One of the biggest problems in our nation right now is, without question, our increasingly large unhoused population. Of course, can’t be surprised by the fact that we have an increasingly large unhoused population, because we have out of control rent prices and refuse to do anything to regulate how much landlords are allowed to charge or increase rent (as many other countries do), and don’t do a lot to increase the amount of affordable housing available to people or otherwise help people get off the street. It’s really not going well!
But, as it turns out, there’s one area of concern where there has been some truly dramatic improvement — veterans!
Every year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conducts what is called a Point-in-Time (PIT) Count to estimate the number of Americans experiencing homelessness. The results, initially collected on a single night in January of 2024 and released in December, showed that there were 32,882 veterans who were unhoused. While that’s still a big number and no veteran should ever live on the street, it’s far less than what it has been. It’s decreased by 7.5 percent since 2023, 11 percent since 2020, and 55 percent since 2009, when we first began tracking the population, which was just over 74,000 nationally in the first count. The reduction in veteran homelessness comes despite an 18 percent increase in the unhoused population overall.
This is the result of many years of the the Department of Veterans Affairs actually doing things to get vets off the street and into housing, as well as to keep them housed, instead of sending them to prison or doing absolutely nothing.
Like so!
Outreach services such as Health Care for Homeless Veterans and the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans, which are the front doors to both VA homeless programs and the broader VA healthcare system.
Residential services such as the Health Care for Homeless Veterans Contracted Residential Services or Grant and Per Diem programs, which provide temporary placement in the form of emergency or transitional housing, for Veterans who need a place to stay right now.
Permanent housing services, such as the Supportive Services for Veteran Families and HUD-VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) programs, connect Veterans to affordable housing in their communities. These services come with either short or long-term rental subsidies, case management and varying levels of wrap-around supportive services to ensure that Veterans have all the necessary resources to stay housed.
VA also has programs to assist Veterans in the criminal justice system with accessing VA services, help Veterans gain meaningful employment, or take care of their health needs through primary care tailored to the unique access barriers that Veterans experiencing homelessness face.
The VA notes that the new number does “not include the even more aggressive actions that VA took to permanently house nearly 48,000 homeless Veterans in fiscal year 2024.” They also report that since these efforts began in 20210, 85 communities and three states (Connecticut, Delaware, and Virginia) no longer have any unhoused veteran populations. In 2024, Dallas, Texas and Hennepin County, Minnesota joined that club as well.
Sadly, some people with influence on the Trump administration, including the architects of Project 2025, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have dollar signs in their eyes with regard to slashing the absolute shit out of veterans benefits, jobs (as the US Government is the single largest employer of veterans, 110,000 of them are at risk of layoffs, courtesy of DOGE) and healthcare.
This means that there is a very significant chance that those numbers could shoot right back up in the next few years.
In any case, the VA has clearly been doing an amazing job when it comes to housing our veterans, and perhaps some of our governors and mayors could look at what they’ve done about this problem and take some notes, so that we do not have non-veterans sleeping rough on the streets either. It shows that this is not a mysterious problem with no solution— it’s work, it’s funding and it’s giving a shit.
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