    [House Hearing, 113 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

         EVALUATING FEDERAL AND COMMUNITY EFFORTS TO ELIMINATE VETERAN
                                  HOMELESSNESS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                         COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS
                         U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                          THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2014

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 113-96

                                   __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs

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             Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov

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                         COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

                         JEFF MILLER, Florida, Chairman

    DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado               MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine, Ranking
    GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida, Vice-         Minority Member
        Chairman                         CORRINE BROWN, Florida
    DAVID P. ROE, Tennessee              MARK TAKANO, California
    BILL FLORES, Texas                   JULIA BROWNLEY, California
    JEFF DENHAM, California              DINA TITUS, Nevada
    JON RUNYAN, New Jersey               ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
    DAN BENISHEK, Michigan               RAUL RUIZ, California
    TIM HUELSKAMP, Kansas                GLORIA NEGRETE McLEOD, California
    MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado               ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire
    BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio               BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
    PAUL COOK, California                TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
    JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana
    DAVID JOLLY, Florida
                           Jon Towers, Staff Director
                     Nancy DoLan, Democratic Staff Director

    Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of rule XI of the Rules of the House, public
    hearing records of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs are also
    published in electronic form. The printed hearing record remains the
    official version. Because electronic submissions are used to prepare
    both printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process
    of converting between various electronic formats may introduce
    unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the
    current publication process and should diminish as the process is
    further refined.

                               C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                          Thursday, December 11, 2014

                                                                       Page

    Evaluating Federal and Community Efforts to Eliminate Veteran
      Homelessness...................................................     1

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

    Hon. Jeff Miller, Chairman.......................................     1
        Prepared Statement...........................................    57
    Hon. Michael Michaud, Ranking Member.............................     5
        Prepared Statement...........................................    58

                                   WITNESSES

    Baylee Crone, Executive Director, National Coalition for Homeless
      Veterans.......................................................     6
        Prepared Statement...........................................    60

    Steve R. Berg, Vice President for Programs and Policy, National
      Alliance to End Homelessness...................................     8
        Prepared Statement...........................................    63

    John F. Downing, Chief Executive Officer, Soldier On.............     9
        Prepared Statement...........................................    66

    Phil Landis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Veterans
      Village of San Diego...........................................    11
        Prepared Statement...........................................    68

    Casey O'Donnell, PsyD, Chief Operating Officer, Impact Services
      Corporation....................................................    13
        Prepared Statement...........................................    69

    Jon Sherin, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice President for Military
      Communities and Chief Medical Officer, Volunteers of America...    15
        Prepared Statement...........................................    72

    Lisa Pape, Executive Diretctor, Homeless Programs, VHA, U.S.
      Department of Veterans Affairs.................................    41
        Prepared Statement...........................................    86

        Accompanied by:
            Thomas O'Toole, Acting Director, National Center for
                Homelessness Among Veterans, U.S. Department of
                Veterans Affairs
    Jennifer Ho, Senior Advisor on Housing and Services to the
      Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development....    43
        Prepared Statement...........................................   101

    Hon. Keith Kelly, Assistant Secretary of Labor, Veterans'
      Employment and Training Service, U.S. Department of Labor......    45
        Prepared Statement...........................................   109

                                 FOR THE RECORD

    Friendship Place.................................................   114
    National Rural Health Association................................   122
    United States Interagency Council on Homelessness................   135
    Vietnam Veterans of America......................................   143

         EVALUATING FEDERAL AND COMMUNITY EFFORTS TO ELIMINATE VETERAN
                                  HOMELESSNESS

                                  ----------

                          Thursday, December 11, 2014

                 U.S. House of Representatives,
                        Committee on Veterans' Affairs,
                                                       Washington, D.C.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
    Room 334, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Jeff Miller
    [chairman of the committee] presiding.
        Present: Representatives Miller, Lamborn, Bilirakis, Roe,
    Denham, Benishek, Coffman, Wenstrup, Walorski, Jolly, Michaud,
    Brown, Takano, Brownley, Titus, Kirkpatrick, Ruiz, Kuster,
    O'Rourke, and Walz.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JEFF MILLER

        The Chairman. If I can take chairman's prerogative just a
    minute. I appreciate the members' indulgence. I have already
    apologized to the ranking member for not being able to be at
    the reception that was held in his honor that Ms. Brown hosted
    for him. I was, unfortunately, attending a funeral in The
    District.
        But, you know, in the nature of this business, we see
    members come and we see members go. Sometimes some members are
    a little bit harder to say goodbye to because they have been an
    integral part of what has been going on in this process. So I
    would say that those of us who have been lucky enough to have
    worked with Mike Michaud, the ranking member, inside this
    committee and outside, will always remember him for his jovial
    nature and his constant willingness to bring both Democrats and
    Republicans together. This committee, I think, has been better
    because of Mike's leadership.
        The work that he has done in this very room provides a
    perfect illustration of Mike's commonsense, bipartisan approach
    to getting things done. So, in an era that has been plagued by
    hyperpartisanship, Mike deserves great credit for his work to
    keep the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs one of the few
    places that is virtually immune from the way Washington has
    come to work. Our committee has lead the charge on uncovering
    the largest scandal in healthcare issues in VA history. During
    that time, Mike has been relentless in his pursuit of the truth
    in getting to the bottom of the all of the questions that our
    committee has answered.
        This past summer, when it was time for the Senate and the
    House conference committee to get together to reach a deal on
    our reform bill, Mike played an integral role to bringing both
    sides together to find common ground and that is why that piece
    of legislation was able to pass by such a wide margin in both
    the House and over in the Senate as well.
        He is as serious as I was about seeing meaningful reform at
    the VA. His leadership was critical to helping all of us
    achieve our goals. I have served on this committee with Mike
    for over a decade now. I think you could probably count the
    number of committee hearings he has missed on one hand, and I
    think that is a testimony to his dedication to those that he
    serves and the passion that he has. Mike is a passionate,
    pragmatic member of this committee as anyone who has ever
    served on it has seen. America's veterans are losing a powerful
    voice in Washington, and this institution is saying goodbye to
    one of its finest Members.
        So, Mike, thanks for your years of exemplary service to our
    committee, this Congress, to our Veterans, and to this country.
    I know I speak for everyone here saying you are going to be
    sorely missed.
        Do have any comments?
        Mr. Michaud. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for that
    very kind and very generous remarks. I really appreciate it
    very much. As you know, this does mark my last hearing as
    member of this committee and this Congress. Although I am
    looking forward to the opportunity and the challenges that lie
    ahead of me, the years ahead, I definitely will miss this
    committee and the work that this committee has done over a
    number of years.
        And to the incoming ranking member, Ms. Brown, I know you
    have spent 22 years on the committee. You have been a strong
    voice for our veterans, you know, here in this committee. I
    hope that you enjoy the ranking membership position as much as
    I have over the last, you know, several years.
        And to my fellow Democrats, I want to thank you as well. I
    can't thank you enough for the work that you have done on this
    committee. You have made my job as a ranking member a very easy
    job, working together, particularly during these turbulent
    times over the last couple of years dealing with the VA. And I
    appreciate the energy and the excitement that you brought on
    the Democratic side. And I hope you will continue to with your
    efforts in the next Congress in the years ahead.
        And to our Republican colleagues, I want to thank you very
    much. I have been on several CODELs with a lot of you over the
    years. I really appreciate the efforts that you have done to
    make this committee a bipartisan committee, and I cherish the
    friendship and the camaraderie that we have had over a number
    of years. And this committee definitely is a special committee.
    And although there are times that--when we differ on
    perspectives and how to best serve our veterans, we work
    together without regard to party. And that is what it is all
    about.
        And I hope that the American people will look at this
    committee as a model and look at you, Mr. Chairman, as a leader
    and insist that their representatives do what we have done here
    over a number of years in this committee working together. And
    we can't do it alone. I want to thank Nancy and my staff on
    this side of the aisle for your tireless effort. I want to
    thank Jon Towers and the Republican majority staff as well. The
    committee staff has done a phenomenal job over the last couple
    of years. And I really appreciate the work that you have done,
    especially the administrative staff. You keep everything on
    time and make sure that we have what we have to do, you know,
    as well. So I want to thank you very much.
        And, in closing, Mr. Chairman, I really do appreciate our
    friendship over the years. And as you mentioned, you know, we
    meet a lot of individuals here in Congress. A lot we consider
    friends. There are some we consider friends in a more, you
    know, special way. And I consider you a very good friend. We
    have switched roles over the time as Members of Congress; so me
    being chair, you being ranking member and visa vera. And I
    really appreciate that, your openness, your willingness to
    listen to me as a minority member and as a ranking member and
    move forward in that regard. So I want to thank you very much.
        And this time, in closing, I know you have talked on the
    House floor, you have talked in this committee about coming to
    the State of Maine, how you want to be able to shoot a moose.
    Unfortunately, I was not able to win the governorship. But,
    hopefully, you will not forget that--and I will not forget your
    efforts to try to shoot a moose in the State of Maine. So I do
    have something I would like to present to you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. That is cool.
        Mr. Michaud. Actually, in Maine, in the woods, moose, they
    do lose their antlers. And I have a constituent actually that
    goes through the woods to try to get moose antlers to carve out
    an eagle head in the moose antler. So this is the half of a
    moose antler.
        Mr. Chairman, I would like to present it to you in your
    drive to actually get a full moose in the State of Maine. And I
    would like to present this to you as a parting gift for your
    friendship, your loyalty, but, more importantly, your work that
    you have done for veterans over a number of years, putting
    aside partisan politics to do what is right for our veterans.
    So here is a freedom antler with an eagle from the State of
    Maine. So----
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mike, very much. If you ever go to
    Maine, you have to drink the state drink of Moxie when you come
    there. So it has been a great, great run. And I thank you.
        I also want to say thank you to the departing members of
    our committee that won't be returning to this committee and we
    are going on to other assignments. We appreciate your
    diligence, especially over the last couple of years and
    understand that your work is just the beginning. We have a long
    way to go working with the Department, and I had a great
    conversation with the Secretary a couple of nights ago. We were
    on the same flight as I was leaving Washington. I do believe he
    is committed to making some changes, but he has got a lot of
    work to do. We are going to try to help him in every way we
    can.
        So, with that, the committee will come to order. We are
    going to have a hearing this morning--it is actually the last
    hearing of the 113th Congress--evaluating Federal and community
    efforts to eliminate veteran homelessness. At this time of
    year, perhaps more than any other, the thought of anyone,
    particularly anyone who has served our Nation in uniform,
    without a home or a safe place to sleep is unconscionable and
    heartbraking. Unfortunately, homelessness or the constant
    threat of it has become a way of life for far too many of our
    Nation's veterans.
        In 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs initiated a 5-
    year plan to eliminate veteran homelessness. As that deadline
    fast approaches, I am pleased to report that the VA has
    succeeded in reducing veteran homelessness by approximately 33
    percent. Yet, as long as a single veteran struggles with
    housing instability or homelessness, our work remains.
        Troublingly, a VA Inspector General report issued just last
    week found that VA's national call center for homeless veterans
    missed well over 40,000 opportunities to link homeless veteran
    callers to VA medical facilities and to ensure that they
    received their needed services. Some of these missed
    opportunities resulted from the unavailability of call center
    staff during peak business hours when veteran callers were
    transferred to answering machines, instead of call center
    employees. I think you will agree this is unacceptable for any
    government program, but particularly--particularly a population
    that is as vulnerable as this one is, a population that, for
    some, the ability to merely make a phone call is a logistical
    challenge. I look forward to hearing today how VA is correcting
    the serious deficiencies that the IG found and holding those at
    fault accountable for their management or mismanagement and
    oversight failures.
        Unfortunately, the call center is just one concern that I
    have with VA's homeless programs. Based on the information from
    the VA, the Department has roughly 20 different programs
    designed to get homeless veterans off the streets and provide
    them with housing, healthcare, and employment assistance. The
    Departments of Housing and Urban Developments and Labor also
    have programs aimed at achieving the same goals. So I am
    encouraged to see the level of cooperation between these
    government agencies.
        I understand that homeless veterans are a varied and
    complex group, and one program alone cannot effectively treat
    the unique needs of all of them. However, the plethora of
    different programs that are in place today beg the question of
    whether significant overlaps exist that both waste taxpayer
    money and limits the effectiveness of any single program's
    ability to effectively care for a veteran that may be in need.
        I also have concerns about the increasingly insular focus
    the Department is placing on permanent housing. Except for the
    very few veterans for whom housing instability may be a
    lifelong concern due to underlying health conditions, the
    foremost goal of every program serving homeless veterans should
    be providing a bridge to an independent, a purpose-filled life,
    not a permanent, government-sponsored home.
        Over the last several years, the American taxpayer has
    devoted record amounts of their tax Dollars to eliminating
    veteran homelessness, with funding for targeted homelessness
    programs increasing by almost 300 percent and funding for
    healthcare for homeless veterans increasing by more than 80
    percent since fiscal year 2009. Despite this considerable
    investment, veteran homelessness will never be completely
    eliminated so long as veterans struggle with the underlying
    health conditions and are in an economic crisis.
        Quickly and effectively diagnosing and treating those
    underlying health conditions and providing veterans who are
    able with job training and placement services is critical to
    empowering homeless veterans to successfully re-integrate into
    stable community environments. To truly honor and respect the
    service of a homeless veteran is to provide him or her with a
    pathway to a life of dignity and self-sufficiency, not just
    four walls and a roof.
        With that, I now yield to the ranking member, Mr. Michaud,
    for an opening statement.

