Excluding Veterans Day and Memorial Day, it can be easy to forget the sacrifices that America’s former military personnel made on our country’s behalf. This winter, a national fuel retailer is stepping up to do something more for veterans, providing savings on an essential utility to help them stay warm.
Suburban Propane, a public company with headquarters in New Jersey and 700 locations in 41 states, is offering a special on the next delivery of 100 gallons or more of gas to households where a veteran or active-duty service member lives. For new customers with military ties, Suburban Propane will take $10 off the bill of their first delivery of 100 gallons or more and comp all charges for the change-out, safety check and the tank’s first year of rent. Existing customers have the opportunity to take advantage of the savings as well; they can receive $10 off the next delivery of 100 gallons or more, and by referring another veteran, they can earn an additional 35 gallons of fuel added to their next order.
Across the country, at least 49,900 veterans sleep on the streets on any given night. The shock of combat can make holding down a job, keeping up with bills and being responsible for other aspects of day-to-day civilian life difficult. Suburban Propane decided to lessen the financial burden on veterans after senior management realized how many of their colleagues had military ties, says Mark Wienberg, the company’s chief development officer.
Of Suburban Propane’s 3,600 employees, “many have family members who are veterans or are veterans themselves. Many have sons or daughters, nieces or nephews who are currently deployed. The head of human resources here is a veteran of the Marines. One guy that managed a local service center and is now overseeing our fleet and tank assets, he’s a military vet,” Wienberg says. The savings offer is “our way of giving back to those who have given for us,” he says.
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And it’s a way to reach veterans as the company ramps up recruiting efforts, offering military personnel employment opportunities. “Many, in their duty to the nation, have performed services that are similar to what we do here, driving major trucks and vehicles,” Wienberg explains. “Someone who comes back from duty could be a service technician, or an officer might run a service center.” The company is currently working with lawmakers on legislation at the state level that would streamline the licensing process for veterans who drove vehicles of a similar class overseas. “We’ll do whatever we can to assist them,” Wienberg stresses.
James Marentette, who was stationed on a Navy aircraft carrier in the 1950s, and his wife Cindy, recently signed up for the deal. The couple, who have a grandson serving in the Air Force, met in church after losing their spouses to cancer and now live together in Crossville, Tenn. Frustrated by their previous gas provider’s poor customer service, they switched to Suburban Propane two years ago at their daughter’s suggestion. The special savings for veterans has helped their pocketbooks, as they rely on fixed income from Social Security and a small pension.
“There is nothing more rewarding than serving your country. Not everyone has that privilege — and I considered it a privilege to do that. To be recognized by a company like Suburban, even in a small way, just means so much to me and so much to all of our friends too,” says Jim. “You get a lot of discounts in restaurants and things like that, but I never heard of a company that supplies utilities to homes helping vets.”
“We think it’s wonderful,” Cindy chimes in, “and we’re so thankful. It makes us feel like people really care.”
The offer is good for one delivery taken by March 31, 2016.
Tag: Homeless Veterans
This Veteran Refuses To Leave His Unemployed and Debt-Ridden Comrades Behind
When Eli Williamson returned from two deployments to the Middle East, his hometown of Chicago felt at times like a foreign battleground, the memory of desert roads more familiar than Windy City central thoroughfares. As he relearned the city, Williamson noticed a strange similarity between veterans like himself and the young people growing up in tough parts of Chicago. Too many had witnessed violence, and they had little support to cope with the trauma.
Applying the timeworn principle of leaving no soldier, sailor, airman or marine behind, Williamson co-founded Leave No Veteran Behind (LNVB), a national nonprofit focused on securing education and employment for our warriors. Williamson formed the organization based on “just real stupid” and “crazy” idealism: “You know what?” he says. “I can make a difference.” Since work began in 2008, with a measly operating budget of $4,674 to help pay off student loans, LNVB has eliminated around $150,000 of school debt and provided 750 transitional jobs, Williamson says.
