At MDHA, we are passionate about ending homelessness. If there is one thing we are extra passionate about, it is ending veteran homelessness. In our 2020 Homeless Count, we identified 360 veterans experiencing homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties. That is 360 too many.
On February 19, 2020, at a press conference led by Dallas City Council Member Chad West and attended by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and all members of the Dallas City Council, we officially launched our second Veterans Housing Challenge to End Homelessness, under the banner No Buddy Left Behind, which alludes to the American military tradition of never leaving a comrade behind enemy lines.
Dallas City Council Member Chad West speaking at the February 19, 2020 press conference (Courtesy of Tom Fox, Dallas Morning News)
This came on the heels of our 2019 Veterans Housing Challenge to End Homelessness, when working with DHA, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), we helped end 140 Dallas and Collin Counties homeless veterans’ homelessness.
Little did we know, in February, that less than four weeks later a once in a lifetime global pandemic would throw a monkey wrench into this effort. Though by the time everything shut down in mid-March we had already ended the homelessness of 35 veterans, we had to adjust our plans.
We had a new challenge on our hands. As society ground to a halt, we needed to get veterans off the streets and out of reduced capacity shelters to ensure their health and safety. We worked with the VA, as well as our CoC member organizations, Endeavors and American GI Forum to get veterans into emergency housing in hotels, with the goal of transitioning them into permanent housing. We haven’t stopped working on this ever since.
MDHA’s role, as the backbone organization of the homeless rehousing system, is to ensure that our partners work cohesively together. In the context of ending veteran homelessness, it is up to Alex Abraham, MDHA’s Programs Manager, to hold the vision, maintain the focus on the big picture, improve processes and workflow, facilitate meetings and build closer collaborative relationships between service providers, and analyze data to improve outcomes.
Alex Abraham, MDHA Programs Manager
And, as our President and CEO, Carl Falconer, himself an eight year U.S. Army veteran, has often reminded us, it is not only important to house veterans now, but to learn and improve the system, so we can house even more in the future.
One of the most important weapons in this battle is the By Name List. A By Name List is exactly what it sounds like: It is a list of our homeless veterans. There is simply no substitute to going down the list name by name, with our partners, to figure out how to house each and every veteran, crossing them off the list as we do, one by one.
So, how did we and our partners do so far? Since March 13, 2020, when everything shut down, 126 veterans were housed in various housing programs! This number does not even include those veterans who self-resolved their homelessness. Looking back further, since November 3, 2019, that number rises to 198.
Do you think we are satisfied? Far from it. As Council Member West said back in February, “Ending veteran homelessness is an achievable goal.” This is why, one of the three main goals of our homeless rehousing system’s system transformation is to join 79 other communities and 3 states and effectively end veteran homelessness by 2021.
We won’t stop there, though. Our Board Chair, Karen Hughes, President and CEO of our CoC member organization, Vogel Alcove, drove this message home at that same February press conference, “There’s a bigger message here we don’t want to forget… We can do this for every single homeless person… in this city.” That is what our system transformation work is all about. That is why we, at MDHA, the backbone organization of our homeless rehousing system, do what we do, each and every day.