        [The prepared statement of Chairman Jeff Miller appears in
    the Appendix]

          OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER MICHAEL MICHAUD

        Mr. Michaud. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        The VA's goal of ending veterans homelessness by the year
    2015 is an ambitious goal. A remarkable progress has been made
    by the VA to meet this challenge, but there is much more that
    still has to be done that we have to focus on.
        As we all realize, VA cannot meet this goal alone. It will
    take the concerted effort and actions of the Federal Government
    and the assistance of organizations and individuals all across
    the country. And I look forward to the hearing today so that we
    can evaluate the effectiveness of this effort and applaud the
    real progress that has been made.
        According to reports, homelessness among veterans has
    declined by 33 percent to roughly 50,000 since 2010. This is an
    accomplishment we all can be proud of, but we have still a lot
    of work to do in dealing with our homeless veterans. And it is
    simply unacceptable that any of our veterans do not have a roof
    over their head. I am also concerned that we are not taking
    adequate steps to address special populations, such as homeless
    woman veterans and those who need serious and sustainable
    assistance.
        Today's hearing provides us with the opportunity to
    continue this discussion. It provides us the opportunity to
    discuss how we define the goals of ending veterans
    homelessness, the resources needed for that, and work that
    remains to be done in the years ahead.
        And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I would ask for my full
    comments to be included in the record and look forward to
    hearing the panel's discussion this morning.

        [The prepared statement of Ranking Member Michael Michaud
    appears in the Appendix]

        The Chairman. Without objection, your statement will be
    entered into the record. I would ask the first panel, if you
    could, come and take your seat. As you are taking your seats, I
    will introduce everyone.
        Joining us on the first panel today is Baylee Crone, the
    executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless
    Veterans; Steven Berg, the vice president for programs and
    policy for the National Alliance to End Homelessness; John
    Downing, the chief executive officer of Soldier On; Phil
    Landis, president and chief executive officer of the Veterans
    Village of San Diego, of which several of us have had a chance
    to visit; Dr. Casey O'Donnell, the chief operating officer of
    Impact Services Corporation; and Dr. Jon Sherin, the executive
    vice president for military communities and chief medical
    officer of Volunteers of America.
        Thank you all for being here this morning to share your
    expertise.
        Ms. Crone, you are first up. You are recognized with your
    opening statement.

                       STATEMENT OF BAYLEE CRONE

        Ms. Crone. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Michaud, and
    distinguished members of the House Committee on Veterans
    Affairs, thank you for the opportunity to appear before this
    committee today. My name is Baylee Crone, and I am the
    executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless
    Veterans. On behalf of the more than 2100 community and faith-
    based organizations NCHV represents, I would like to thank all
    of you for your steadfast commitment to serving our Nation's
    most vulnerable heroes.
        This testimony will focus on our understanding of the
    progress made to end veteran homelessness in this country,
    including efforts to match services to the needs of homeless
    and at-risk veterans through permanent housing, transitional
    housing, employment, and prevention initiatives.
        National declines in veteran homelessness since 2009 are
    without precedent, as we have heard this morning. The successes
    we have seen to date and our future successes rely on the
    strength of VA's front lines, the community providers, and VA
    case managers who fight the daily battle to do more, better,
    and faster. The momentum is on the side of rapid change, and we
    are closer than ever to achieving our mission of effectively
    ending Veteran homelessness. However, any veteran homelessness
    is not a moment. It is a moving target.
        Looking at one measure, the 2014 point-in-time count tells
    an important part of this story. On a single night in January,
    49,933 veterans were homeless. This 33 percent decline since
    2009 is more than a statistic. It represents a real measurable
    downward trend in homelessness among veterans. These
    significant drops happened as community organizations and VA
    medical centers have improved outreach and targeted their
    services to those with the most significant barriers. To make
    progress toward our mission, we must see drops in the point-in-
    time count, but that is not the only aspect of change we need
    to see.
        Across the country, community organizations and VA partners
    are stepping in with the safety net and a hand up to self-
    sufficiency and independence. We are fostering empowerment. We
    are halting cycles of abuse. We are educating and protecting.
    These activities may not show up in any official point-in-time
    count, but they are and will continue to being the actions
    protecting against homelessness for many veterans.
        The PIT count is a snapshot. Other data build out a more
    robust scene of the challenges we face in the road ahead. In
    2014, 80 percent of unsheltered veterans moved out of
    unsheltered status in 3 days. In that same period, over 50,000
    veterans achieved permanent housing through the supportive
    services for veteran families program, far outpacing the VA's
    goal of 40,000. These are some of the data points that show us
    that fuller picture. Veterans are engaging when they need help.
    They are moving rapidly off the streets, and they are
    successfully moving into permanent housing.
        The VA updated its homeless gaps analysis and launched the
    25 cities campaign to promote community-based solutions to
    ending veteran homelessness in high-need areas. The picture
    gains more clarity. Results are being meticulously and
    consistently tracked to improve targeting to meet specific
    local and individual needs. The system has improved, and it is
    working. At NCHV, we demand that individual needs match
    specific services. We do not have a homeless veteran
    population. We have individual veterans who are homeless and
    have specific and unique needs profiles to be addressed through
    a coordinated system of care.
        Wherever chronic, episodic, or at-risk homelessness exists,
    the VA and its community partners must be ready and armed. We
    can end chronic homelessness. We are already doing it through
    HUD-VASH and Housing First. We can functionally end episodic
    and recent homelessness. Rapid rehousing infrastructure,
    transitional housing, and income interventions are joining
    together to make this happen.
        We can get ahead of homelessness through prevention. SSVF
    serves more veterans and their families more cost-effectively
    every single year.
        The full picture is complicated, but it is lit up with
    hope. Ending veteran homelessness starts with the veteran, and
    people are complicated. Some individuals with complex needs
    profiles will be served by several programs. This does not mean
    that the services are being duplicated, but rather the
    organizations and programs are working together to address
    specific barriers to permanent housing. We believe in and will
    defend effective deployment of targeted resources to field
    research-based interventions when and where they are needed. As
    the number of veterans on the streets and in temporary shelter
    goes down, we will need to be more, not less, diligent in
    ensuring that we provide that hand up to those who remain on
    the streets.
        We will end veteran homelessness, but reaching that
    benchmark happens when the systems in place are ready and able
    to immediately meet a veteran's needs should he fall into
    homelessness or be at high risk. As we make progress, resources
    will need to be redeployed, not withdrawn. We believe a surge
    is still needed now, not because we set a goal for 2015 and
    want to check a box, but because we have the momentum now to
    make it happen for veterans. This requires full funding HVRP, a
    surge in SSVF resources, and maintenance of current eligibility
    for veterans served through VHA homeless grant programs.
        Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony
    today. It is a privilege to work with this committee to ensure
    that every veteran in crisis has access to the support services
    they have earned through their service to this country. Thank
    you.

        [The prepared statement of Ms. Baylee Crone appears in the
    Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Crone.
        Mr. Berg, thank you for being here. You are recognized for
    your opening statement.

                      STATEMENT OF STEVEN R. BERG

        Mr. Berg. Thank you for having me. Thank you for all the
    members of the committee to come here. This is the end of this
    Congress today, it looks like, and I hope that this hearing
    will mark the beginning of a final push to achieve something
    very important in this country that is long overdue.
        I have a lot of wonky things I can talk about about
    homelessness. At the National Alliance, we make a point of
    being experts on what it takes to end homelessness. But I sort
    of feel like, for 5 minutes, I really need to make this point:
    Once in a rare occasion, our country has a chance to do
    something that is really great, and that happens on the even
    more rare occasion when people in leadership positions
    recognize that that is what they are facing, that they are
    facing that kind of opportunity. And that the appropriate thing
    to do is to put aside business as usual and instead come
    together and focus on what we can be doing to make this result
    more likely to happen.
        And if nothing else happens in this hearing, if no other
    message gets across, I hope people will leave with an
    understand that, when we are dealing with veterans
    homelessness, that is the situation we are facing. For way too
    long, veterans have been overrepresented among the homeless
    population. When modern homelessness first emerged in the
    economic crisis of the early 1980s, people would come back from
    Vietnam. A certain number of them were having a very hard time,
    and they became homeless in droves, and we let it happen. We
    didn't really understand what homelessness was all about then.
    We didn't know what the--what the right interventions were, but
    we didn't do anything to stop it. And since that time, veterans
    homelessness has been a bigger part of the problem than it
    should be. It shouldn't be any part of the problem.
        So, right now, we have, I think, what we have seen going
    beyond the numbers, just--a 33 percent reduction is an
    important thing. But that didn't--it is important to understand
    that didn't happen by coincidence, it didn't happen by luck. It
    happened because a lot of people have been doing the right
    thing, including people in this committee, have been doing the
    right thing to make it happen. So I want to spend a couple of
    minutes talking about why this is working and a couple--and
    then a quick rundown of what we need to do next.
        It is working for a couple of reasons. One, I think there
    has been leadership at the Federal level. I think the VA, after
    sort of skirting around the issue for a number of years, has
    embraced the idea that they are going to have to be the leaders
    on this. They can't look to anybody else. VA is going to have
    to be the leaders on this from the Federal Government's point
    of view.
        They have understood, also, however, that they need to work
    with many others within the Federal Government, with HUD, with
    the Department of Labor, with other departments, with nonprofit
    communities all over the country to make these things happen.
        The VA set up the National Center on Homelessness Among
    Veterans. This has been very important. A joint project with
    the University of Pennsylvania where there is some--at the
    University of Pennsylvania happens to be where some of the real
    experts on homelessness around the country teach there. Dr.
    Dennis Culhane, if any of you have never met him, if you can
    sit and talk with him about homelessness for a little while,
    you will feel like you are a smarter person than before you
    started talking to him. I guarantee it.
        The VA has put the right kind of program models in place
    with the help of Congress. Congress has authorized new
    programs, both more intensive programs that are more about
    long-term housing and supports like the HUD-VASH program. But
    then, as Mr. Miller started by saying, most homeless veterans
    don't need long-term intensive help. They need short-term help
    to deal with a short-term crisis, and that is what this rapid
    rehousing model and the SSVF program are all about.
    Tremendously effective.
        And, finally, communities are seizing control of this issue
    and taking it upon themselves, through the leadership of
    mayors, through the leadership of veterans healthcare
    directors, to use the tools that Congress and the VA have made
    available and really put them to work and try to get results.
    VA is helping with that with various technical assistance
    initiatives. Other people need help as well. We are trying to
    do our part at the National Alliance to End Homelessness to
    spread that information.
        There is some work that Congress needs to do. I have
    outlined that in my written testimony. There are some short-
    term fixes to a couple of the programs that would be very
    important. We are going to have a longer-term need, as veterans
    homelessness gets down close to zero, to redesign the homeless
    programs to be about preventing homelessness. That shift from
    intervention to prevention will be a very important work for
    this committee in the next Congress. And we are looking forward
    to working with you all at that time. Thank you very much.