“Coming out of the military, every individual is going to have his or her challenges,” says Williamson, who served as a psychological operations specialist and an Arabic linguist in Iraq in 2004 and in Afghanistan in 2007. “We’ve seen veterans with substance abuse issues, homelessness issues.” Additionally, at least one in five veterans suffer from PTSD, and almost 50,000 are homeless and 573,000 are unemployed.
Williamson started the group with his childhood friend Roy Sartin. They first met in high school, when they joined choir and band together. “I think we’ve been arguing like old women every since,” Williamson says. Both joined the U.S. Army Reserves while at Iowa’s Luther College and were mobilized to active duty during their senior year after the Twin Towers fell. Williamson finished his education at the Special Warfare Training Center at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, while Sartin put his learning on hold.
Upon return, both struggled with crippling interest rates on their student loans. Sartin received a call from the loan company saying that he needed to make a $20,000 payment. “Although I had the funds, it was just enough to get myself back together. So, for me, the transition wasn’t as tough, but I was one of the lucky ones.” Williamson got a bill for $2,200 only 22 days before the balance was due. Desperate, he took to the streets playing music to cover the costs.
After talking with other vets, the two realized that many didn’t qualify for the military’s debt repayment programs. That’s when they started going out to financial sources for “retroactive scholarships” for our country’s defenders. And they sought employment opportunities for former military members to help cover the rest.
Jobs and debt relief for our nation’s warriors are the main focus of LNVB, but the group oversees several initiatives, including S.T.E.A.M. Corps, which pairs vets with science, technology, engineering, arts, and math experience with at-risk youth. More than 200 students have graduated from S.T.E.A.M., but Williamson, director of veteran affairs at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, points to a more intangible benefit of his non-profit’s work: the ability for veterans “to articulate a larger vision of themselves … is our advocacy mission,” he says.
“Veterans can paint a vision for where our country needs to be, and the only reason we can do that is because you realize that you are part of something larger than yourself,” Williamson adds. “That’s a fundamental value that veterans can share, as they leave military, with the communities that they come back to.” For those who’ve just returned home from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, in other words, service is just beginning.
This Man Walked Away From Wall Street. Now His Pizza Parlor Is Feeding Philadelphia’s Homeless
You can’t buy much for two dollars these days, but in Philadelphia, you can feed yourself and a homeless neighbor with just a couple of bucks.
After leaving a successful Wall St. career because he found it unfulfilling, owner Mason Wartman opened Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in late 2013. He had witnessed the popularity of the one-dollar pizza joints in New York City and decided that a the concept might work in his native Philadelphia.
“I knew that we would be feeding homeless people because we’d be providing affordable food,” says Wartman. “About three months into operation, a paying customer asked if he could pre-purchase a slice for a homeless person. And so I ran out, got a stack of Post-it Notes to remind myself and the employees that we could help someone out when they came in short.”
Before long, the walls of Rosa’s became covered in Post-it Notes. Each one signifies someone who has given a dollar so that that a homeless or hungry person can enjoy a meal at no-cost. The messages on some are simple; others have drawings or a friendly letter.
Each day, a few dozen homeless people file into Rosa’s to enjoy the kindness of their neighbors. In the last year, Wartman reports that this system has provided more than 14,000 free slices for Philadelphians in need.
“This is way more rewarding than what I used to do on Wall Street,” says Wartman. “I learn a ton everyday, I meet really cool people — homeless and not homeless. I get to see a positive difference being made in a city that I really love. So, what more could I ask for, right?”
This T-Shirt Could Be the Difference Between a Veteran Having a Home and Living on the Streets
“They had our backs, let’s keep the shirts on theirs” is more than just a motto for Mark Doyle. It’s the business model on which he built Rags of Honor, his veteran-operated business.
Originally a consultant, Doyle was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 as a forensic accountant for the Army. After returning to the U.S., he saw the same men and women who had given their lives for their country struggling to survive. In fact, only one quarter of returning soldiers between the ages of 19 and 25 were employed. Even worse, many were homeless or at risk of losing their homes.
