Time running out on goal to end veteran homelessness

Merced County advocates are pushing to find housing for local veterans amid a national effort to provide homes for all who served in the military by year’s end – an ambitious goal the Department of Veterans Affairs is not likely to meet.

Merced-area advocates are also looking for more help to identify those veterans still on the street so they can be housed. According to the latest tally, there are 88 homeless veterans in Merced County.

The VA has been focused on getting the homeless into housing immediately and paying for it with a voucher that subsidizes most or all of the rent. The VA then works to provide the veterans with counseling, health care and other benefits.

The Merced County Continuum of Care brings homeless advocates together to work toward housing people who need it and is overseen by Pasadena-based nonprofit Urban Initiatives.

“We are making some really strong progress towards housing veterans,” said Joe Colletti, the group’s executive director.

Kathy Smith, a case manager with Sierra Saving Grace Homeless Project, said her organization specializes in finding permanent housing for people who are chronically homeless and have a physical or mental disability.

Since February, her organization has found homes for three veterans in the area. She said homeless veterans deal with many of the same issues as others on the street, including mental health and drug problems.

Getting used to a new home with new rules brings its own challenges. “Even though it’s a nice warm place to be, you think you can’t do it because it’s too overwhelming,” she said.

The annual tally by Continuum in Merced County is also changing its method this year, which organizers say will allow them to better identify veterans. But to do so means the group needs to triple the number of volunteers who go out during the count, according to Continuum member Phil Schmauss, director of marketing for the Merced County Rescue Mission.

The training and orientation for those volunteers begin next month.

The latest national count available showed about 50,000 homeless veterans on a single night in January 2014. That’s a decline of 33 percent from January 2010. Results from the January 2015 count are expected later this month.

“If you don’t meet your goals, it doesn’t necessarily mean failure,” said Joe Davis, a spokesman at Veterans of Foreign Wars. “You have to think big if you’re going to do big.”

In August, Connecticut became the first state to announce it had ended chronic homelessness among veterans. Officials said that means any veterans who had been homeless for more than a year or had four separate bouts of homelessness in recent years were either in permanent housing or on an immediate path to it. New Orleans, Houston and a few others have also made such declarations.

VA Secretary Robert McDonald said last week that the end of the year was still the goal for ending veteran homelessness. The survey verifying that outcome won’t take place until January and takes almost a year to tabulate. McDonald said his focus is now on Los Angeles with an estimated 4,200 homeless veterans.

Earlier this year, the VA agreed to settle a lawsuit that requires it to develop a long-term master plan for turning a sprawling West Los Angeles VA campus into housing for homeless vets.

“For some ways for me, the clock didn’t start until we got that lawsuit settled, and we’re making a lot of good progress out there,” said McDonald, who was confirmed in July 2014.

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 6:54 PM with the headline "Time running out on goal to end veteran homelessness."