In 2016, Connecticut was certified as the first state to end veteran homelessness, but the number has since crept back up to 191
by Jamil Ragland
As the number of veterans experiencing homelessness continues to rise across the country, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced changes to how it calculates income for disabled veterans to help them qualify for housing assistance programs.
“There is not a single valid reason that any veteran should be homeless in America,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, said at a press conference Friday morning in Hartford about the HUD changes. “And yet, until now, federal policies actually promoted veteran homelessness because they counted disability benefits going to veterans for purposes of judging whether they should receive housing assistance. In other words, their veteran’s benefits counted against their receiving veteran’s homeless assistance for housing vouchers. We’re ending that policy. We’re righting a wrong, a miscarriage of fairness and justice for our veterans.”
Under previous rules, disability benefits that veterans received through the Department of Veterans Affairs were counted as income. For some veterans, even though they were homeless, these benefits prevented them from qualifying for assistance through the Housing and Urban Development-Department of Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program (HUD-VASH) because the benefits placed them above income limits for the program.
HUD will adopt an alternative definition of annual income for applicants and participants of the HUD-VASH program that excludes veterans’ service-connected disability benefits when determining eligibility. The alternative definition may be adopted by other housing subsidy programs to help make more veterans eligible.
“The days of a Veteran having to choose between getting the VA benefits they deserve and the housing support they need are finally over,” said VA Secretary Denis McDonough in a statement when the changes were announced earlier this month. “This is a critical step forward that will help Veterans nationwide – and bring us one step closer to our ultimate goal of putting an end to Veteran homelessness for good.”
Other changes include requiring public housing agencies that administer HUD-VASH vouchers to set the initial income eligibility for veterans at 80% of Area Median Income, rather than 50% of Area Median Income. HUD has also awarded $20 million to be made available for additional administrative fee funding to 245 public housing agencies in 43 states currently administering HUD-VASH vouchers.
Housing advocates celebrated the change as an important one to keep up the momentum in the battle against veteran homelessness.
“Today goes a long way in setting a priority for our veterans here in Connecticut, but also as the Senator said, across our country,” said Sharon Castelli, CEO of the Chrysalis Center. “Veterans should not need to choose between receiving VA benefits and having access to affordable housing. Those veterans receiving HUD-VASH benefits will now have exclusions regarding these benefits when determining their housing eligibility.”
Anastacia Woolcock, director of housing at Journey Home and co-chair of a coordinated access network that deals specifically with veteran homelessness, spoke about the challenges she’s seen firsthand regarding helping veterans find housing.
“Over the past years, in these [coordinated access network] meetings, we have realized that a lot of vets are accepted for a VASH voucher, but then return to our system because of many barriers,” she said. “And the most common barrier is income. They exceed the income threshold. So we’re essentially matching them to an opportunity, letting them know that they might have this housing opportunity, but then returning them back to homelessness, back to the streets, which is unacceptable.”
In 2016, Connecticut was certified as the first state to end veteran homelessness. However, the COVID pandemic upended some of that progress. As the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased, so has the number of veterans experiencing homelessness. According to the latest point-in-time count, a measure taken during the last week of January of the number of people experiencing homelessness in the state on a given day, 191 veterans were experiencing homelessness.
“Chronic homelessness among veterans was said to be eradicated,” Blumenthal said Friday. “In my view, it was simply made less visible. It has continued to exist. Let’s be very blunt and real. We need to face the facts. And homelessness generally has risen over the past year because of a shortage of affordable housing.”
Blumenthal said that the federal government needs more effective, stronger policies to encourage the development of affordable housing.
“We have proposed housing programs, investment in more housing, providing more subsidies, more tax breaks, and more encouragement for towns and municipalities to welcome more affordable housing. So it has to be a comprehensive, overarching federal investment generally in affordable housing, not only for Veterans Affordable Housing.”