“I could never square when I got back the commitment that they made every day, with the reality of their life when they came home,” Doyle says.
Founded in 2012, Rags of Honor is a silk-screen printing company based in Chicago that provides employment and other services to veterans. In the three years since its inception, Rags of Honor has grown from four employees to 22, all but one of whom are veterans at high risk of homelessness.
To read more about Rags of Honor, click here.
The Big Easy’s Challenge to U.S. Cities: House Our Veterans
Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama flew to New Orleans to celebrate their milestone achievement of being the first major U.S. city to end veteran homelessness. In an event with the city’s leaders, Obama said the Big Easy’s success was a call to action for the rest of the country.
“You all have proven that even in a city as big as New Orleans, veteran homelessness is not a reality we have to accept. It’s not an impossible problem that is too big to be solved,” Obama said. “We want cities across this country to follow your lead.”
As we wrote earlier this year, the city at the mouth of the Mississippi River developed several initiatives that proved essential to reducing a spike in homelessness after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. An interagency council on homelessness united approximately 60 agencies under a common banner of ending veteran, chronic and family homelessness. Together, they organized active-duty military personnel into outreach teams to homeless vets and set up a referral center within the VA hospital. Touting “Housing First” and “No Wrong Door” (an initiative that allows for single point access to care), the city witnessed a rapid success: Last year, they housed 227 homeless warriors, surpassing the 193 veterans that had been counted in the previous point-in-time survey.
“To be able to give so many homeless veterans a forever home — most of them disabled and a quarter of them elderly — in such a short period of time was extremely challenging but incredibly exhilarating for all of the many partners in this effort,” Martha Kegel, the executive director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans, said at the time. “That so many veterans who have risked their lives to serve our country are left homeless, especially in their later years, shocks the conscience. To bring them home, once and for all, has been very rewarding.”
To help other cities accomplish the same goal, the First Lady announced $65 million in HUD and VA funding that will provide rental assistance for 9,300 vets, the same vouchers that helped many New Orleans fund new construction or subsidize rent to landlords. She added that The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm that owns hotel chains like Hilton, Motel 6 and La Quinta Inns and Suites, will partner with 25 cities to furnish homeless soldiers’ new apartments.
“All of us know the hard truth, that this job is never going to end,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said last week. “Tomorrow there is another veteran that will find themselves in a difficult circumstance and is going to need housing.” But now, New Orleans has procedures in place to find those vets and help them transition to housing within an average of 30 days, he added. ”We never leave a soldier on the battlefield, and we certainly never leave a soldier on the streets of America.”
One Man, His T-Shirts and an Honorable Mission to House Homeless Veterans
They had our backs. Let’s keep the shirts on theirs.
That’s the message inscribed on every piece of clothing made by Rags of Honor, a Chicago-based apparel company that employs homeless and unemployed veterans. In the time since Mark Doyle, head of a consulting firm and high school football coach, founded the business in September 2012, Rags of Honor has doubled the size of its silkscreen printing to 2,000 square feet and hired 18 employees — 15 of whom experienced homelessness. With a few large deals signed, particularly from Big Ten conference schools like New Jersey’s Rutgers University, the business printed and shipped 15,000 items last year, a number Doyle plans to increase by taking the brand national.
“My first stage is triage. Someone comes to me or I get a call that someone is in trouble or in the shelter. I hire them that day,” Doyle says. Having a job “change[s] the arcs of their lives.”
Witnessing firsthand the grisly day-to-day experience of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan while serving on a yearlong anti-corruption panel in 2010 prompted Doyle to help recent vets. “I watched billions spent building that country, while our veterans were living under bridges, in their cars and in shelters,” Doyle explains. That experience combined with his knowledge that both political campaigns and sporting events have a continual need for custom clothing made Doyle spring into action. “Driving home in my car one night, I said, ‘I’m gonna do something. I’m going to make a difference.’ I had absolutely no plan: no business plan, no marketing plan, no sales plan,” Doyle recounts. “The next morning, Rags of Honor was born.”
