Update: Since this article was written, all budget cuts to homeless services in DC have been restored.  Friendship Place's Homeless Veteran's Initiative continues to advocate for homeless veterans in DC, and would still like to see the execution of the five-year Strategic Action Plan to End Homelessness.

A crossroads for DC's homeless programs

Geoff Millard

With its 2012 budget, D.C. sits at a crossroads. Will the District pursue a new vision for homeless services, as laid out in detail in the five-year Strategic Action Plan to End Homelessness that the Council approved a year ago?  Or will the D.C. government, in the name of budget cutting, abandon all efforts to implement proven, cost-effective and humane solutions to homelessness?

The talk we are hearing from our elected officials right now is alarming. Cutting programs to save money is the name of the game. We know this path; it is well worn at the Federal level. But D.C. does have a choice. Merely cutting programs as an end goal makes no sense. If the goal is to save money, then why spend on programs at all?

The fact is that we do care, as a people, about our neighbors. Our goal with regard to our homeless neighbors should be to see them off the streets and in housing.

In other words, to end homelessness.

In this time of fiscal crisis, we should turn to the Strategic Action Plan for guidance. It offers a practical blueprint for ending homelessness with services that D.C. taxpayers can afford.

A quick glance at the numbers may shock those who think that funding homeless services would add to D.C.’s fiscal problems. Studies have shown that the cost of providing services to someone living on the streets is actually greater than the cost of housing that individual.
For example, a study from Los Angeles – home to ten percent of the nation’s homeless population – found that placing four chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing saved the city more than $80,000 per year in reduced emergency services, hospitalizations and incarcerations.

Yes, it does make sense to be fiscally frugal. So, why not cut the band-aid approach altogether in favor of permanent solutions?  This would save D.C. taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run.

Beyond dollars and cents, we have a moral obligation to consider those who would be devastated by the defunding of homeless services. Veterans, for example, make up a disproportionate percentage of the homeless population. How can we tell those who sacrificed for us that they are too costly to house?

In the next month, our elected officials will be making budget decisions with enormous consequences for D.C.’s homeless residents. We urge them to act with bold leadership, guided by both a vision to end homelessness and fiscal responsibility.

Thanks to HVI's tireless efforts, Congress has allocated 7,500 HUD VASH vouchers. We consider this a partial victory as we were pushing for the full 10,000 (as noted in the below article). What this does show is that advocacy matters, and we can push elected officials to carry out the will of the people. HVI will work to ensure that DC receives as many of the vouchers as possible, as we continue to end homelessness among veterans in our nation's capital.

Keep an eye out for more opinion editorials published by HVI in the months to come!

How much should we sacrifice?
A case to fund the VA in an age of massive budget cuts

Geoff Millard

You can't turn on the TV right now without hearing of massive budget shortfalls carrying with them massive cuts in spending. Shared sacrifice is a line that will soon follow any talk of cuts. But how much are we going to ask veterans to sacrifice? Haven’t they already made their sacrifice?

Only about two percent of citizens in the US have served in our two ongoing wars, one of which is now the longest war in US history. While the general public was told to spend in the wake of 9/11, service members and their families were preparing for war. As 98 percent of Americans were spending their way out of the grief accompanying the most traumatic attack on American soil, the other two percent were headed down a road of multiple tours, an epidemic of suicide, and, yes, homelessness.

One out of every three homeless men in the US are veterans and on any given night over 100,000 veterans will sleep on the streets. More Vietnam veterans will be sleeping on the streets tonight then died in South East Asia.

If we allow cuts to programs that should be expanding, the same could be true very soon for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

One lesser known provision of HR1 (the budget passed by the House) eliminates funding for the next round in the HUD-VASH voucher program. This permanent supportive housing (PSH) program has been tremendously successful in reducing the number of veterans living in homelessness. These vouchers are targeted at the most vulnerable of the vets living on the streets and are key to the reason why here in the District of Columbia, during the past year, homelessness among veterans has gone down more than 14 percent while homelessness overall went up 17 percent.

