Our homeless rehousing system was recently awarded 50 additional HUD-VASH housing vouchers. HUD-VASH stands for Housing and Urban Development – Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing, a partnership between the VA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD provides housing vouchers, and the VA provides case management and other services.
This type of voucher was the main vehicle used to house the 140 veterans we housed in our first Veterans Housing Challenge, which began in May 2019. Cumulatively, since the beginning of that challenge, and despite the intervening and ongoing global pandemic, Dallas and Collin Counties’ homeless rehousing system housed over 420 veterans through November 2020!
The Dallas VA’s official 2019 Veterans Housing Challenge “Thermometer”
Now, while it is phenomenal that we housed those more than 420 veterans, ending veteran homelessness will not be achieved merely by housing all veterans who are currently experiencing homelessness, though that is definitely a prerequisite to reaching that goal.
What really sets the 81 communities and 3 states who have effectively ended veteran homelessness apart from those who have not is that they have built and continue to sustain, “systems that can effectively and efficiently address veterans’ housing crises in the future.“
That is where we are headed in 2021. It involves a lot of hard, quotidian, and methodical work behind the scenes, but through our system transformation we are confident that we will get there.
