Advocates are concerned about increases in veteran homelessness stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Veteran Stephen Kiker receives a pair of combat boots from VA employee Yael Gowens during the Stand Down held at the Dallas VAMC. Photo from the Nov. 21,2019, VAntage Point blog
WASHINGTON — While the last decade has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of veterans who are homeless on any given night, that trend has stalled in the last two years with numbers, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, starting to move upward again.
While it is still unclear how big an impact the pandemic has had or will have on veteran homelessness, advocates are preparing for a significant jump when the national eviction moratorium ends on July 31 or whenever it ends, if that date is pushed back.
In 2010, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that more than 76,000 veterans were homeless on any given night, with three times as many individual veterans finding themselves homeless throughout the year. Between 2010 and 2016, that number dropped at a rate of about 10% per year, with the biggest drop (17%) coming between 2015 and 2016. Between 2016 and 2020, that progress stalled with some metrics starting to creep up again, however.
At the beginning of 2020, the count was at 37,000. This number was virtually unchanged from 2019, but the number of unhoused veterans—those not in shelters or emergency housing—increased by 6%. The pandemic curtailed HUD’s 2021 count, but advocates expect the number has only risen.
If the trend from the first half of the decade continued into the second half, the United States might have had fewer than 10,000 homeless veterans when COVID-19 hit, VA leaders told legislators last month at a hearing of the House VA Economic Opportunity Subcommittee. Instead, the pandemic had VA, HUD and nonprofit organizations hard at work protecting one of the most vulnerable veteran populations during a time when even the healthy and housed were at risk.
According to NIH studies, homeless veterans are significantly more likely to report a chronic medical condition or a mental health condition. They also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), hepatitis and cirrhosis at twice the rate of non-veteran homeless people. Those working with homeless veterans agree that the best way to treat those conditions and to ensure that treatment continues is to find stable housing for veterans.
The HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program combines HUD’s rental assistance voucher program with case management and clinical services provided by VA. The vouchers subsidize the monthly rent and utility payments for participating veterans and families, as well as help with moving costs, if needed. The vouchers also can help pay motel costs to house veterans while they are looking for a rental unit.
“Most landlords are unwilling to house a veteran with poor credit, criminal history, or past eviction,” explained Lula Skowronek, director of Priority Veteran, a nonprofit assistance program for homeless and at-risk veterans in Alabama. “When [VA] expanded our ability to place veterans in hotels, it became apparent how many were already using extended-stay hotels as their primary residence—not because they didn’t have income but because they couldn’t find a landlord willing to rent to them.”
The downside of motels has been the isolation and lack of a regular support structure, which can be difficult for veterans with mental health conditions.
“Lack of mental healthcare is another challenge,” Skowronek told the subcommittee. “As we placed more veterans in hotels, it became clear that mental illness made it difficult for many to live alone in a hotel room, leaving them without a safe option.”
While advocates such as Skowronek testified that HUD-VASH vouchers are key to providing shelter for veterans, they also noted that the program has significant problems. In January 2020, VA officials reported that thousands of vouchers had gone unused the year before. Lawmakers were concerned that unused vouchers could be cited as a reason to cut funding for the program, even though there were still more than enough homeless veterans in need.
At the time, VA placed the blame for the unused vouchers on a combination of hiring difficulties related to case manager positions and rising rent costs. In 2020, 83% of VA case manager positions were filled. That number is now at 86%. However, rent prices have only risen during that interim.
“[The problem is] first and foremost a lack of affordable housing units,” explained Keith Harris, PhD, the National Director of Clinical Operations for VA’s Homeless Programs Office. “We could have all the case managers in the world, but without sufficient units to place veterans into there’s a stop point. There’s a bottleneck.”
As for what will happen in the next few months, Harris said, “We’re as concerned as anyone else on the possible impact of lifting the eviction moratorium on some of the ongoing challenges that our homeless and at-risk veterans face.”
Unprecedented Wave
Others expressed that concern in starker terms. Kathryn Monet, CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, testified that the lifting of the eviction moratorium could “result in an unprecedented wave of veteran homelessness.”
During the summer of 2020, when there was a brief gap between national eviction moratoriums, NCHV’s referral line exploded, Monet told legislators. “We received so many calls from people, and they weren’t all from high-cost areas. The challenge may not be high-cost areas, but communities where the judicial system churns through evictions at a faster rate. That’s what I would be worried about. The speed of the system and what we have in place to move people into housing.”
Monet also advocated that Congress make permanent some of the homeless-specific funding contained within the CARES Act.
“If we are to get through this crisis … we’re going to need sufficient funding, and that’s got to be incorporated into non-emergency appropriations,” she declared. “We can’t just keep getting emergency shots of funding.”
That funding was sorely needed, explained Akilah Templeton, president and CEO of Veterans Village of San Diego. “We were able to place veterans with advanced age and preexisting conditions in non-congregate living settings like hotels. We were able to help veterans at risk of becoming homeless with [rent and expenses]. And, for the first time, we could be compensated at per diem rates needed to provide care to veterans in our emergency housing program.”
In addition, Veterans Village was able to buy PPE for veterans and employees; provide healthier meals; and invest in equipment to help homeless veterans log into telehealth appointments with VA.
“Soon COVID will no longer be a threat, but poverty will continue to be a public health crisis,” Templeton declared. “The pandemic proved that the funds were needed, that we would be good stewards of those funds, and we would be able to support our veterans in more meaningful ways.”