He went to a homeless shelter and hired his first four employees. A Marine Corps veteran helped train the crew on the machines, and a couple of willing restaurants gave them their first few orders. Registered as a low-profit L3C company, Rags of Honor produces T-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, hoodies, baseball hats and knit caps. You can purchase custom designs or the company logos repping the Second City (“Sweet Home Chicago“) or the Armed Forces (“Wear it like a badge“). All of its revenue goes to employees’ paychecks or is reinvested in the business, Doyle says.
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During a worker’s first few weeks of employment, Doyle pays for a bus card to and from the homeless shelter, but he vows to have each employee housed within three months. An associated nonprofit helps connects vets with beds, bath towels and other furniture they need for their new home — the first step in starting over. Workers also receive support from their coworkers, with whom they develop strong bonds through their shared experience as military veterans who are transitioning out of their own personal tragedies.
Tamika Holyfield, the company’s director of customer service, was a Navy gunner who spent two years in Afghanistan as a small arms weapons instructor. Back in the Windy City after being deployed, she struggled to cope with debilitating panic attacks while still raising her three boys. Unable to manage, she dropped her children off with relatives and lived in her car for seven months. “I would have the kids on the weekend and tell them we were going camping, because I had nowhere to go,” she says. Holyfield found Rags of Honor through an employment agency; Doyle hired her on the spot. “I am so happy,” she says of life, which includes living with her boys again. “Even my panic attacks are under control.”
Across the country, stories like Holyfield’s are all too familiar. The last annual survey counted nearly 50,000 homeless veterans, and many more are at risk of losing their homes. The struggle to readapt to civilian life caused unemployment rates among young veterans to peak at 29 percent in 2011. On the shores of Chicago’s Lake Michigan, as many as 1,000 vets experience homeless on any given night, according to Volunteers of America’s Illinois chapter. Last year’s point-in-time survey identified 721 homeless veterans on a single January night, a little over one-tenth of the total homeless population. One-third of the veterans — 256 homeless — had no place to sleep except outside on the streets.
Doyle says he still has little business experience in the competitive garment industry, but he has the strength of guiding principles to keep him from falling astray. “Give them a chance, and they can do everything,” he says of his employees. “I’ve hired the ones that probably no one is going to find, folks who’ve been out of work, gone through their savings and ended up in the shelter. They don’t have the means to get too many interviews or don’t have resumes, but I really believe in them.”
Doyle adds, “Two of the most profound words you can say to anybody are ‘You’re hired.’”
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Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah is entering the final stretch of its 10-year plan to end homelessness, but that doesn’t mean the state’s work is over.
The number of chronically homeless individuals has dropped from 1,932 in 2005 to 539 last year. If numbers continue to decline this year, the state will reach what’s known as a “functional zero,” meaning that Utah will have housed all the chronically homeless who will accept it and have the capacity to shelter the rest. Just like the “functional zero” economists use to calculate unemployment doesn’t include the baseline of people switching jobs, Utah won’t include in their data the minority who refuse housing, says Lloyd Pendleton, the state’s homelessness czar. “We can’t force them into housing. That’s called jail,” he notes.
Despite the Beehive State’s success, a larger population always teeters precariously on the brink. Utah’s total homeless population has grown 12.5 percent — from 11,275 to 12,685 — over the last decade. These individuals will need somewhere to stay when a landlord evicts them, when parents scream that they’re not wanted or when an abusive spouse makes them fear for their safety. So achieving functional zero doesn’t mean that Utah’s homeless shelters can close up shop tomorrow.
“We’ve demonstrated [Housing First] works. We have achieved remarkable results. Now we’ve really got to amplify and fortify our existing service delivery,” says Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, Salt Lake City’s emergency shelter.
What steps will the state’s task force take to address the broader issues surrounding homelessness?
