VA Highlights Its Pioneering Housing Programs

Fourteen years ago, Army veteran Jocelyn Payton was grieving the death of her mother, who was then living in a retirement community.  Her mother’s death had left Payton homeless because she was too young to take over her mother’s apartment in a community reserved for those over 65.For a while, Payton oscillated between staying with her sister and sleeping in her car. Then, during a VA appointment, staff asked if she had stable housing. She confessed that she didn’t. Within a month, she’d been enrolled in a joint program, run by the VA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  The HUD-VA Supportive Housing Program (HUD-VASH, provided Payton with a voucher that got her into a nice apartment in North Carolina where she’s lived ever since.“Don’t be ashamed because sometimes bad situations happen and it’s out of your control,” Payton recently told the VA for a blog post. “You can get help and get back on your feet.”Thanks to sustained work by HUD, VA, and the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the number of homeless veterans has dropped by 52 percent since 2010. Over the last year alone, the federal government permanently housed more than 46,000 veterans –surpassing the year’s goal by nearly 23 percent.To learn more about veteran homeless and VA’s housing programs, check out past work on the topic by VHPI Policy Analyst Jasper Craven. Also check out the chapter on VA’s homelessness programs in fellow VHPI Fellow Suzanne Gordon's book Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans.