Veterans Tip of the Week – Almost Homeless HUD-VASH

Over the last two weeks, two things happened to point me towards this week’s topic. First I had a conversation with a young OEF Veteran (sadly they are all starting to be young to me), about their period of homelessness after returning from deployment, several years ago. It struck me that here was a young person who felt they had run out of options. Well, there are options. In this case, the veteran received VA healthcare for the issues they was dealing with and, luckily, found their future spouse – also a veteran. The happy couple are now on their way to buying their first house. The second thing that happened, also by chance, I met a HUD/VASH Case Manager at the Friday morning Veterans Networking Coffee, hosted by Cape Ann Veterans Services, Veteran Service Officer Adam Curcuru. The HUD-VASH folks have case workers that us the office on Friday mornings, as part of their outreach and accessibility efforts.

The Housing and Urban Development-VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program is a collaborative program which combines HUD housing vouchers with VA Veteran Support services. You can find an overview here: https://www.va.gov/homeless/hud-vash.asp. In practical terms, if a veteran meets the eligibility requirements – must be eligible for VA healthcare (most of us are), and meet the income limits - the VA will help get you (and your family) into a safe and stable living situation, provide the veteran with medical, mental health and/or substance use disorder case management, and help develop a plan to eventually transition out of the program. The goal is to stabilize the situation and enable the veteran to become self-sustainable, but permanent support is available if that is what the veteran needs. The administration of the program is done though the use of a case manager that is assigned to each veteran.

This is not the only program the VA has to help combat veteran homelessness. A few others can be found here: https://www.va.gov/homeless/for_homel....

If you are a veteran or, know a veteran, who is homeless or at risk of homelessness, please call: 1-877-4AID VET (877-424-3838). It's free and confidential. More resources can be found on the National Call Center page: https://www.va.gov/homeless/nationalc...

If suicide or self-harm is an area of concern, please immediately call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 (Press 1)

Don’t loose hope, there are a lot of resources out there. If you have questions on this or any of your VA benefits, please PM me, and I will do my best to answer your questions.