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READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
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Meet the Courageous Man Who Has Housed 1,393 Chronically Homeless Individuals in Utah
Lloyd Pendleton is the most efficient man in Utah. By the hour, he ticks off small achievements in a pocket planner, marking progress toward long-term goals. His mind routinely calculates volumes and outputs; he thinks in returns on investments. When Pendleton speaks, you begin to suspect he’s just sifted through a file cabinet’s worth of data. But then, he tosses in one of his signature colorful aphorisms, and you realize, nope, that’s just Lloyd.
After retiring from high-ranking positions at Ford Motors and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pendleton began a second career in Utah’s Department of Workforce Services, a seemingly unglamorous government job in Salt Lake City. “I retired on a Friday and went to work with the state on Monday,” he says. As a pet project of sorts, Pendleton set an ambitious goal: To functionally eliminate chronic homelessness across Utah within 10 years. Nine years later, as Utah’s homelessness czar, he’s on track to reach that milestone by year’s end.
“He gets things done” is how his colleague Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homelessness coordinator, describes her state counterpart.
Raised on a ranch at the far western edge of Utah, Pendleton’s early experience working the land gave him a dogged work ethic and a quiet-the-bells directness. He admits he once thought street people panhandled because they were lazy. “I used to tell the homeless to get a job, because that’s all I thought they needed,” he recalls.
But later, through the Mormon Church, he was tasked with restructuring struggling food pantries, emergency shelters and other charities across the country. After working directly with the homeless, including a year on-site at Utah’s largest shelter The Road Home (then known as the Travelers Aid Society), Pendleton had a “major paradigm shift.” Viewing the homeless as his brothers and sisters, he realized that when they suffered, so did the entire community. “We’re all connected,” he now says.
Pendleton’s years of bolstering charities earned him credibility from many nonprofit executive directors. When they knew he was considering retirement, several service providers and then-Gov. Jon Huntsman began lobbying the L.D.S. Church to “loan” Pendleton out to head up the state’s nascent homelessness task force. The church agreed, and Pendleton did the job part-time for two years before committing to being its full-time director in 2006. “We got Lloyd involved before he realized,” one executive director says.
Described by one Salt Lake City social worker as a “voracious reader and researcher,” Pendleton started by signing up for conferences on the latest strategies. While at one in Chicago in 2003, he learned about the 10-year plans to end homelessness taking shape around the country, and he heard the buzz about an innovative idea called “Housing First.” Two years later, after a conference in Las Vegas, Pendleton started chatting up a fellow passenger on the airport shuttle: Sam Tsemberis, considered the originator of the “Housing First” model.
Tsemberis explained how Pathways to Housing (the organization he founded in New York City in 1992) threw out drug tests and waiting lists — the old trappings of getting someone “housing ready.” Instead, the homeless were moved into apartments in Manhattan and Westchester County, N.Y., within two weeks. “You’re curing the housing problem first. You cure the person later,” Tsemberis explained. After its first five years, 88 percent of tenants had stayed in the program’s housing — double the rate for the city’s step-by-step rehab programs. “Recovery starts when you have something you care about, a place where you can go,” he added. Pendleton took an instant liking to Tsemberis and together, they convinced Utah lawmakers and foundations to take a chance on “Housing First.”
Just because it worked in New York City, however, didn’t mean the program would be a fit for Utah. During one tense early meeting, a contractor worried about his reputation almost backed out of building 100 units. As Pendleton listened, a thought came to him: why not test a small pilot program consisting of 25 of the toughest, most distressed people? The idea partially came from a truism he learned on the ranch while chopping kindling for their wood-burning stove: “Chop the big end of the log first.” In other words, if you can house the most chronically homeless, you can house anybody.
The task force gathered the best case managers, convinced landlords across the city to participate and handed over keys to 17 people. “I felt the sweat on my forehead, and I know others did too,” recalls Matt Minkevitch, the executive director of The Road Home, a Salt Lake City shelter. “You’d give each other a casual smile and say, ‘We’ll work through it, okay?’ But they couldn’t hear your stomach growling, hear you praying under your breath,… and just hoping, hoping that you don’t hurt people and damage all these important programs.”