        [The prepared statement of Mr. Steven Berg appears in the
    Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Berg.
        Mr. Downing, it is good to see you and you are recognized.

                      STATEMENT OF JOHN F. DOWNING

        Mr. Downing. Good morning, Mr. Miller. It is a privilege to
    be here with your committee.
        Congressman Michaud, it is great to be with you, a fellow
    New Englander, and the fellow that really, if you lived in New
    England, has really revived the Togus Medical Center and made
    it a facility that is really much more interactive with all the
    other facilities in the area.
        I am honored to be here today on behalf of Soldier On and
    the 3,800 veterans we have served last year. We have become the
    largest provider of supportive service grants of veterans of
    the United States of America. Soldier On operates eight SSVF
    grants throughout five Eastern States. This was accomplished
    with the assistance of Congressman Richie Neal and James
    McGovern from Massachusetts; Congressman Chris Smith from New
    Jersey; Congressman Chris Gibson from New York.
        In addition to that, we serve 76 counties in Mississippi;
    23 counties in Pennsylvania; and we now do the 4 western
    counties in Massachusetts. Next year, we are slated to increase
    the breadth and depth of our services and assist more than
    5,300 veterans and family members with special focus on the
    chronically homeless veterans whose lives are reduced by an
    average of 20 years when compared to their stably housed
    brothers and sisters.
        The Department of Veterans Affairs' goal to end veteran
    homelessness by 2015 was not a goal that could take place
    without examining and combatting the underlying effects that
    cause poverty and which really is the cause of homelessness.
    The lack of safe affordable housing, with services on site, has
    allowed veterans in poverty and those suffering from untreated
    and undertreated mental health and addiction disorders to be
    left forgotten and alone in their prolonged states of
    homelessness.
        Eliminating homelessness requires a society to look at
    these causes of poverty, which in a capitalistic society are
    rooted in income and cultural enrichment that we translate to
    mean education. As a result of that, the lack of those
    opportunities, the reality is that our goal has been to bring
    each homeless veteran back to the center of their life.
        With great help from the national director of homelessness,
    Lisa Pape, Soldier On became a leading grant per diem shelter
    bed provided for the VA. And we house every night 265 men and
    women in western Massachusetts homeless veterans, every night;
    13 of them are women. And for 13 years, the 13 women--every
    woman that has ever come into our care--and we need to hear
    this--70 percent of the homeless women that come into our care
    experienced sexual trauma before they enlisted in the military;
    100 percent of the women in my care have suffered military
    sexual trauma. It is a dynamic that we can't deny, and it is
    one that we must face more effectively in the Department of
    Defense on how we treat this issue. And we must begin to put
    women in charge of this issue and allow them to review and
    establish the standards by which we are going to be held
    accountable. And until we do that, we will continue this
    tragedy.
        I also want to make sure that we understand that safe,
    sustainable affordable housing is one of the keys to ending
    homelessness. But housing itself doesn't do it. We need to
    deliver services to the housing. How can we continue to expect
    men and women who are chronically mentally ill, addicted, don't
    have transportation, are underemployed, to keep three or four
    or five appointments a week? How can we expect them to find
    medical centers 30, 40, 50 miles from where they live? We must
    find them. We must go out and seek them.
        And we have been motivated by the SSVF work we do and by,
    really, the push from Vince Kane, when he was the director at
    the Center for Excellence, to get out there and do it. Not to
    have excuses. And so we have really worked hard at SSVF, and we
    are looking to continue to develop beautiful, affordable
    housing that veterans own and live in and deliver services to
    them.
        So, with the VAi2, we were awarded $6 million. And at the
    North Hampton VA in Massachusetts, we are now building 44 units
    of limited equity co-op for homeless veterans to own, live in,
    and have the services delivered to them there, and 16 units for
    women and children. And women and children, when we talk to
    them about moving to the community or moving to staying on the
    hospital grounds, they chose to stay on the hospital grounds
    because they felt safe and secure there.
        So we need to understand that this--that the Housing First
    model really works, but it only works when we deliver services
    where people live and we must be mobile. The VA has got to get
    mobile, and we have got to stop funding this incompetent--
    skilled incompetent bureaucracy and begin to make it
    accountable by going out and identifying the veterans
    delivering the services where they live. Thank you.

        [The prepared statement of Mr. John Downing appears in the
    Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Downing.
        Mr. Landis, thank you for being with us today. You are
    recognized.

                        STATEMENT OF PHIL LANDIS

        Mr. Landis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
    committee. My name is Phil Landis. So I am a president and a
    chief executive officers of Veterans Village of San Diego. And,
    sir, thank you for visiting us last year.
        As a matter of disclosure, you should be aware that I am a
    member of the VA Advisory Committee on Homeless Veterans and I
    am neither speaking for the VA, nor for the advisory committee
    today.
        Veterans Village of San Diego is a nationally recognized
    nonprofit that has served veterans since 1981. Using six
    pillars of prevention, intervention, treatment, aftercare,
    employment services, and housing, VVSD assists veterans who
    have substance abuse and mental health issues, including men
    and women recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
        Working with addiction case managers and mental health
    professionals, residents have an opportunity to rebuild lives,
    repair relationships, and return to society as productive
    citizens. Housing First is an admirable and reasonable idea for
    many homeless veterans. In fact, since October of 2013, we have
    placed over 550 Veterans into permanent housing. However, for
    veterans with co-occurring disorders, housing without treatment
    is a major risk factor and, if left untreated or unmanaged,
    becomes progressive and life threatening.
        VA is putting a preponderance of their homeless Dollars
    into repaid rehousing and VASH. They have eliminated new
    funding for grant and per diem. Grant and per diem funding
    focuses on treatment and employment for transitional housing.
    And there is a need for both. To substantially reduce or
    eliminate grant and per diem beds would be short-sighted and,
    quite frankly, disastrous.
        Since the inception of our Supportive Services for Veteran
    Families, SSVF, program in 2013, we have assisted 263 veteran
    households who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless
    into stable housing. This program is a great tool in fighting
    homelessness amongst the veteran population. The program
    prevents homelessness amongst veteran families and works with
    those who are homeless to rapidly enter permanent housing and
    utilizing the Housing First model.
        This model works very well for many of the post 9/11
    generation who only need a hand up. One of the benefits of the
    Housing First model is the singular focus on addressing the
    participants' housing crisis. However, we have seen that the
    SSVF participants and others who are not ready to address their
    primary cause of homelessness, whether it is substance abuse or
    mental health issues, are not ready to maintain long-term
    housing stability. Therefore, having the option to be in a
    formal treatment setting or transitional housing program
    benefits them in the long run and gives them the opportunity to
    work on their barriers prior to obtaining permanent housing.
        Our experience indicates that when a homeless veteran is
    denied the opportunity for a rehabilitation program or
    prematurely departs from a rehabilitation program in the VASH
    housing, unless intensive services continue, the risk of
    relapse, ending up in prison, or death occurs far too often.
    And here are just a few recent examples from our program: A
    veteran is placed into VASH housing that experienced severe,
    unintended consequences. Danielle, age 30, combat vet, within 2
    weeks in VASH apartment, relapsed on heroin. She is now in
    jail. Michael, age 57, relapsed a short time after moving into
    VASH housing, lost his home and is now in prison. Thomas, age
    41, was very active in a recovery program and community.
    Transitioned into VASH housing. Relapsed on methamphetamine
    within 3 months. Vernon, age 63, transitioned into VASH
    housing, relapsed on drug, now in prison. Phillip, age 33,
    combat vet going to school on the GI bill, school funding fell
    through due to low grades, relapsed on alcohol. He is currently
    awaiting transfer to a State prison. Walter, age 51, worked in
    active recovery program, found dead in VASH apartment in August
    of 2014. The medical examiner reported cause of death was
    alcohol related. Scott relapsed and lost apartment within 2
    months. James, age 56, relapsed 1 month later, now in jail.
        You kind of get the idea.
        Now, here is one that we really need to pay attention to
    because it seems to be under the radar: Joe Vaughn, age 27,
    combat vet, was in a long-term residential treatment program.
    Doing extremely well. When he received his VA 100 percent
    disability rating, the HUD income cap rule forced us to exit
    him from the program. We are seeing more and more of that. It
    might be something you would like to focus on.
        Homeless veterans who have lost their way due to substance
    use and/or mental health issues have also lost their job. And
    they have lost their community, their identity, their support
    system, their sense of camaraderie, their mission in life, and
    their financial stability. Programs that would provide housing
    but fail to address these underlying unmet needs will set
    veterans up for failure.
        For those who are situationally homeless due to a recent
    family crisis, job loss, or medical condition, the Housing
    First model is truly ideal.
        For those who are chronically homeless due to mental health
    issues, substance use, long-term medical conditions and/or
    criminal justice involvement, it is imperative to implement an
    assessment protocol that could triage the neediest, most
    vulnerable, high-risk, and disenfranchised veterans for whom
    residential treatment is essential.
        Our goals at VVSD is to break the cycle of homelessness
    among veterans and their families. In order for us to succeed
    in our efforts, we think it is crucial that we address the
    various reasons veterans become homeless in the first place.
    Not all veterans are ready to sustain themselves in housing.
    Not every veteran will have substance abuse or mental health
    challenges.
        But having both an SSVF and a veteran treatment center in
    the same agency allows us to make a substantial difference in
    the veteran community. One size does not fit all. And Housing
    First, at the exclusion of everything else, is just plain
    nonsense.
        In conclusion, at Veterans Village of San Diego, we believe
    intensive services leads to self-sustaining independence and a
    maximizing of human potential and a meaningful, fulfilling
    life. Our veterans are worthy of nothing less. Thank you, sir.

        [The prepared statement of Mr. Phil Landis appears in the
    Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Landis.
        Dr. O'Donnell, you are recognized.

                  STATEMENT OF CASEY O'DONNELL, PSY.D.

