Giving veterans in need a place to call home

May 28--A Wednesday summit at Alabama State University was designed for federal, state and local agencies, so they could discuss working to end veteran homelessness. But that didn't stop Delano Caldwell from showing up for answers.

The 40-year-old U.S. Navy veteran came to the meeting looking for affordable housing.

"I came to get as much information as I could about trying to find somewhere decent and affordable to live," he said outside the doors of the Veteran's Homeless Summit in the J. Garrick Hardy Student Center at ASU. "I am staying in a regular rented house, but I am so far behind on my bills and probably am going to get evicted, so I'm just trying to jump ahead and find me somewhere to stay before I hit the streets."

ASU and its National Public Radio Station WVAS 90.7 FM hosted the summit in an effort to help homeless in the River Region and throughout the state receive the help, assistance and attention they deserve. The summit was organized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

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Southeast Regional Administrator of HUD, Ed Jennings, Jr., along with representatives of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), public housing authorities and continuum of care providers, held a day-long discussion seeking strategies to end veterans homelessness in Alabama. Representatives from throughout the state attended including the cities of Auburn, Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Tuscaloosa.

Their goal included ensuring Alabama veterans participating in the HUD-VASH Program are counted in the State of Alabama's Homeless Management Information System; expanding other options for families of veterans through programs such as Supportive Services for Veterans Families and Emergency Shelter Grants; and removing barriers that hinder veterans obtaining permanent benefits and help.

"We have a list of issues and challenges, and we want to put everyone together, and out of this forum, to come up with solutions to the challenges," said Michael German, HUD Birmingham field office director. "You have people who come back from post-trauma, people dealing with issues with drugs and alcohol, and even chronic people who prefer to live on the streets. Housing them is the easiest part.

"Keeping them in housing is the challenge. People bring syndromes back with them, and it's about adapting to a new culture, and they bring in habits that are not good for them. So people tend to stay in the lifestyles they are in."

Nationwide, numbers drop

Point-in-Time Count reported in its annual survey that the number of homeless veterans fell to just under 50,000 in 2014 from nearly 75,000 in 2010, a drop of 33 percent, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

The announcement from the federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs, attributed the drop to several strategies, including reducing prerequisite "barriers" to get veterans in permanent housing more quickly and focusing housing efforts on chronically homeless and "vulnerable" veterans, according to the article.

What worked in Mobile

It was announced at the summit on Wednesday that on May 7, the city of Mobile ended veteran homelessness.

"It was a team effort," said Eric Jefferson, CEO of Housing First, Inc., The Homeless Coalition, of Mobile and Baldwin counties. "We worked with the VA and other service providers such as mental health, substance abuse. We use a model in Mobile of getting folks housed first and working on whatever their issues are once we get them housed."

Jefferson believes the aspect of the Mobile solution that could help most statewide is a coordinated assessment process.

"We have a database that all of our service providers enter information into, and we can make referrals to all of those different agencies," he said. "We can track all of our homeless folks, and we know what programs are available to them in real time. So we can make those referrals right away. So if there is a waiting list, it's a centralized waiting list instead of 15 agencies with their own waiting list. We can manage that."

In the Mobile community, the coordinated assessment went live Aug. 18, but the process started in January 2014.

"It helped us so much," Jefferson said of the process, "that we also have ended chronic homelessness in our community -- those individuals who have been on the streets for over a year. We were able to do that last June 2014. We made the commitment to do it, and we got the community to buy into it."

Over a three-year period with the program, 654 veterans have been served, and about 400 chronic homeless have moved through the system. And with the coordinated assessment, the program can house the homeless within three days.

"It's not just about getting them housed," Jefferson said. "It's about moving them to self-sufficiency so that they don't need our services anymore. So with our chronic homeless over the past two years, we've moved 40 percent of those clients out of our program and into self-sufficiency, where they are paying their own rent, paying their own bills. They are followed for about a year after they leave the program to make sure they stay (stable) and housed."

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Taking care of the homeless

The most important thing that can be done for a veteran who has served his country is to give them a place to call home, Jennings said.

"We are excited about that, and that's why we're focused on that," he said. "You take them one at a time. We're looking for the mayors of Tuscaloosa, of Birmingham, of Montgomery, to all line up ... to come together. Right down here in Region 4, in the south, we care about our veterans. It's a major, major issue.

"How do we get transportation, one of the issues that has been identified ... how do we get people to (provide) training opportunities so they can be self-sufficient, and how do we get them just to the VA so they can get their ... services met?" Jennings said. "How do we make sure the faith-based community is involved? We need more landlords."

He said when the participants went back home they shouldn't just be looking at big, multi-family developments or public housing developments as solutions, but anywhere someone might have a room, whether it's a room of a child who has graduated or a little house in back or a second house.

"We need landlords," Jennings said. "We only need one room. We'll take one at a time."

This is exactly what Caldwell showed up for. He wants that one room. Having served from 1993 until 1996, he attended ASU for about a year before starting to work odd jobs. He tried becoming a firefighter, and when that didn't work, went back to odd jobs, and since then, he has worked, and searched. Worked, and searched.

"I don't want to be out there in front of stores, begging," he said. "I want to try and get in front of that."

Need help?

Veterans and their families may call 1-877-4AID-VET (1-877-424-3838) to access VA services.

Visit online at va.gov/homeless to learn about VA programs for veterans who are homeless and share that information with others.

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By the numbers

In January 2013, three states -- California, Florida and New York -- accounted for 44 percent of all homeless veterans across the country.

There are 57,849 homeless veterans on any single night.

There are 144,842 veterans who use homeless housing programs each year.

Source: National Coalition for Homeless Veterans

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