VA Provides Largest, Integrated Network for Homeless Veterans
Frances Murphy, M.D., M.P.H., deputy undersecretary for health policy coordination at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), testified before a congressional committee in March 2000 that the VA is “the only federal agency that provides substantial hands-on assistance directly to homeless persons.... [Its] major homeless programs constitute the largest integrated network of homeless assistance programs in the country.” These are among its programs:
Health Care for Homeless Veterans, which provides outreach, physical and psychiatric examinations, treatment, and case management to veterans with psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. Veterans can receive residential treatment in community-based treatment facilities. | |||||
Domiciliary Care for Homeless Veterans Program, which provides psychiatric and other medical care to veterans in residential settings at VA medical centers. Staff also provide vocational counseling and postdischarge supportive services. | |||||
HUD-VA Supported Housing Program, a joint program between the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the VA in which HUD provides vouchers for use by “harder-to-serve” homeless veterans in the private housing market, and the VA provides outreach, clinical care, and case-management services. | |||||
Grant and Per Diem Program, which offers funds to community-based organizations for construction, acquisition, or renovation of facilities that can provide supportive transitional housing and for operational costs. | |||||
Stand Downs, which are run by local organizations and offer homeless veterans one to three days in which they can obtain food, shelter, clothing, benefits certification, and referral to other kinds of services. | |||||
Veterans Industries, in which disadvantaged, at-risk, and homeless veterans live in supervised group homes while working for pay in VA-supported positions in the public and private sectors. | |||||
Community Homelessness Assessment, Local Education, and Networking Groups, in which VA staff work with other federal, state, and local agencies and nonprofit organizations to assess the needs of homeless veterans and develop plans to meet them; | |||||
Taken as a whole, the VA's programs are designed to provide a continuum of care for homeless veterans. That care includes outreach and clinical assessment, rehabilitation in community-based contracted residential treatment, and case management that supports independent living.
Through the Northeast Program Evaluation Center, the VA conducts the country's most extensive and long-standing program of monitoring and evaluating data concerning homeless individuals and the programs that serve them, according to Murphy.