        Dr. O'Donnell. Good morning, Chairman Miller, Ranking
    Member Michaud, and esteemed committee members. Thank you for
    the opportunity to offer this testimony.
        My name is Casey O'Donnell. I am currently the chief
    operating officer of Impact Services Corporation in
    Philadelphia. For the last 20 years, Impact has been providing
    both housing and employment-focused programs to homeless
    veterans who suffer from both mental illness and substance
    abuse.
        Impact's current continuum of housing includes 150 beds of
    both transitional and permanent housing. Impact's program was
    one of the first and was one of the few programs in the Nation
    exclusively serving dually diagnosed formerly homeless
    veterans.
        Since 1994, Impact has also been providing employment
    services through the Department of Labor's Homeless Veteran
    Reintegration Program. In addition to these programs, Impact
    has recently received surge priority one funding.
        Finally, Impact will break ground on 26 units of affordable
    permanent housing for low-income veterans and their families,
    focusing on females, on Monday, December 15th. You are all
    welcome to join us for the groundbreaking.
        We are working in close collaboration with the VA National
    Center on Homelessness Among Veterans to provide all of these
    services from a trauma-informed care model. I was invited to
    participate in the National Center's work group to implement
    trauma-informed care across the nation, both within the VA and
    among community-based providers.
        The national center has been an invaluable collaborative
    partner in the provision of care to homeless veterans, and the
    center's work related to training and implementation will be
    critical to success. Men and women who have proudly served our
    country through military service should not be allowed to
    suffer in addiction and mental illness on the streets of any
    city for one night longer. It is all of our jobs to find
    veterans safe places to live, recover from trauma and substance
    abuse, and improve the quality of their lives.
        In fact, it is believed by those of who us who are
    providers that trauma informed care is necessary to eradicate
    homelessness among veterans.
        Setting the deadline of December 31, 2015, to end
    homelessness among veterans has become a critically important
    milestone for our country. Impact has been extremely active in
    the 25 Cities Initiative to end veteran homelessness in
    Philadelphia. The deadline is producing hard work,
    determination, and teamwork.
        Over the last 11 months, with our many collaborative
    partners, we have placed 556 homeless veterans in permanent
    housing in Philadelphia. We have approximately 540 veterans
    left to house before the deadline of December 31st, 2015. The
    goal of ending veteran homelessness in Philadelphia is within
    our sights. We are ending veteran homelessness in Philadelphia
    by developing a safety net system that catches veterans before
    they become homeless, provides intervention, when necessary, to
    keep them housed, and gets them housed again if they have
    slipped back into homelessness. This safety net is important as
    we look at veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who are
    potentially vulnerable and may be headed toward homelessness.
        Research provided by the National Center on Homelessness
    Among Veterans suggests that this rapid safety net approach is
    allowing approximately 80 percent of veterans to stay housed
    after 90 days of case management and temporary financial
    assistance through SSVF. Recent data provided by the City of
    Philadelphia's Office of Supportive Housing also shows that the
    number of actual homeless veterans on the streets and in many
    programs in Philadelphia have decreased by 15 percent in the
    last year. We expect that percentage to dramatically decrease
    in 2015 and come to functional zero by January of 2016.
        The safety net system has only been possible within the
    context of real partnerships that are being forged between the
    community and the VA as part of the 25 Cities Initiative in
    response to the deadline. These partnerships have brought HUD,
    the VA, local municipalities, housing authorities, and
    community organizations like Impact to a common table where
    systems have been changed by bringing two continuums, the city
    and the VA, into alignment on outreach and assessment and
    eventually on placement and retention to ensure that veterans
    are being moved into housing.
        Further, I would like to say that housing without jobs or
    increased benefits is only a short-term strategy. Supportive
    housing, integrated with programs to get vets into jobs and/or
    access to benefits or increased benefits, provides a long-term
    recipe for self-sufficiency. We would like to see the VA and
    the Department of Labor work closely to integrate community-
    based job training and job development into current housing
    activities funded for veterans. A good place to start would be
    a pilot with community-based veteran organizations like Impact
    to better integrate SSFV, grant and per diem, HUD-VASH, and
    housing with HVRP programs.
        Finally, Impact currently operates four grant per diem
    programs that move homeless veterans through various stages of
    recovery to self-sufficiency according to their needs. Our
    program is currently full. It is full because there remains a
    critical need for grant and per diem to provide stable housing
    and services for veterans. Impact is extremely interested in
    working with Congress and the VA to test out several additional
    models of housing, utilizing the VA's grant and per diem
    program as the foundation of funding. Specifically, we would
    like to see a percentage of grant and per diem vets converted
    to provide supportive services and permanent housing, as
    opposed to only transitional housing, for formerly homeless
    veterans with mental health and substance abuse issues that
    require a higher degree of support than independent living can
    provide.
        In conclusion, on behalf of my colleagues at Impact,
    myself, and the veterans that we serve, I would like to thank
    the members of the committee for this opportunity to testify.
    Thank you for listening.

        [The prepared statement of Mr. Casey O'Donnell appears in
    the Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Sherin, you are recognized.

                  STATEMENT OF JON SHERIN, M.D., PH.D.

        Dr. Sherin. Thank you, Chairman Miller, Ranking Member
    Michaud, and the committee for convening today's hearing. My
    name is Jon Sherin. I am a psychiatrist and neurobiologist by
    trade. Though not a veteran myself, I have spent my entire
    professional life serving veterans of the United States
    military.
        It was just 5 months ago that I testified in this same
    forum on the issue of suicide in the veteran community, and it
    honors me deeply to be here again testifying on homelessness,
    another true emergency confronting too many former
    servicemembers.
        As a reminder, I worked for over a decade in VA, last as
    chief of mental health at the Miami VA. Three years ago, I left
    that post to join Volunteers of America, a large nonprofit
    whose legacy in this arena dates back to serving Civil War
    veterans. Today, providing for veterans is Volunteers of
    America's top priority. Alongside VA, this past year alone, we
    housed and supported roughly 20,000 homeless veterans in
    communities across the Nation.
        Let me begin my testimony by making clear that ending
    veteran homelessness will require more than finding shelter for
    all homeless veterans. It will also require making sure that
    they have timely access to both a full range of services,
    including family support, mental healthcare, addiction
    treatment, legal aid, benefits assistance, and financial
    coaching, as well as a full range of opportunities, including
    education, training, and meaningful jobs.
        At present, there are a number of Federal programs that
    have been very effective at bringing homeless veteran numbers
    down, due in large part to congressional support. Further
    success will rely upon Congress continuing to provide
    unprecedented resource and oversight to these efforts within
    Federal agencies--within Federal agencies but also in relation
    to multisector partnerships. To this end, I applaud the
    committee for inviting input from the partners on this panel.
    In the remainder of my testimony, I will summarize
    recommendations for select Federal programs and suggest adding
    a peer-to-peer strategy that could bolster our efforts.
        Regarding select Federal programs, the following
    recommendations are made based on my own personal experience
    and input from numerous colleagues in both the VA and in the
    community. They are meant as guidelines to more effectively
    help homeless veterans. In markets where VA's grant and per
    diem transitional housing inventory is not fully utilized, it
    should be repurposed to better match local supply with local
    demand and funded accordingly. No inventory should be
    dismantled, shelved, or otherwise deactivated until we end
    veteran homelessness. The VA's safe haven transitional program
    is highly effective for chronic, recidivistic homeless veterans
    and has changed the life trajectory of many veterans for whom
    all other interventions have failed, some over the course of
    decades. These programs tend to be full and, as such, more safe
    haven inventory needs to be developed.
        HUD and VA's HUD-VASH permanent housing program is highly
    effective but only when adequately enriched by services
    alongside housing, in accordance with the Housing First model.
    In markets where VA is not equipped to provide adequate
    services, it is recommended that community partners be
    leveraged to do so.
        The Support Services for Veteran Families program, SSVF,
    created and administered by VA's National Center for
    Homelessness Amongst Veterans in Philadelphia, is a game
    changer that has successfully served a massive number of
    veterans in a short period of time through a streamlined
    partnership process. It makes sense to expand the scope and the
    reach of this program by including mental health as well as
    employment offerings and by loosening eligibility requirements.
        In terms of a peer-to-peer strategy, it would make sense to
    activate a robust, community-based workforce of trained and
    certified peers who can drive outreach resource navigation and
    advocacy for homeless veterans. Peers could be deployed to
    suitable VA campuses, housing facilities, and service centers
    and charged to connect homeless veterans to both VA and
    community resources. They could also be leveraged for the same
    purpose through the homeless crisis line, 211 exchanges, and
    Web-based portals such POS REP. Resource to fuel this workforce
    could be generated by approving veteran and peer-support
    training for VA work study and/or by enrichment of the support
    services grant.
        In conclusion, we must actively embrace a philosophy,
    create a culture and insist on policies that hold us
    accountable for addressing the vast array of challenges known
    to emerge for some veterans in the context of civilian life
    because it is these challenges that predictably precede the
    loss of a place to call home, something all of us need for
    life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is through your
    informed legislative stewardship that our country can promote
    conditions in which all sectors come together to form cohesive
    American communities that welcome veterans home, ensure they
    receive the services they need, and provide them ample
    opportunities to thrive. Thank you very much for hearing my
    testimony.

