Veteran Homelessness

The RE!NSTITUTE and the 100,000 Homes Campaign worked together and organized RE!NSTITUTE Housing Bootcamps that brought together cross-agency teams from over 50 cities.  Each team launched a 100-Day Challenge aimed at accelerating local efforts to move chronically homeless Veterans into permanent housing. Apart from the Veterans Administration, this work was sponsored by a number of federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness. The work also received funding from the Chase, Starr, and Home Depot Foundations.

Each participating city set out to drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for chronically homeless veterans to be housed.

RESULTS

45 community teams improved on average by 124%, meaning the average community more than doubled their housing placement rate in less than 100 days. These results were achieved by making data-driven decisions, working differently as a team, and improving the systematic response.

In March 2014, RE!NSTITUTE helped to launch a multi-year, multi-agency effort to help 25 communities across the United States end Veteran Homelessness by December 2015. The 25 Cities Initiative was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and we were honored to partner with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, Community Solutions, Atlas Research, and local community partners in working to meet this ambitious, yet believable goal.

In order to make a significant impact, our federal partners selected 25 Cities across the country with the highest populations of homeless Veterans. They included Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Riverside, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver, Houston, Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.  Along with our partners at Community Solutions and Atlas Research, we worked with these cities through September 2016 to accelerate their housing of homeless Veterans and chronically homeless individuals. Our aim was to help each city build, test, and strengthen more coordinated and integrated systems at the local level, which led to more efficient use of time and resources to reach the goal of ending veteran homelessness.  

RESULTS

The number of Veterans experiencing homelessness in the 25 cities decreased by 47% from 2013-2016, compared with a 27% decrease in other cities in the US. The following factors that make this 20 percentage point gain even more impressive are:

• There were no additional program funds with the 25 Cities Initiative, just coaching support, so cities do more with what they have.
• The 25 cities that were part of the 25 Cities Initiative were not self-selected. Also, they were chosen in part because they were cities that had the largest inflow of Veterans into homelessness.
• Despite this, there was a 20 percentage point lift compared to comparable cities that did not participate in the initiative!

In September 2014, we launched four teams from communities across the State of Virginia in partnership with the Virginia Department of Veterans Services and Community Solutions. In 100 days, these four communities housed 462 Veterans and laid the groundwork for collaborative partnerships in their own communities and across the state. Governor Terry McCauliffe later credited this 100-Day statewide effort as the catalyst for putting the state on the path to becoming the first state in the US to officially end Veterans' homelessness in November 2015.

We partnered with four communities in Connecticut (Greater Hartford, New London County, Windham County, and Fairfield County) to help them improve the coordinated access networks for homeless services. The networks bring together Federal, State, and local resources with local providers to help them better coordinate their services. Such networks ensure that all families and individuals struggling to find stable housing are paired quickly and efficiently matched to the most appropriate supports within the community. The networks also help minimize gaps in service and eliminate duplication of services across providers. This was part of a state-wide effort to end Veteran and Chronic Homelessness by 2016, and after 100 days - over 460 Veterans were safely and stably housed.

In February 2016, we launched six teams from communities across the State of North Carolina in partnership with the Operation Home Task Force. Those communities included:  Asheville/Buncombe County; Brunswick, New Hanover, and Pender Counties; Gaston, Lincoln, and Cleveland Counties; Onslow County; Rowan County; and the Triangle Area (Durham, Wake, and Orange Counties).  

Operation Home Task Force is a committee of the Governor's Working Group on Veterans and Their Families and is led by The North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness (NCCEH). During the 100 days in these six communities, 277 veterans exited homelessness, and insights from this work were spread throughout the state. A report can be found here. 

The work was sponsored and funded by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Virginia Department of Veteran Services, North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness, and supported by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, The National Alliance to End Homelessness, and the National League of Cities.

This work was led nationally in partnership with the 100,000 Homes Campaign, Community Solutions, and Atlas Research and engaged hundreds of local service providers in communities across the nation. 

Visit our YouTube page to watch Part 1 and Part 2 of the 100-Day Challenges on Ending Veteran Homelessness.