streets and into safe homes.
The number of veterans experiencing homelessness dropped by 11% between 2020 and 2022.
An estimated 33,136 veterans live on the streets or in homeless shelters on any given night, according to the annual "Point-In-Time," or PIT, survey conducted in January 2022.
But the number is not considered a complete accounting of the nation's homeless population, because it is an estimate based on a count conducted by volunteers on one day and does not include those living in hotels or staying with family and friends.
In addition to getting veterans into homes, the VA also announced it will award roughly $1 billion in grants to community organizations and housing assistance groups that help homeless veterans, are able to rehouse veterans and families who have lost homes, and provide prevention services to those at risk for losing their homes.
"These grants will allow VA, alongside our community partners, to help provide more housing and wraparound services to more homeless and at-risk veterans than ever before," VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement released Monday.
The VA has a National Call Center for Homeless Veterans facing eviction or struggling with homelessness: 877-424-3838.
-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com.
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