        [The prepared statement of Dr. Jon Sherin appears in the
    Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you all for your testimony today. We
    appreciate it, and any parts of your statement that were not
    read will be entered into the record as well.
        I think we all believe that ending veteran homelessness is
    an important goal. It is a laudable goal, but getting to zero
    is very difficult. I think, Dr. O'Donnell, you had remarked
    about functional zero. Can you tell me what ``functional zero''
    really means?
        Mr. O'Donnell. So there is actually an equation. I am sure
    someone in our audience can identify what that equation is. It
    is based on an average number of veterans housed for 3 months
    as compared to the number that are left. That is not the--the
    whole equation.
        For us, it is ensuring--it is a more functional definition
    to ensure that there are enough slots of the appropriate kind
    of housing available for those that are left. Right. So as we
    decrease that number--so for Philadelphia, I believe it is 540
    veterans, ensuring that each of those folks have the
    appropriate space to come to. So I personally don't ever
    believe that we will be at zero. Right. It is about the safety
    net. But functional zero is ensuring that each person has the
    appropriate level of care, hopefully, that that would indicate
    that they would stay there for longer with the appropriate
    level of services.
        The Chairman. Those of you that provide group housing or
    housing in large numbers, how many or what percentage of your
    residents will never be able to get over that final hump, and
    will always be with us, with you?
        Mr. Landis, then Mr. Downing, both.
        Mr. Downing. Thank you. Go ahead.
        Mr. Landis. Our population may be a subset of those that we
    treat at our rehabilitation center. Two-thirds of our residents
    have diagnosable chronic mental illness by the time they find
    us; 70 percent of the population have already been
    incarcerated; of the younger generation, the post-9/11 men and
    women, the statistic for incarceration is about 85 percent. We
    know that, for the vast majority of these men and women, many
    will be able to deal with their demons. They will be able to
    move forward, but they are not going to do it in isolation. It
    is only going to happen after intensive long-term residential
    treatment. It is not going to happen if that does not occur
    simultaneously, either with housing or with some form of a
    long-term treatment center. There is a subset of this
    population that will require our assistance for the rest of
    their lives, perhaps 25 percent.
        But the rest, you know, if we do it right, what they should
    look forward to is a life that is balanced and a life where
    they have employment, because employment is a key factor in, I
    believe, happiness. They should be able to be self-sustaining.
    And they should be able to get on with the world as the way
    that we do in our own normal lives. But I would say, to answer
    your question, sir, a good 25 percent of this population is
    going to require our care for the rest of their lives.
        The Chairman. Mr. Downing.
        Mr. Downing. We look to shut down approximately 80 percent
    of our per diem beds over the next 5 years. We think about 80
    percent of the men and women we serve can really function and
    grow living in their own dwelling with services delivered to
    them. And there are various levels of services people need.
        On the average, in the community where we are working, what
    we are finding is veterans, essentially 50 and over, who have
    been homeless and chronically mentally ill for extended
    periods, can work about 15 or 20 hours a week when they are
    really back to the center of their life. So if you look at
    those type of entry-level, limited-income jobs, with some
    supportive services and some small benefits, either from Social
    Security or the VA, somebody can have a comfortable life in
    supported housing with services delivered. So we think that
    that is a reasonable number.
        We also believe that trauma-informed care, which has been
    mentioned here this morning, is an extremely important training
    that we all need to be continuously growing in because everyone
    that is in our care benefits from that. And what we have found,
    as we--we did some training with the National Alliance on
    Homelessness on trauma-informed care for the past year in our
    facilities--and all our staff has gone through it--and what we
    are finding is that where much people are much--feeling much
    safer discussing things that previously were kind of glossed
    over, pushed to the side. And I think that that is the type of
    thing that we need to get better at.
        So, to me, I don't think we are ever going to end
    homelessness. I think about 20 percent of the people are either
    in the category of we don't have the skill or ability to figure
    out how to manage their needs better or we have some folks who
    somehow seem comfortable in that lifestyle. So, you know, we
    accept that. We would like to change that, but I don't think we
    can.
        I don't know how you feel there, big guy.
        The Chairman. I apologize. I need to move to Mr. Michaud.
        Mr. Landis. I am sorry.
        The Chairman [continuing]. We have other questions, but
    thank you.
        Mr. Michaud.
        Mr. Michaud. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        This is for each of the panelist. Do you see any overlap
    between the three major programs funded by the VA, VASH, GPD,
    SSVF? And we will start with Ms. Crone.
        Ms. Crone. Mr. Berg here will probably laugh at me because
    I always say that there are four critical programs when we are
    talking about programs essential for ending veteran
    homelessness, and I would include HVRP in that mix. I know it
    is funded through Department of Labor.
        Like I mentioned in my statement, we don't look at the
    programs that exist and the people we are going to push into
    those programs. We look at each individual veteran and what
    their specific needs are. If you have--if you have a veteran
    who comes into a program and is in need of intensive services,
    multiple co-occurring disabilities, that person might be in
    transitional housing for a short period of time and move into
    HUD-VASH housing, using a HUD-VASH voucher. In that case, they
    are using both of those resources, but there are stepping
    stones to get that person into permanent housing.
        On the other side, you may have someone who comes in who
    needs a short-term intervention and assistance with employment
    and services because they are unemployed, but they want to go
    back to work. They may be enrolled in SSVF to help them pay for
    their security deposit, and they may get employment services
    through HVRP. In that case, they are using two programs, but
    they are using the best practices of what those programs are
    meant to provide in order to get themselves----
        Mr. Berg. Yes. Thank you.
        I would say one of the real advances that people who work
    on the issue of homelessness all over the country have made is
    understanding this idea that different homeless people need
    different levels of care and to set up a system with an array
    of interventions that are designed for that. And I think the
    three programs you mentioned, not to leave out HVRP, but those
    are the three big housing programs, and there are aligning
    themselves in many cities with that in mind. And SSFV deals
    with people for whom a short-term intervention is most
    appropriate. HUD-VASH is for the people with long-term
    permanent disabilities. GPD works well for people in sort of a
    middle group, really concentrating on recovery housing. There
    is always some overlap. You are never sure because people, once
    they get in a program like this, a lot of times, they improve
    tremendously. But I think that array of programs is the right
    one, and it is working well.
        Mr. Downing. I would agree with that, Mr. Michaud. Also,
    just from my viewpoint, I think the HUD-VASH case manager
    should all be outsourced to community-based groups. I think
    they are much more geared to housing search. They are much
    better at working at it. There are professional agencies in the
    community that they should partner with to do that. I think
    trying to train people and bring them up to speed on that is
    just kind of insanity when there are so many groups--especially
    if you look at what has happened with CAP agencies in the
    Community Action Programs, have really done housing search
    extremely well in our communities. And we should be funding
    them with the VASH money to do it for our veterans, I believe.
        The GPD program, I believe, has done a great job. And I
    think downsizing everybody can see coming. For SSVF, I really
    think this is what we have to get in our head: SSVF leverages
    tremendous amounts of community assets to work along with the
    VA Dollars. So what we have discovered is the average veteran
    who we serve in SSVF, we are spending somewhere between $2,400
    to $4,400. Somebody in GPD for a year costs us $42,000. But
    when we do the 24 to 42 in the community, we are also bringing
    in community-based addiction services, we are bringing in
    finance management agencies, we are bringing in mental health
    agencies to work to help us stabilize, all at a different cost
    center and all available to other citizens. So that leveraging
    has really made, I think, that program much more effective. And
    I think it is why we are seeing the tremendous results with it.
        Mr. Landis. If you develop a continuum of care within an
    agency, each one of these three programs complement the other
    and seem to work very well together.
        Dr. Sherin. There is definitely an overlap, but not
    redundancy, and I think that is the key element here.
        Mr. O'Donnell. I think that these are distinct programs. I
    would beg to differ with the concept of deactivating any grant
    per diem inventory, as I said in my testimony. I believe that
    that is critical inventory around the Nation that can be used
    to do things in addition to grant per diem housing, including
    bridge housing, rescue housing. In addition, it could be used
    for permanent housing or permanent supportive housing. It could
    even be used for assisted living down the road, depending on
    the needs of the local community. I would also reiterate one of
    my co-panelists comments about HUD-VASH case management.
    Communities are very well-equipped to do this actually in a
    more efficient and cheaper, less expensive rather, manner.
        The Chairman. Mr. Bilirakis, you are recognized for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. I
    want to thank Ranking Member Michaud for his advocacy on behalf
    of our veterans and being a great friend to our true American
    heroes over the year. It is been an honor to serve with you,
    sir.
        The first question is for the entire panel. Last week, the
    Virginia Inspector General issued a report that found serious
    problems with VA's national call center for homeless veterans.
    The report found that the VA missed 40,500 opportunities to
    engage homeless veteran callers with needed services due to
    lapses in management and oversight, and I know the chairman
    mentioned this in his opening statement.
        Furthermore, the IG's audit found that the majority of
    messages were left between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the day.
    The report also stated that counselors spent significant
    amounts of time unavailable to answer calls during peak calls.
    This is during peak time periods. This is unacceptable. For the
    panel, were you surprised by the IG's findings regarding the
    call center? What are your personal experiences? I would like
    to hear from you. How would you suggest VA improve the call
    center's performance, and who do you think should be
    responsible for operating and overseeing the call center, and I
    guess we will start with Ms. Crone.
        Ms. Crone. NCHV has said publicly when this came out that
    we take this report very seriously, and it is completely
    unacceptable that any veteran in crisis, any veteran in need
    reaching out to something that should be operating 24/7 should
    go to voice mail. We are going to be following the progress on
    addressing these steps very closely because it is meaningful to
    us on a national level and to our members. We believe that the
    steps that are laid out to address the various issues with the
    call centers seem reasonable. We are going to be watching those
    very closely to make sure that they happen and that the
    timelines are stuck to. But what is important to remember with
    the call center is that it is a small piece, or it is a piece
    of the overall outreach effort that we have to homeless
    veterans within communities. The providers on this panel and
    the organizations that we work with, those are the people who
    are going out on the streets, that are under bridges, that are
    in shelters, that are looking for veterans in need of services.
        So it is important to keep this in that bigger context,
    that these veterans are likely receiving services, and it is
    thanks to the community providers that are doing that through
    funding resources like SSVF. But, again, we will be watching it
    really closely.
        Mr. Berg. I think the steps the VA appears to be taking to
    address the findings in here seem like the right thing to do. I
    think the IG is doing the IG's job, which is good. That is why
    they are there. We need to have things like this work. We need
    to also not get distracted from the major goal of what is going
    on. When something like this comes up, this is important, get
    it fixed; or if it is just not going to work, then get rid of
    it, and keep moving forward with stuff that works. That is our
    view.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Mr. Downing.
        Mr. Downing. Well, this was run by VHA, and it kind of
    boggles your mind that we have the 800 number for homeless and
    people in need going to VHA and not running it through the
    homeless program that has a lot of community partners and is
    used to contracting with community partners to provide service.
    Because I would suggest to you, again, that agencies like
    myself and others that operate 800 numbers are very good at
    responding to people 24 hours a day, are very good at getting
    the information to where it has to go so people get the
    critical intervention that we need to prevent a tragedy.
        So I think that what we really have to do is challenge the
    VA again to look within itself and look at where is the
    competency in this group, and let that group of competent
    individuals operate it. And I think it is shameful that we just
    put it out there and say because we have done it and we have
    all this information flying around, it is going to work. I
    operate an 800 number for SSVF. I operate it with homeless
    veterans answering the phone 24 hours a day, and when you call
    and you are in one of our areas, we have a veteran, a case
    manager, in your home within 48 hours, any of the five states
    you are in that we work in. But we have learned that we have to
    get the information, respond to it, and have backups, and you
    need to have community partners that respond where you are
    weak; and that is what we are not doing with the VA. And I
    know, and I just can't believe with the history of the homeless
    program and its ability to contract, that that is not the
    perfect thing that should have been moved through them to do
    the outreach to veterans.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you very much, and now to the incoming
    ranking member, Ms. Brown, you are recognized.
        Ms. Brown. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of
    all, I think this is a great day to talk about the fact that we
    have cut out one-third of the homelessness and we are moving in
    the right direction, and I have been on this committee for 22
    years, and we have been working and discussing it for 22 years,
    and I do think there is a lot more we need to do, and certainly
    working with those stakeholders is extremely important. Our
    partners, like you said, the mayors, the different groups and
    organizations, we are moving forward, and I am very pleased
    with that.
        I guess what is still very disturbing to me is the number
    of homeless veterans' families, when I see the children of just
    the veterans and the children and when I run into a mother and
    she can't have the children because there is not adequate
    housing. Can you address that for me, please? Either one of
    you.
        Mr. O'Donnell. If I may, this is exactly the reason we are
    opening these 26 units, and they will be available in September
    2015. It took us 5 years to get where we needed to be to have
    the support to do this, but you are right. One of the problems
    is, especially in Philadelphia, there is very few places--I
    know of one--for a woman to find shelter with her children.
    There are single fathers also with children, and we welcome
    them into the program, so many of those women have a fractured
    family for no other reason than their being homeless. So
    programs like ours will offer the opportunity to partner with,
    in Philadelphia it is DHS, Department of Human Services, to
    reunite moms and their kids. And there is a growing need.
    Twenty-six units isn't nearly enough.
        Dr. Sherin. Just a comment on that. At Volunteers of
    America, we have a great deal of a commitment to homeless
    families. We have facilities around the country that are
    focusing on this. We just are in the process of opening up a
    78-unit facility in San Pedro called the Blue Butterfly Village
    specifically for homeless female veterans and their families.
        We also just opened one in Chicago called Hope Manor II.
    This is a critical issue, and when you think about the
    stressors on family of serving, it is no surprise that we have
    this challenge. And I think when we look to funding through the
    Federal Government, we need to create the flexibility to create
    these programs. I can tell you that the Blue Butterfly Village
    in San Pedro took almost 15 years to get developed, and one of
    the reasons for that is that we couldn't get easements due to
    interference from the DoD.
        Ms. Brown. The key is there is a multiplicity of things. We
    cannot sit here and think that just getting a person a house is
    the answer. The homeless person had a house, but they need the
    counseling. They need the support services. They need the
    employment. So it is really us working with the stakeholders.
    It is not just getting a person temporary housing. They have
    really fallen through the safety net.
        Mr. Downing. You are absolutely right, Ms. Brown, and I
    think that the issue again, and I want to go back to what Doc
    said. We need to be able to build affordable housing more
    rapidly, and we need to create priorities. And one of the
    issues is we are forced, because veterans are not a protected
    class under the Fair Housing Act, we have to compete with every
    other community of need for affordable housing money. There
    have been some special, the areas done on tax credits where
    there have been set-asides for stuff built in a medical zone,
    and we can get veterans housing lined up. I am doing that in
    Mississippi. And we are looking at models and we are working on
    models where we can utilize tax credits and integrate them with
    the affordable housing money to make it happen more rapidly.
        I have four projects under construction right now, and the
    fastest one is 3\1/2\ years from the day we started. So it has
    been a long run. In the 5 years that I have been at it, I have
    got 39 units completed with people living in them for 3 years.
    It operates beautifully, but it is going to take a long time,
    and so there is a whole structure on the housing issue that we
    need to work on.
        Ms. Brown. Mr. Downing, I think you said something very
    important. Many of these programs are already in the community.
    It is just how do we partner with them, with these
    stakeholders. They are very good at finding housing and that
    supportive services that is needed.
        Mr. Downing. Yes, ma'am. One of the things that has made me
    a great fan of Jeff Miller is that he absolutely attacks
    bureaucracy for the sake of the consumer. We need to be doing
    that on these issues because the tragedy is this, and this is
    the hard part. What motivates me to do the work is simply this:
    8 or 9 percent of the American people are veterans. Every one
    of them that put on that uniform for a day said to all of us, I
    will die for you. We need to clearly hear that that sets that
    community apart for services and opportunity ahead of every
    other group in America; and we need to make that sacred, and
    this committee has done more, I think for that, than any other
    group in America in bringing it to light and in getting the
    government agencies focused on that, and I really thank you all
    for that. I think it allows us to do our work with more
    dignity, and also with a sense of hope that we might not have
    had 10 years ago.
        Ms. Brown. Thank you very much. I yield back the balance of
    my time.
        The Chairman. Thank you. Dr. Roe, you are recognized.
        Dr. Roe. Thank you, Chairman. I also associate my remarks
    with what you said about Mr. Michaud. It has been a pleasure.
        I think probably part of the VA and the bureaucracy, Mr.
    Downing, you share, Dr. O'Donnell, and I share with all of you.
    Setting up an 800 number doesn't fix anything if nobody answers
    the phone. So I think the people that solve the problem, I am
    sitting here looking at right here. Let me share with you a
    little bit of my frustration. At the Blue Butterfly Village, it
    may actually be about as long as that VA hospital in Florida
    that Ms. Brown has talked about since I have been here to get
    done. We had a flood in our area three years ago, tremendous
    flood. It took out about 100 homes. We weren't big enough for
    FEMA to help us. We took the local mayors, private-public
    partnerships, and we built 35 homes for these people in a year,
    had them in the homes, ready to go.
        We are beginning to do that for veterans now, and we are
    using the Appalachian Service Project in East Tennessee. We are
    using private funds. We are using public funds. We can build a
    home for cheaper than the VA can rehab a house where we are.
    The biggest problem we are having, and I was going to ask Dr.
    O'Donnell this, the biggest problem we have with the HUD-VASH
    program and others is there is not enough housing stock. That
    is the biggest problem we have got. If we had more housing
    stock, we have got the vouchers; we just don't have a place to
    put the veterans. We just broke ground on several--it will make
    a little dent like you. In 8 or 9 months we will have seven
    apartments where we are for veterans. But that's the biggest
    challenge we have.
        And the other challenge Mr. Downing brought up is this case
    management. It takes the VA forever to get a case manager.
    Those assets are already in the private community if they would
    just unleash them. And everything you have heard, I have heard
    in my own community. The VA needs to be a little less
    paternalistic and work with people like you all that are able
    to go out and do these services rapidly. Because somebody
    living under a bridge tonight is freezing. It is cold, and we
    need to get them off the street now and get them in this not
    just 6 months from now, but it is an emergency. I will start
    with in Philadelphia, how are those 500-plus folks going to
    get, what are you going to do with that? That would be the
    biggest challenge I see is where do you find 500 safe places
    that are approved for them to live in?
        Mr. O'Donnell. So collaboration with landlords, not my
    doing. It is a collaborative effort and there are landlords
    that, you know, want to do well and do good. So they are
    private owners that get approved to provide HUD-VASH housing,
    so having direct contact with landlords, but again, the 25
    cities initiative--in Philadelphia it is called a boot camp. I
    don't know if it is called that elsewhere, but people get
    together in a room regularly. There is Mr. Steve Culbertson who
    else in the audience there helps lead this effort. They get
    together and they identify every name on the list. So in truth,
    there are more than 540 homeless veterans left in Philadelphia.
    Those are the names on that list that get reviewed regularly
    with benchmarks that we need to hit constantly. And that group
    holds themselves accountable and it is about partnership, and
    clarity, and communication, and also about transparency, which
    is at the heart of some of this.
        Dr. Roe. Let me ask this, a little more global question.
    Are all the VA programs that we have, are they interconnected
    enough or do we need to have a review and say okay, let's make
    it simple and easier for organizations like you that are on the
    outside looking in? Is there a way to do that?
        Dr. Sherin. What I would say is that in the past several
    years that the National Center For Homelessness Amongst
    Veterans has created a new paradigm for partnership with
    community, which is one of the reasons why the SSVF program is
    so effective. When we talk about issues like the call center,
    communities are set up to do this type of work. We are set up
    to do intensive case management for HUD-VASH. I would strongly
    recommend that the VA consider leveraging the National Center
    For Homelessness Amongst Veterans to establish a larger
    continuum of services with communities around the Nation
    because it can do it in a much more streamlined fashion than
    through the VISNs and the medical centers.
        Dr. Roe. There are local housing authorities that already
    has that case management set up. All you have to do is let them
    do it. I mean, they are already doing it right now. It would be
    really simple. But now you go and find a case manager. They got
    to be trained. They got to do all this--I don't know whether
    you all have run into that or not. I certainly have.
        Mr. Downing. We would find the same thing. Look it, the
    bottom line is, the VA is going to continue to do these things
    unless it is demanded otherwise, you know. And we deal with all
    types of issues. But the reality for me is this: If I look at
    veterans and where they live, and as I go into rural areas, I
    am shocked at Vietnam veterans that we are identifying, 30
    percent of the Vietnam veterans we identify in the five States
    we are in in rural America are at 30 percent of median income
    or less; 60 percent are at 50 percent of median income or less.
    So, you know, we have to see that individuals left unserved,
    unhoused, and not being cared for continuously have diminished
    power to help themselves.
        Dr. Roe. Yes.
        Mr. Downing. So we need to rethink that, and I have become
    more and more convinced, at some point, we have to give every
    veteran his card with his benefits loaded up in it and let him
    choose to go to the VA or choose to go to a community provider
    or a community hospital, because until we do that, I don't
    think we are going to utilize the resources that are available
    that we all continuously refer to.
        Do you know what I am saying? I just think we need to
    somehow manage that out, and I don't know how else to manage it
    out without leveraging the Dollars. And it is frustrating
    because we watch the same thing you watch, sir, that there is
    services here, and we are sitting with people being trained
    over here while people dwindle out of their housing voucher
    based on the fact that they can't get services.
        I mean, it is difficult, so I would like to see that
    change.
        Dr. Roe. I yield back.
        The Chairman. Mr. Takano, you are recognized.
        Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is for any of the
    panelists. I have heard from providers in my district that most
    funding available for creating new housing options for homeless
    veterans and homeless people in general is for capital costs,
    in other words, for startup and construction costs, rather than
    operations and maintenance. And while funding for capital costs
    is obviously very important, the providers in my district say
    they have trouble funding operations and maintenance.
        Do you believe this is a problem, and do you think that
    funding for this type of housing should be more flexible? For
    any of you, Mr. Landis, Mr. Downing.
        Mr. Landis. In my experience, planning the capital cost to
    build a project, although it is difficult and complex, pales in
    comparison to your point in that the funding for services is
    just not there, or there isn't much of it. And the two go hand
    in hand. You can't just have a place to live, and without being
    able to provide extensive services to the veterans that are in
    place, as I mentioned earlier, you are going to have veterans
    that fail in their housing and they lose their stable housing.
        So the operational funding is critical to maintaining the
    stability of the vast majority of these men and women whom we
    are placing into housing.
        Mr. Takano. Mr. Downing.
        Mr. Downing. We found that operations were an issue until
    we got involved with SSVF and learned to build partnerships
    better with other community-based agencies, and it also gave us
    personnel in the area where we were doing housing. So you have
    staff with that. So what we have developed in our SSVF grants
    is we employ in all of our SSVF grants approximately five to
    seven veterans who work as peers, who do nothing but provide
    transportation for you to your appointments, or bring your
    appointments to you, depending on what the need is.
        And what we have found, again, is that is really where it
    works. What causes the cost to go up in services is when you
    have to rely on a source, and I would assume all of us have
    learned that the more we can partner this out, we can do it.
    The second thing is, in building, I build nothing but limited
    equity cooperatives for the veterans to own and manage. The
    reason I do it is twofold. Number one, they pay taxes to the
    community we build them in, so I don't have that pushback that
    it is more non-taxable property. The second thing is, our cost
    of operations of maintenance is at 40 percent of the national
    average because people who own where they live, when we say to
    our vets, you can go out and help us shovel the sidewalk, or we
    can pay guys 15 bucks an hour to do it, and they say, oh, no,
    if you are paying them 15, that is less income for us and our
    cooperative. Our costs go up. They get that. So we are finding
    that model works. There is ways to do these things. We just
    have to do the partnerships. I think if we can get the housing
    up, we will maintain it. Okay, I believe that.
        Mr. Berg.
        Mr. Berg. I think an analogy is to look at the private
    sector. In the private sector landlords don't get grants for
    operating costs. They collect rent. And from the rent, they pay
    the operating costs. Congress has put a lot of money on the
    table for rent subsidies for homeless veterans through the HUD-
    VASH program and through the SSVF program. I think what is
    starting to happen is, people who do veterans' housing, do
    site-based housing, are starting to change the way they do
    business a little bit in order to figure out how to use the
    rent subsidies as ways to finance that. I think it is realistic
    and it seems to be working.
        Mr. Takano. Well, Mr. Berg, can you explain to me more in
    detail your suggestion to put in place a system that will find
    vulnerable veterans before they ever become homeless and
    prevent their homelessness entirely. Do you think the VA is
    heading in that direction already?
        Mr. Berg. I think they are starting to head in that
    direction. And this is the long term vision. We need to end
    veterans' homelessness. And we are on track to do that. But
    then once we do that, we need to make sure it never comes back,
    and really transform into a prevention system. I think VA is
    already starting to do things like veterans who come into the
    health services facilities get asked certain questions to try
    to assess what their housing stability is, and then that
    information gets, at least the way it is supposed to work, and
    it does work this way in the places where it works well, that
    information gets transferred to people who can do something
    about it.
        Mr. Takano. I mean, there seems to be certain higher-risk
    folks who are servicemembers, people who have been trained to
    disarm IEDs and who we know have been in more intense battles.
    It seems to me DoD should be able to provide data on these
    individuals and we can track these individuals as they move
    into--it ought to be that we are identifying more high-risk
    individuals.
        Mr. Berg. Exactly. This is a future challenge. DoD knows a
    lot about people who are in the military, and it would be very
    helpful if they would share key information like that with VA
    as part of a sort of a----