Many are now saying that these cuts will not affect the housing of veterans because the 10,000 vouchers funded in FY 2010 have still not been used. But in DC (as in many other municipalities) those vouchers have been used and in fact DC is on pace to house all released vouchers in the next two months. The DC VA has led the way by partnering with the DC government to implement the program, a model now being duplicated elsewhere.

Some criticism of HUD-VASH is warranted. In particular, the VA has not always targeted vouchers to the most vulnerable, in some cases distributing vouchers to veterans who could find housing through other means while leaving on the streets veterans with serious mental and physical illnesses and disabilities. But the VA could easily adjust their policy to address this issue. Here again, DC is leading the way. The DC VA has implemented a vulnerability index to ensure that vouchers are given first to those who are at greatest risk. The rest of the country should follow suit.

Beyond moral arguments, housing homeless veterans saves the taxpayers money in the long run by drastically reducing the use of emergency rooms and other costly services that people who are homeless turn to at times when they are merely seeking a meal or warm bed.

If we are really going to end homelessness among veterans we should be expanding HUD-VASH in combination with homelessness prevention programs like the Homeless Prevention Rapid Rehousing Program (HPRP) in the 2010 stimulus bill. And don't veterans deserve housing with all that they have already sacrificed?  How much more sacrifice can we ask of those who were willing to give all for this country?

Geoff Millard is the Director of the Homeless Veterans Initiative with the Community Council for the Homeless at Friendship Place. He is also a disabled Iraq veteran who served in the military for nine years.

Friendship Place Offers Expertise to Federal Task Force

A year ago, the Obama Administration issued a plan that aims to end homelessness among veterans by 2015. Action couldn’t be more urgently needed: one in six homeless adults in the U.S. is a veteran, and veterans remain homeless longer, on average, than other people who experience homelessness.

Thanks in part to the work of Friendship Place’s Homeless Veterans Initiative (HVI), homelessness among veterans has decreased here in the District in the past two years, even as it has increased among the general population. In January, our executive director, Jean-Michel Giraud, and our HVI director, Geoff Millard, were asked to join a Federal-level working group, the Veterans Signature Initiative where they are helping to develop the District as a model city for services that work quickly and effectively to bring veterans in off the streets.

Since March of 2010, Geoff has been helping to shape policy at the local level through his work on a steering committee set up by the D.C. VA Medical Center to find better ways to serve homeless veterans. “Geoff has provided us with a lot of assistance with respect to policy questions,” said Maria Llorente, Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health at the D.C. VA. “He’s always thinking of the big picture, and his insightful questions have led us to go back and look at some of our earlier initiatives in greater depth.” For example, she said, Geoff successfully encouraged the VA to bring in other agencies to offer services at the VA’s resource center for veterans who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. As a result, homeless veterans can now access an entire spectrum of services at one time, from health care to housing.

While he’s been working at the local level, Geoff has also been a fearless advocate on Capitol Hill, pressing Members of Congress to allocate the funding needed to end veterans homelessness nationwide. He concedes this is tough work when budget cuts are on the table in every area. But as an Iraq War veteran himself, his argument is clear: “Veterans have already made tremendous sacrifices for our country. They shouldn’t be asked to sacrifice more.”

September 30, 2010

Geoffrey Millard is an Iraq veteran who has served for 9 years in the US military.  He holds a B.A. in American Studies from SUNY Buffalo where he also taught American Pluralism.  Growing up in Buffalo, Geoff saw poverty, addiction, abuse, and homelessness firsthand, escaping this life when he entered the military at 17 years old.

Since his return from Iraq, Geoff has worked on veterans' care by being involved with Iraq Veterans Against the War and helping to start a veterans peer support group that is now functioning across the country.  As Director of the Homeless Veterans Initiative, Geoff sees the potential to help all veterans by making sure that none of his comrades in arms will be living on the streets of the nation's capital.