The first night, Pendleton recounts, one man placed all his belongings on the bed and curled up on the floor to sleep. The following few nights, he dozed outside, near a dumpster. Finally, after several days, he moved in and slept on the bed. Housing isn’t “rehabilitation,” Pendleton noted, “because so many of them were never habilitated to begin with. You are creating new lives for them.” With the exception of one person who died, all the tenants remained in housing 21 months later.
Pendleton isn’t striving for prestige or fame in solving an ill that blights much of urban America. He just likes ideas that work, and he wants to see them take root, regardless of who sows the first seed. “Housing First” isn’t unique to the Beehive State, but Pendleton’s precise methods are a primary reason why Utah’s rates of chronic homelessness are so low. The fingerprints of his orderly approach can be spotted all over the 10-year plan: its clear articulation of vision, its far-reaching collaboration and its experimental pilot projects.
According to Pendleton, every action must answer this question: Does this help the homeless into housing or not? “If you don’t have a crystal-clear vision about the homeless situation, then you just muddle along. You get poor results. You’re not getting people housed,” he says.
For Utah to solve such an intractable social problem, it also had to find support beyond the traditional partnerships. Pendleton’s résumé helped win the involvement of the business community and the L.D.S. Church, one of the most influential forces in the region. Their monetary contributions and participation in programs like job placement meant even “more and more people carrying the load with the county, city and state,” Pendleton tells the Deseret News. And once the strategy had been distilled, all those agencies focused their individual expertise on a specific aspect of the problem.
Despite playing different instruments, “We have been pretty much on the same sheet of music in the symphony,” Pendleton says of the collaboration.
To meet the goal Pendleton first dreamed of a decade ago, Utah still needs to house approximately 539 chronically homeless and 200 homeless veterans, according to the latest comprehensive report — far fewer than the 1,932 chronically homeless on the streets when he first started.
Pretty good for an “encore career,” don’t you think?
READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Crystal Spencer desperately needed a home for her three little girls. A single mother in her thirties, Spencer had lost her job at a Utah gas station and, in the twilight of the Great Recession, couldn’t find work elsewhere. Notices stacked up from her landlord, utility companies and bank.
“It was overwhelming. I just couldn’t keep up,” Spencer recalls. “I moved out because I knew I couldn’t do it.” She loaded her daughters — just babies at the time — into the back of her Dodge Durango and went to The Road Home, an emergency shelter just west of downtown Salt Lake City. As Utah’s largest shelter, its interior consists of a stripped-down dormitory. Plastic-covered mattresses on bunk beds can sleep more than 200 men each night, and its bathroom stalls, as a safety measure, don’t have doors. Spencer’s family had the small privilege of staying in a room closed off from the main beds, but she said it was “very uncomfortable” not having any privacy. Fearful of who was coming in and out the shelter, she never let her girls wander from her side.
In any number of American cities, Spencer would be required to jump through bureaucratic hoops — prove you’re sober, get a job, never miss a meeting — before her family would receive assistance. But in Utah, “Housing First,” an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, now prevails. Because of it, Spencer quickly moved to a two-bedroom apartment at Palmer Court, an old hotel renovated into 200 units and opened by The Road Home in 2009. In the 13 months since, she’s caught up on all her debts and is on a waiting list for a Section 8 housing voucher. She decorated the apartment with framed pictures of her daughters — Sandra, 4, a nimble athlete fond of doing handstands on the living room recliner; Sierra, 2, a gregarious dancer and singer; and Phoenix, 1, a quiet observer — and the paintings they made at the on-site Head Start classroom.
“It was very difficult being homeless…[My kids] didn’t really understand what was going on. They still don’t,” Spencer says. “Right now, I am trying to go forward with my life, so I can move out and get a place of my own. The only thing I see myself doing is taking care of my kids. Hopefully, in my own house.”
Utah’s initiative isn’t just for hardworking moms like Spencer: it’s helping veterans haunted by war, the mentally ill, alcoholics and drug addicts. “Homelessness itself turns out to be a big barrier to all kinds of things, whether it is trying to get a job or trying to get an education or stop a drug addiction,” Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at The National Alliance To End Homelessness, tells Mic.