        Mr. Takano. They don't currently share that information?
        Mr. Berg. There is some efforts underway to do that. I
    think there needs to be more.
        Mr. Takano. Thank you, sir. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Thank you. Dr. Benishek.
        Dr. Benishek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you all for
    being here today. I have got some great information from it.
    Mr. Downing, in particular, I really appreciate your passion--
    --
        Mr. Downing. Thank you.
        Mr. Benishek [continuing]. And your frustration with the
    bureaucracy of the VA as I share that very much as well. And I
    guess one of the first things I think of when I hear about the
    difficulty in coordinating the VA with the community-based
    services that are available and that, it seems to me that each
    community has a different set of community-based services, and
    I am not sure if there is enough flexibility within the VA to
    be able to deal with that. I mean, how does the coordination
    occur? Do you know at what level the VA makes these decisions
    to get into partnership with the VA?
        Mr. Downing. Speaking for SSVF and the grant per diem
    program that I work with, they absolutely encourage community
    partnership. They work with us in working it out. We regularly
    would call Lisa Pape and her staff and talk about, hey, how do
    we pass money through here? Can we make that work? Does that
    pass the sniff test?
        Dr. Benishek. Is that happening just in your--my concern
    is----
        Mr. Downing. I am doing that in all the States I am in. I
    have no trouble all. I find the veterans' services in
    communities very willing to interface and work. With SSVF, we
    can sometimes pay first month, last month, and do some things
    to assist so we can work the veteran's service officer and
    extend out benefits, and stabilize better, so all of that
    works----
        Dr. Benishek. What I am saying is, there is obviously a
    failure somewhere because of the fact that this--for example,
    this phone-in service was not working.
        Mr. Downing. But that was VHA, not the VA per diem. So it
    is done out of that big bureaucracy of healthcare and not under
    the little unit that just dealt with homelessness, the grant
    and per diem office and the homeless program.
        Dr. Benishek. So do you feel as if that--why is the VHA
    taking care of this when it should be the homeless people?
        Mr. Downing. You know what, Doc, or Mr. Congressman, I
    really can't answer that. I am befuddled by how they think. I
    have come to describe the VA as a bureaucracy that excels at
    skilled incompetency.
        Dr. Benishek. I agree with you.
        Mr. Downing. I don't know how they do it. I know this, that
    when I work with my community partners, when I deal with the
    grant and per diem folks or the people at the Center For
    Excellence in Philadelphia, I get answers. I get responses. I
    get frustrated sometimes, but I generally get, you know, I
    generally get supported in trying to move forward.
        Dr. Benishek. Well, hopefully, the VA will----
        Mr. Downing. The VA healthcare, they are the enemy to me.
    Even at the hospital that I house 225 homeless vets every
    night. Okay. They don't cooperate with me.
        Dr. Benishek. All right, thank you for your answer, Mr.
    Downing.
        I would just like to ask Mr. Berg a question sort of
    following up on Mr. Takano's question, and that is, how we can
    best, you know, and we didn't really breach about how to
    prevent this in the beginning when the person transitions from
    the DoD. I think there should be a better way of not waiting
    for somebody to reach out to the VA, but to make sure everybody
    on their discharge gets some follow-up. And can you maybe
    comment on that a little bit more, Mr. Berg?
        Mr. Berg. Sure. And just to go back to the previous
    question, I would just say, I work with several different
    Federal agencies and what I found with all of them, HUD, HHS,
    and VA, whatever you think about the agency in general, and
    people have different ideas, one of the good things about
    working on homelessness is in all those agencies the part of
    the agency that deals with homelessness seems to attract people
    who are very capable, very smart and very committed to getting
    things done. So I think that supports what Mr. Downing is
    saying.
        On the prevention issue, what we see as an important long-
    term piece of the homelessness prevention system is exactly, as
    I said before, the DoD knows a lot about people who are in the
    military, and we know more and more about what the risk factors
    for homelessness are, both for people in general, and
    particularly for people who have been on active duty, depending
    on the kind of duty they had, the kind of injuries they have,
    what sort of medical conditions they have, what experiences
    they had while they were in the military, what characteristics
    they had before they ever joined the military. These are risk
    factors for homelessness in all of that. DoD knows a lot about
    that. VA doesn't have really any ready access to that kind of
    information, but that wouldn't have to be the case.
        I could foresee a system where the homeless services part
    of the local VA Medical Center had a list of veterans who were,
    who had been identified as having these risk factors, that they
    could check on once in a while, not in any sort of intrusive
    way, but just as part of the normal course of business. We are
    a long way from having such a system, but I don't see--I think
    we have got the know-how to make a system like that work.
        Dr. Benishek. Thank you. My time is expired.
        The Chairman. Ms. Brownley, you are recognized.
        Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Downing, I
    wanted to follow-up with you on your comments on military
    sexual trauma. And I am just interested to know if there are,
    you know, sort of model programs for that and if it is
    consistent across the country. Do you have any idea of what the
    success rate is? Do any of our men and women who experience
    military sexual trauma, do they fall into the category? I think
    there were two of you who talked about 20 to 25 percent of
    veterans will need services for a lifetime and sort of not have
    the recovery that we all would hope for. Can you comment on
    that?
        Mr. Downing. Well, first of all, I can comment on the women
    that we serve. It is hard for me to project it out nationally.
    Think about this: In 13 years, every night we are at 100
    percent capacity for 12 beds for our women, every night. I have
    never had a woman with custody of children present. It kind of
    runs counter to all the thoughts I would expect to have take
    place.
        So the first thing we found out is that women will live in
    horrific situations where they are absolutely horribly violated
    and everything rather than show up in a shelter with children
    because they don't want the children identified and then going
    into special care units in most States.
        The second thing that we found is that we had to change how
    we operated our women's program. There is no male authority in
    our women's program. It is run all by women. No man has any
    power, has anything there. We pay all the bills. That is what
    we do. Soldier On pays the bills. We found out that was another
    issue was male authority, trust of men, that type of thing.
        Finally, we found out the approaches we were taking really
    changed when we went to trauma-informed care into wellness. We
    got a grant for $150,000 from Newman's Own Foundation and we
    started a wellness program in our women's program. And we
    started to deal with the spirit, the mind and the body, and we
    started to see some real change. Now, I can only express the
    change in how people appear and then how women started to--our
    women never participated in any program that involved our men.
        We now have former homeless women who are employees working
    on the call center, working as outreach workers, working as
    peers. We have women going to school. But the issue is, they
    want women-specific services, and it is very difficult because
    the VA does not accommodate that at all. At the rural VA center
    that I am at, there is no OB-GYN services at all. If a woman
    has a mental health break and needs to go to a unit, she goes
    on a unit with male patients; completely unacceptable to her.
        So we have to, in our facility, we dual register all our
    women in Mass Health so they can choose to go community-base
    where they can see doctors that they are comfortable with and
    they can go to units for treatment where they feel safe.
    Doesn't make sense to me that we have--so that is that.
        Finally, in the piece about recovery, I think the women
    generally recover because there is much more support in their
    community for one another than there is with the men. They tend
    to care for one another very much and they tend to look out for
    one another, so that even as they have moved into the community
    and established their lives, they come back and visit. They
    come back and help the women decorate their new apartment, just
    a number of those things. So I think there is more hope for us
    there. But the shocking part to me is that we continuously read
    about this in DoD. And you know, it is not run by women--do you
    know what I am saying?
        Ms. Brownley. Yes.
        Mr. Downing. And it is like somehow we are going to get
    there. Well, I want to tell you something. When I first ran the
    women's program, I ran it like we ran the men's program. And in
    fact, they shared some space in the building where the men
    were. And I was very frustrated with it and women were coming
    and going, and it really wasn't working. And I went home one
    night and I am sitting with my wife and I have a daughter who
    is a special-needs teacher who happened to stop at the house,
    and I am talking about the women's program.
        My daughter looks at me and she says, what the hell are you
    doing running a women's program. You stunk as a father. If it
    wasn't for mom, we all would have left you. And I am really?
    And I had to really--she wasn't joking. She was dead serious.
    Okay, and that is when I realized, my God, yeah, what do I
    know? And how do I--I didn't understand. Do you know what I am
    saying?
        Mr. Brownley. Yes.
        Mr. Downing. So that is what we need to do, and we need to
    really say that across the board. I am sure Dr. Sherin has some
    other insights on women like that because I would assume in
    your practice, there has been a lot that you face.
        Ms. Brownley. Yes, sir, I think my time is up, but I would
    like to hear from other members maybe, you know, off time here
    about----
        The Chairman. If we could do it off line because they are
    about to call votes, and I would like to go ahead and continue
    the questions. But thank you very much, and thank you for your
    spontaneity, Mr. Downing.
        Mr. Coffman.
        Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Sherin, I have
    got a question for you. You were talking about how we calculate
    homelessness, and I think you had, if I can quote you, you said
    certain homeless veterans populations, and then you went on to
    say, elude current methods of calculation. What populations are
    you referring to, and what do you think the true number of
    homelessness is?
        Dr. Sherin. I think you actually got the wrong doctor. I
    will hand it over to him, but let me just say real quick, I
    think we have to recognize that our estimates of homelessness
    are rough. You know, when we do the point time count, we get a
    sense on a given night how many veterans we are finding
    basically in the streets. First off, there is a whole year that
    we are looking to kind of estimate. Secondly, there are
    veterans that elude these techniques and these radars, for
    example, post-9/11 veterans I would say in large part, and
    female veterans.
        Mr. Coffman. Okay, Mr. Landis.
        Mr. Landis. No. I think that was yours.
        Mr. O'Donnell. So you asked for the actual number, and I
    don't know. But you asked about the population, and as you
    might imagine, as the number of homeless veterans that are
    known, I will speak to Philadelphia, to be in Philadelphia,
    those that are more elusive, might actually be choosing to live
    on the street for a whole host of reasons.
        But as we find appropriate housing, some of those folks are
    the most difficult people to find appropriate housing and care
    for, significant mental illness, chronic and prolonged
    substance abuse and dependency. They are at a stage in their
    recovery where they--it is called precontemplative. You are not
    even considering the idea of abstinence from substance use. So
    those are the folks that I think no one really has figured out
    what long-term appropriate housing and care looks like, and I
    don't know the number.
        Mr. Coffman. If we talk about the majority of the causes
    for veterans homelessness, I mean, when I left for my first
    overseas assignment with the United States Army in 1972, came
    back from my last overseas assignment with the United States
    Marine Corps in 2006, and so, but I never went to Vietnam. And
    that population, a conscript military, very intense war, a lot
    of drug and alcohol issues, doesn't the majority of
    homelessness right now come from that generation of veterans?
        Mr. O'Donnell. The generation that we are serving
    predominantly is from the Vietnam era.
        Mr. Coffman. Vietnam era.
        Mr. O'Donnell. But within the last year, we went from 5
    percent OEF/OIF veterans to 10 percent OEF/OIF veterans, so
    that is steadily and significantly increasing. And those guys
    haven't hit bottom yet. They are couch surfing. They are being
    incarcerated, often related to substance use. But your
    comments, and actually the comments about military sexual
    trauma, if you can expand the idea of trauma just from combat
    to complex trauma that occurs on the street, there is something
    implicit about being homeless that there is a threat of
    violence, interpersonal violence on a regular basis. We know
    there is a dose-duration relationship between trauma and all of
    the problems, including homelessness that come along with that.
        Mr. Coffman. Well, doesn't it--any effective program for
    homeless veterans, doesn't it have to include a mental health
    component, particularly in substance abuse?
        Mr. O'Donnell. You would imagine so. If I had another
    choice today, I would say allow the VA to outstation mental
    heal providers. We are not allowed to provide psychotherapy. So
    there are evidence-based treatments for posttraumatic stress
    disorder and a hole host of other disorders related to trauma.
    We can't provide that service directly. We drive guys every day
    to the VA if they can get an appointment, but if mental
    healthcare providers could be outstationed to our facility, I
    will even pick up the occupancy cost. Right? We can try to find
    money, but if you can provide that level of care, yes, it is
    necessary, and then a longer discussion is about trauma-
    informed care, which is a culture change.
        Mr. Coffman. It is about--I don't want to use the term
    outsourcing--well, I guess I would--about reimbursing private
    providers for providing the care or nonprofit providers for
    providing the care.
        Mr. O'Donnell. That would be an option, although I got to
    tell you, the VA has a whole branch that focuses on
    implementation and evaluation. So if mental healthcare
    providers are given the training to provide evidence-based
    therapy for specific disorders with some flexibility about
    context because that is relevant in implementation, I would
    suggest that before giving me money to go hire a therapist. The
    VA is able to monitor what therapies are being delivered and in
    what way.
        Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        The Chairman. Ms. Kirkpatrick.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. Thank you, panel, for being here. I
    represent a very large rural district in Arizona, and my staff
    and I talk with thousands of veterans, and it is very evident
    that housing is an acute need for veterans in rural Arizona and
    maybe throughout the country in rural areas. And so my question
    is, what is being done about that and especially in light of
    the VA reform bill that we recently passed allowing veterans to
    get care in their local communities where they live, under HUD-
    VASH, are they going to be able to get that in their
    communities? Are they going to be able to stay in their
