From AFT:
“Advocates for homeless vets
face next big challenge: inflation”
(A grocery cart with a note from
a homeless veteran sits on Fifth Avenue during New York City's annual Veterans
Day parade in 2006.)
With coronavirus pandemic
restrictions lifting across most of America, federal officials and housing
advocates are hoping their efforts in coming months can lead to a significant
decline in the number of veterans experiencing homelessness. But they’re also
already wary of the next looming challenge facing vulnerable veterans:
inflation. “A lot of people right now are thinking about how higher prices are
going to impact their clients and what services or resources they’ll have to bring
to the table to close that gap,” said Kathryn Monet, chief executive officer of
the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “There are people out there
already making hard choices. Do I pay for medicine or gas? Do I buy school
supplies or pay the utilities? We’re in a difficult moment.” Federal officials
saw a 10 percent decrease in sheltered homeless veterans in January 2021.
Several hundred advocates are
gathering in Washington, D.C., this week to discuss those problems — and
potential solutions — as part of NCHV’s annual conference. This year’s event,
which runs through Friday, is the first in-person gathering for the group in
three years, since the pandemic upended normal operations in communities across
the country. Attendees noted that unlike other jobs that could shift operations
to remote locations over the last two years, most of the outreach work done to
help veterans experiencing homelessness still had to be done in person. That
has meant long hours and extra stress for the community of helpers. “We had to
learn how to multitask even more than we did before,” said Wendy McClinton,
president of Black Veterans for Social Justice, a non-profit providing a
variety of housing assistance programs. “And we had to protect our staff,
protect our clients, protect their families, and that meant sometimes using
resources we didn’t even know we had before.”
Now, advocates are taking
those lessons learned and working them into ongoing operations. In some
cases, it means continuing to deliver services over the phone or internet to
clients instead of in-person because it provides faster results. In others, it
means providing more single-occupancy options to veterans looking for housing,
giving them more independence and investment in their situation.
Federal agencies have also
made changes in their support services. On Wednesday, James Rodriguez,
assistant secretary for veterans’ employment and training service at the
Department of Labor, announced $57 million in grants to community groups to
help homeless veterans find “meaningful employment.” A short while later,
Housing and Urban Development Deputy Secretary Adrianne Todman announced a goal
of 200,000 new housing vouchers this year to help put veterans in stable
housing (there are about 106,000 in use currently). Because of the new
resources, combined with the “return” of advocates to pre-pandemic operations,
officials said they see an opportunity to build on past efforts to reduce the
number of veterans without steady housing in the coming year.
From 2010 to 2016, the number of
veterans experiencing homelessness dropped by nearly half — from about 74,000
to 39,500 — thanks in large part to a dramatic increase in federal and state
funding of programs to deal with the problem. Since then, however, the number
has remained largely stagnant. In 2020 — the last year a full point-in-time
count was conducted by federal officials, the estimated number of veterans
experiencing homelessness was about 37,200, a decrease of about 6%. Officials
saw a 10% drop in the number of veterans using emergency shelter services from
2020 to 2021, but it is unclear how much of that is because of improvements in
their housing situations or concerns about using the public facilities in the
midst of coronavirus outbreaks. It is also not clear how much rising inflation
could wipe out any of those past gains.
VA needs more money to keep
pace with veterans’ needs, advisory group warns The Independent Budget for
fiscal 2023 calls for a hefty increase in department program spending over
current levels. Monet said rising rents are the most immediate threat for
advocates trying to get or keep veterans in reliable housing. But increased
costs for groceries, gas and other services all play a major role in veterans’
finances too. She said those concerns limit her optimism for how much progress
can be made quickly on the homelessness issue. “We know that the housing
market is crazy now,” she said. “So we may just be treading water. And that’s
unfortunate, because we do have these big bold goals from the federal
government and we’re all working hard to try and encourage all our partners.”
By getting advocates back in the room together this week, NCHV officials
are hopeful that they can plan ways around those obstacles and create new
momentum. They also expect that the return of the conference can help
spur new connections among all the groups involved, especially since now they
can greet those partners not with a computer-screen wave but instead with a
real-life handshake.
^ Veteran Homelessness has been a
major problem for decades and has been made much worse since Covid. Now with
high Inflation people who could or would normally help (donating money or food)
are scaling back. Veterans should not have to suffer because of Inflation or
lack of Government Response. They risked their lives for us so the least we can
do is treat them with the respect they deserve and make sure they have the
basics (homes, food and health care.) ^
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