Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who played a pivotal role in bringing down the system of Apartheid, was once asked to explain how massive system change was even possible. “How does one go about eating an elephant?” he said, “You eat it one bite at a time.”
This is what we have been doing since May 2019, when we launched our first Veterans Housing Challenge. Since then, 705 veterans have ended their homelessness.
The elephant in our case is veteran homelessness. You might think that the “bites” we refer to are the individual veterans. Not entirely. Though housing each veteran is wonderful, our system and workgroups’ focus is on learning and continuous improvement.
Effectively ending veteran homelessness does not mean that no veteran ever becomes homeless. It means that we have housed every veteran we can, our supply of units available to quickly rehouse veterans exceeds demand, and most importantly we have a well-functioning and continuously improving system that can quickly and permanently house any veteran that becomes homeless.
That is where we are going in 2021, and that is truly the best part.
