Efforts to support homeless veterans in Massachusetts are getting a boost from the Healey administration – part of a broader effort to solve the problem all together.
$6.7 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act is being split among organizations across the Commonwealth to “enhance outreach and case-management services aimed at eradicating veteran homelessness in Massachusetts.”
That’s according to the administration of Governor Maura Healey, which announced the funding and a list of grantees earlier this month, on July 11.
“This is an initiative under the broader End Veteran Homelessness initiative,” said Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll. “That means supporting that person-to-person work - this is the stuff that's on the ground, ensuring that we're in communities, going to where our homeless vets may be, and to then provide permanently safe housing options for these folks.”
It comes months after the governor’s office announced the initiative and campaign in March.
The latest $6.7 million in funding is part of a $20 million effort, according to Dr. Jon Santiago, the state’s Secretary of the Executive Office of Veterans’ Services.
Santiago, as well Housing Secretary Ed Augustus, were on hand for the announcement. He tells WAMC that throughout the Healey administration, housing has remained a top priority amid what some officials have been calling a crisis in the state.
He says that in addressing it, every secretary had been asked to weigh in and “get active in the housing space,” exploring how the issue affected their sector and what could be done.
“… in the veteran space, we began to have discussions with community providers, veteran service organizations, and folks on the ground, and we were able to find $20 million of ARPA money to invest in this,” Santiago said. “This is the largest dedicated funding investment to address veteran homelessness in the history of the Commonwealth, and so, from that $20 million, we developed a program, essentially the End Veteran Homeless campaign, and the first part of that is this HOPE Grant, it’s about $7 million.”
HOPE is short for the “Housing Outreach-to-Placement Effort” campaign.
Providers, officials say, would collaborate with other veteran service organizations and regional Continuums of Care, or CoC’s, to “find, identify, and engage with homeless veterans.”
With the Springfield/Hampden CoC in mind, as well as the Tri-County CoC that encompasses Franklin, Hampshire, and Berkshire counties, the private nonprofit, Soldier On, was selected to receive a million dollars as part of the HOPE grant.
“We have a lot of different programs - we do transitional housing, we've developed and, most importantly support, permanent housing, and then we are one of the larger providers in the country have a program called ‘SSVF,’ which is Supportive Services for Veteran Families, and it's a program that was started by the VA in 2011,” said Bruce Buckley,CEO and president of Soldier On. “We are now in four states with about 130 employees performing this grant.”
Buckley tells WAMC that while Soldier On has grown throughout the Northeast, “home base” has always been western Massachusetts, where it provides services like transitional programming and beds for veterans on the VA campus in Leeds as well as in Pittsfield. He says about 100 veterans make use of them some nights.
He says funding like from the HOPE grant translates to more means for getting out and accessing veterans in need – helping get staff out on the road and getting to vets out in the rural stretches of western Massachusetts.
Detailing program plans post-grant, Buckley laid out some of the roles that have been put together for boosting outreach efforts.
“We are going to have four employees in this program - a case manager, two peer outreach [staffers] - and then a housing navigator,” he explained. “The case manager would meet directly with the veteran and assess their needs and their resources available, and then we have formerly homeless veterans, who are employed with us full-time in our SSVF program, as well as this one - and they're going to then work with the veteran with a very specific, kind of a case to follow as far as transportation, helping access benefits, helping access other resources, making sure their medical appointments are made and are kept with, prescriptions and all of those pieces that can fall by the wayside.”
“Then, our housing navigator - we have in four states currently - we'll add another one for Western and Central Massachusetts, and they work directly with landlords - we have relationships with landlords that we develop - and find, really, suitable housing, and we then work closely with the landlord with any issues that may arise or any needs that may arise when the veterans are living in their property,” he continued.
Buckley says funding from the state’s department of veterans services also supports a special hotline number for veterans in need, 888-720-5575.
According to Santiago, based on the data available to his office, anywhere between 500 and 600 veterans experience homelessness in Massachusetts. He noted that those are not veterans who are completely unsheltered – that figure is closer to 30.