As the decade-long plan initiated by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman wraps up this year, the Beehive State’s “Housing First” program has already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by this time next year.
Media coverage ranging from The New Yorker to The Daily Show has pointed out that “Housing First” is a no-brainer. In reality, however, it’s been a herculean task 10 years in the making.
When the plan rolled out in 2005, Utah counted 1,932 chronically homeless adults. These individuals composed only 14 percent of the state’s total homeless population, but they were consuming the majority of agencies’ scarce resources. For instance, The Road Home found that the small group of chronically homeless used 60 percent of the shelter’s beds, according to executive director Matt Minkevitch. “Once we saw that, we really wanted to move forward.”
In Utah, a homeless person relying on shelters and soup kitchens costs the community $19,200, while the expenses of permanent housing and case management run just $7,800. For some, the price of law enforcement and medical expenses is astounding: One chronically homeless individual in Salt Lake City, for example, racked up $563,000 in emergency room charges in 2010; another had hospital bills that almost topped $1 million over three years.
Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homeless services coordinator since 2013, says the state jumped into action when service providers realized they couldn’t rely on “diminishing resources” from the federal government. “If you put someone in a house, it’s half the cost of that person receiving services in the shelter. So why not put them in housing?” Buehler asks. “It’s not only giving them security, you can also help more people.”
Housing First’s backers are quick to note that they’re not giving away apartments for free: the new tenants have to abide by lease agreements (a handful have been evicted) and contribute $50 or 30 percent of their income to rent each month (whichever amount is greater).
For every 10 chronically homeless people housed through the program, eight are still in rapid rehousing units and one has moved on to other stable housing.
Minkevitch, a former hotel manager who migrated to the nonprofit sector to help “the weariest of travelers” at The Road Home, says the state’s success has taken even the most experienced caseworkers by surprise. “I know people who have been in this field for years, in this line of work for like 20 years, and as they were talking about clients, their eyes would light up like at Christmas,” he says. “They’d just laugh like it was the funniest, most beautiful joke, sitting here right under our nose all this time: we’d always known if a person has a home, they’re not homeless.”
READ MORE:
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
This City Thought It Would Take Five Years to House Homeless Vets. They Did It a Year Ahead of Schedule
Standing at a podium before New Orleans’s bigwigs was an unusual place for a homeless veteran — or as he corrected the presenter at the press conference, “a former homeless vet.” Now living in permanent housing, he thanked the audience “for possibly saving my life, cus I don’t know if I could have survived another night on the street. … On behalf of all homeless veterans, I want to thank you.”
This month, New Orleans succeeded in becoming one of the first major U.S. cities to house every single homeless veteran.
In a collaboration unprecedented in scope, government agencies and nonprofits united around one common goal of housing at least 193 veterans, the number of homeless in New Orleans that were counted at the last point-in-time survey. Together, almost a year ahead of schedule, they exceeded that goal, placing 227 veterans into apartments in 2014.
“Veteran homelessness is an important and challenging issue, and we are very proud of our accomplishment today in New Orleans,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at the city’s World War II Museum. “We owe our veterans our eternal gratitude for their service and sacrifice to this nation and making sure they have a place to call home is a small but powerful way we can show our appreciation.”
New Orleans’s undertaking began in 2011 with the creation of a 10-year plan to end chronic and family homelessness and a 5-year goal for ending veteran homelessness. (In May 2012, there were 570 veterans living on the streets.) The city was still reeling from Katrina’s destruction: nearly 11,600 people were living on the streets in 2007 and many neighborhoods had yet to rebuild. One of the key advances was the formation of an interagency council, a centralized effort that would unite all five-dozen partner agencies and service providers — from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development all the way down to Ozanam Inn, a local shelter — in what New Orleans refers to as a “continuum of care.” It also includes a committee of active duty military (a group that could quickly establish trust) who scoured the streets locating homeless vets and helping those in transition make the move into new housing.
This collaboration streamlined services for veterans, particularly after a referral center, which served as a day shelter and offered case management, opened up inside the V.A. hospital in 2013. Locating assistance in the hospital not only made it easily accessible for struggling vets, it also advertises its services for those who may one day need help. It’s still the only center of its type in the country.
“This initiative, which has addressed the immediate needs of our city’s homeless veterans while creating a structure for the future, is a testament to the strength of the partnerships that have been forged among government, nonprofit, and private entities as we work together to rebuild a stronger, more sustainable New Orleans,” says City Councilmember Susan Guidry.
In 2013, almost $5 million became available through HUD’s HOME program, which pays for the construction of affordable housing or rental assistance for low-income tenants, and the city earmarked much of that money to combat overall homelessness. Using those funds and vouchers provided through the Department of Veterans Affairs, New Orleans asked landlords to list affordable rentals in one online database. Veterans were given homes without any conditions since the city endorsed “Housing First” and “No Wrong Door,” which aligns caregivers with shared information to help them obtain any needed service, regardless of which door they show up at first.
Since then, New Orleans has pushed local businesses to prioritize hiring veterans and has set up a criminal court that can respond to their unique situation, among many other cutting–edge innovations.
“To be able to give so many homeless veterans a forever home — most of them disabled and a quarter of them elderly — in such a short period of time was extremely challenging but incredibly exhilarating for all of the many partners in this effort,” says Martha Kegel, the executive director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans. “That so many veterans who have risked their lives to serve our country are left homeless, especially in their later years, shocks the conscience. To bring them home, once and for all, has been very rewarding.”
Although veterans may continue to experience homelessness because of poverty or disability, New Orleans has reached a “functional zero,” which means every known homeless veteran has been housed permanently or is on the way to a designated apartment.
Last summer, after First Lady Michelle Obama issued a challenge for cities to end veteran homelessness by 2015, all the New Orleans’s groups involved redoubled their efforts. While Binghamton, N.Y., (pop. 46,400) was technically the first, New Orleans’s feat has yet to be replicated in a major metropolis.
“Quite simply, the men and women who have defended our freedom deserve to return to the American Dream. Far too often we as a nation have failed them in that regard,” says Jared Brossett, another city councilmember. “The fact that New Orleans is on the leading edge of ending veteran homelessness is something of which we should all be proud.”
While Phoenix and Salt Lake City ended chronic homelessness last year after a friendly competition (spoiler: Phoenix won), both western cities are still working towards eradicating veteran homelessness altogether. Los Angeles, Chicago and Wichita, as well as 300 other mayors, six governors and some 70 county officials across the nation are all hoping to house all the homeless veterans in their towns by the year’s end.
Some observers have doubted whether New Orleans’s recent veterans housing push is a sustainable solution, stressing that preventive measures like counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder could keep them off the street in the first place. Those groups want to see a shuttered hospital reopened as a facility to treat mental illness.
Mayor Landrieu readily admits, “The work of ending veteran homelessness is never really done.”
But in response to the huge task, Landrieu announced a new “rapid response model” at the same time he celebrated his city’s hard-won success. This system will centralize “all available local, state and federal resources” and link veterans on the brink with active duty and former soldiers, essentially “utilizing veterans to help veterans.”
There’s also a structure now in place to ensure no vet will fall through the cracks: The mayor promised any veteran who loses his housing will be housed within an average of 30 days.
The city’s milestone has galvanized advocates across the country, far beyond this corner of southern Louisiana. As of the last count on a single January night last year, veteran homelessness nationwide has declined by one-third since 2010, but 49,933 vets still lacked safe and stable housing.
“This remarkable achievement is significant to the entire nation — to every state and community that has the will to end veteran homelessness before the end of 2015,” says Laura Green Zeilinger, the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness who’s coordinating policy among 19 federal agencies. “New Orleans, by answering the call that it must be done, proved to all of us that eliminating veteran homelessness can and will be done.” And after that? Let’s “build on this success to end homelessness for all Americans,” Zeilinger adds.