    communities, or are they going to have to relocate just to get
    housing?
        That is my general concern. I don't know who on the panel
    can best answer that. I will let you sort that out, but that is
    what I would like to hear about.
        Dr. Sherin. I have a few comments about that. At Volunteers
    of America in Northern Louisiana, we actually just received a
    pilot grant from the VA specifically to connect veterans in
    rural areas in the Tri-State area around Northern Louisiana to
    the services that they need around the horn, you know,
    healthcare services and human services.
        In addition, we are looking to obviously provide housing
    through the HUD-VASH program when we can. I think that the
    challenge in rural areas is obviously significant. Leveraging
    technology is one part of the solution, and I think that the
    VA's willingness to outsource services to non-VA providers is
    going to be very, very important in rural areas going forward.
    And I would say this new generation, particularly those
    suffering from post-traumatic stress are retreating to more
    rural areas, and we need to be aware of that and get out ahead
    of that movement.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. And let me just mention, I am hearing from
    veterans on housing, not necessarily who are living on streets
    or in the woods, but they are living with their children, or
    grandchildren, or friends. And in my mind, they still count as
    homeless because they don't have their own place. Mr. Downing,
    do you have anything to add?
        Mr. Downing. We work in 76 counties in Mississippi. Most of
    them are rural. We have the same issues. What we found is the
    SSVF grants allow us to go out there. Now, we partner with
    Voice of Calvary out of Jackson to provide services there
    because they have a whole history down there and we have found
    that that really works. So what we have done, again, is we
    have, in Mississippi, we have seven peers and 11 outreach
    workers who do nothing but go to those areas, deliver services,
    and then try to get local agencies to work with us and partner
    with us to sustain some service for individuals because a 3- or
    6-month process can get you to a little bit more stability and
    opportunity, but it is the long-term, how do we keep this going
    and keep you going in the right direction.
        So at this point we have 2 years of experience there, and
    we are finding that is what works there. But what we need to do
    is increase SSVF funding, especially in the rural areas because
    we need to do much more transportation, and we need to get
    professionals to move out there with us.
        I think what, again, what Dr.--is it Sherin?
        Dr. Sherin. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Downing. What he said was, that if we can get the VA to
    contract for those services and we can make them mobile and
    they go with us, it is just so much more effective.
        Dr. Sherin. If I may, I have mentioned earlier the concept
    of leveraging the National Center For Homelessness Amongst
    Veterans to create a larger grant opportunity. That grant could
    be named reintegration services for veteran families, as one
    example, which would have a number of different resources
    available to use through that very responsive mechanism.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. Thank you, panel. Yes, yes, Mr. Berg.
        Mr. Berg. Just to say on this issue of housing, I think
    this is a longer-term problem that people on this committee are
    going to have to deal with. The long-term trend in the cost of
    rental housing is up compared to the rest of costs of living.
    We went through a period in the mid-to late zeros where we had
    sort of a temporary lull in that, but housing costs are going
    to continue to be more and more of a burden. If the VA benefits
    system doesn't find some way to take account of that, they are
    going to leave more and more veterans pushed into homelessness
    and pushed into poverty.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. Right, I completely agree. I think this is
    an absolutely top priority that we have got to address. And we
    don't even get to providing healthcare or mental healthcare
    without providing that housing stability. My time is up, but I
    thank the panel very much and I think we need to focus on this
    going forward. Thank you. I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Kirkpatrick. To the first and
    second panel, please accept our apologies. We are going to have
    to step out. We have a series of votes right now. We should be
    able to return in about 30 minutes so we will stand in recess
    until that time.
        [Recess.]
        Mr. Lamborn [presiding]. The committee will come back to
    order. We will resume the questioning of the first panelists. I
    want to thank you for staying here. We were interrupted. The
    chairman has so much going on and--all of us do. Important
    votes taking place, and then we leave for the rest of December
    to go back to our districts. So thank you for your indulgence
    in staying here and being willing to continue answering
    questions.
        And, at this point, we are to Representative Walorski.
        Ms. Walorski. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Lamborn. The floor is yours.
        Ms. Walorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the
    panel, also, for being here. I am grateful for the work that
    you all do and--and for the heart that you have and your
    diligence in continuing to make a difference.
        And I think one take-home--take-away that we can take home
    today from today's testimony is that there is measured success
    when local programs are tailored to meet the needs of veterans
    and take charge of the homeless veteran population. And in my
    district, although it does not receive any grant money from the
    VA, but we have the Robert L. Miller Sr. Veteran's Center in
    downtown South Bend, Indiana. It has 24 beds. They are always
    full. And the facility has an incredible proven track record.
    But, obviously, there is--you know, it is a small--it is a
    small step forward. We have other homeless shelters as well.
    But for us, in the middle of getting into winter now, everybody
    will be full and there is still going to be a need.
        But their story does go to show that local community
    organizations doing the work on the ground achieve results.
    And--and that is why I am glad you are here, to hear about
    other stories, winning stories, things that work. But, I guess,
    I share the same passion you do that, for every success story,
    there are so many folks that are standing in the shadows that
    are counted as just nameless, homeless veterans.
        The question I have is: In the research that you have all
    done in some of your--some of you maybe have alluded to a
    little bit of this. But in the research that you have done for
    the folks that come to your facility or that you end up
    involved somehow with an outreach as a net, what are the
    backgrounds that lead a lot of these veterans to homeless? And
    the one thing I want to know--I know some of you are going to
    say it is economic, it is mental health issues. And we get the
    same thing on our end in just handling our district phone
    calls.
        But I just want to draw your attention to one really quick
    story. We have a--one of the first times I dealt with this
    really up close and personal was the homelessness veterans was
    the shelter in our area. But, secondly, when I was elected, we
    got a call last year from a homeless veteran. And he said, ``I
    am living in my car and I have lost everything.'' And his
    issue, though, to me, was, you know, just another frustrating
    point about the efficiency of services delivered by the VA to
    the veteran community. This guy wasn't homeless. He became
    homeless. He lost his house and he lost everything but a car.
    And he called us because he had filed claims with the VA, and
    this went on for years. And we got involved and started to run
    the traps on that claim. And part of the claim was that he was
    unemployable with 100 percent service connected PTSD.
        And after--years after he has been homeless, living in car,
    lost his family, lost everybody, we chased the bunny trail and
    he began to get the money--the back money that the VA owed him
    from some 4 or 5 years ago.
        Today, our happily-ever after story is today, he is back on
    his feet. He has a home. His family is reunited. And the story
    ends happily. But there is still even hundreds in my own
    district where, you know, that is never going to happen. But
    when you look at the breakdown of a pie chart and say, if today
    the VA could run no backlogs, completely efficiently and all
    services rendered, delivered, and all that kind of thing, if
    the veteran was number one and we could solve this today with
    just that scenario, which I know, you know, is kind of
    hypothetical, how many veterans are coming into your services
    that perhaps could be--put back on the right path, if they had
    the claims resolved and really were not fighting with the
    bureaucracy of the VA itself? And I am just going to open up to
    whoever wants to answer that.
        Dr. Sherin. Well, you know, it is--I mean, it is a tough
    question. Obviously, if we could get perfect service out of all
    the different agencies, fewer veterans would fall out. What I
    have said for a long time--and I continue to say--is that the
    biggest problem is actually accessing resources, which is why I
    continue to push at Volunteers of America an effort to create
    what we like to think of as community concierge, which is
    veterans helping veterans, as battle buddies, navigate the
    systems. Okay. A veteran can engage another veteran better than
    anybody.
        Ms. Walorski. Right. Exactly.
        Dr. Sherin. Family relationship.
        Ms. Walorski. Yes.
        Dr. Sherin. Then, if they are supported by an organization
    like Volunteers of America or others who are on the panel, they
    have the ability, they can develop the process and content
    expertise that they need to navigate the systems. And then,
    when they show up at a nonprofit, at the VA----
        Ms. Walorski. Right.
        Dr. Sherin [continuing]. Anywhere----
        Ms. Walorski. Yes.
        Dr. Sherin [continuing]. Together, they are stronger.
        Ms. Walorski. Yes.
        Dr. Sherin [continuing]. At kicking down the door and
    getting access to that resource.
        Ms. Walorski. I agree. And that is why my hand and my heart
    goes out to you because what you are doing--and in my own
    community with the Miller Homeless Vet Center, privately run,
    privately funded, you know, no Federal money coming in, but
    they have certainly led the way. And my hope would be, for
    communities like ours, that we would be able to leverage more
    grant money that comes into communities to say, lets drive the
    money--I would rather see the finances driven to the frontline
    than held up in a bureaucracy. That is just the kind of--that
    is just how--in my world, it is so much more efficient and--but
    I applaud your efforts.
        And if you just--if you could indulge me, Mr. Chairman, one
    second. If there was one thing the VA could--could do today,
    would it be the access of resources for all of you, as for Dr.
    Sharin?
        Mr. Downing. It would for me.
        Ms. Walorski. Yes.
        Dr. Sherin. Yes.
        Ms. Walorski. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
        Representative O'Rourke.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        I wanted to begin by joining my colleagues in thanking Mr.
    Michaud for his service. This is the last day, I hope, of my
    first term in Congress. And serving on this committee with you,
    I have learned a lot and your style of leadership and your
    commitment to veterans has really been inspiring. And I--that
    inspiration will continue long after you leave. So I just want
    to thank you for your work for everyone that we serve on this
    committee.
        And then for--Dr. Sherin, I really enjoyed your comments
    about, in reading some of the backup in your written comments
    and testimony about peer-to-peer services. And you cite a New
    York Times article, and it says this is a way to treat
    depression in the general population that might go viral. And
    you suggest how that might work for veterans, and you suggest
    something like an SSVF-type grant to fund that.
        Can you talk a little bit about how that might work? What
    that might cost? How that grant might be structured? That seems
    like something that this committee could pick up and run with.
        Dr. Sherin. Well, I mean, to start, we want to try to, I
    think, use the SSVF program as a prototype because it is so
    flexible and responsive. And in the hands of community
    providers and, also, veterans who are being served, there is a
    clear recognition that this program works. So, once we have a
    mechanism like this, it is something that we should leverage
    because what it allows for the VA to do is to engage community
    providers in a direct way and to maintain fidelity with the
    needs of the community and the individuals.
        There are a lot of funds--there are a lot of funds that are
    floating around doing different things. If we were able to, for
    one example, take HVRP money or money for employment and funnel
    it through SSVF, that would be an effective way, I think, to
    get services to homeless veterans so that, once they were
    actually housed, we could work on getting them employed.
        Same thing around, you know, kind of around this circle of
    the human services: Leveraging peers is a critical part of the
    solution because--because many homeless veterans become
    disenfranchised, they become isolated. When you are in the
    military, the community, the family that is built is a critical
    part. And when you return to the country and things start to
    fracture around you, you become isolated. And, you know, we
    call it the other LOL, which--you know, which is the lethality
    of loneliness. Because veterans become isolated.
        And, you know, the homeless lifestyle does not lend itself
    to, you know, any type of thriving behavior. So if you
    incorporate resources for a--for a program that is operated
    like SSVF. What that will do is it will give the homeless
    veterans that family piece so that they can belong, and also,
    the ability to access resources.
        And I--sorry to be carrying on. But the other thing here is
    that this is an opportunity for a massive employment
    initiative. We could employ a huge number of veterans to do
    this work. And the veterans that do this work--and I say this
    from my own experience. I met with 15 of them yesterday in Los
    Angeles, that work gives them purpose, because that purpose is
    lost as well when they return.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Great. Great idea.
        For, Ms. Crone, I spend a good deal of time when I am back
    in El Paso with the veterans in our community. We have a
    veterans town hall every quarter and a monthly town hall. And
    we have actually held some of them in a homeless shelter that
    primarily serves veterans. And so anecdotally, I have gotten a
    lot of good feedback.
        We have the point-in-time count, you know, 56 veterans in
    El Paso. We know how many HUD-VASH vouchers there are
    outstanding. We know how many Dollars SSVF have come into the
    community, who holds the grant. How can I assess, what is a
    good measure? I know no measure will be perfect. But how do I
    know how El Paso is doing? How do any of us know how the
    communities are doing using the resources that are coming
    through and holding those who have those resources accountable
    for their use?
        Ms. Crone. That is a great question. So I appreciate it.
    Thank you very much.
        Mr. O'Rourke. You have 20 seconds to answer that question.
        Ms. Crone. Okay. But--oh, okay. Great.
        Mr. O'Rourke. No. I am kidding. I am kidding. Hopefully the
    chair will give me some time.
        Ms. Crone. The point-in-time count is a useful number, but
    you also want to be looking at factors like the lease-up rate,
    how quickly is someone being referred for a HUD-VASH voucher
    and how long from that referral point does it take until they
    are leased up. You want to be looking at their continuation in
    that permanent housing, once they are leased up with HUD-VASH.
        For those individuals that don't need that extensive
    intervention--so maybe people who are going through SSVF--you
    want to be looking at how quickly, again, they are being placed
    into permanent housing, what the cost replacement is from year
    to year and its increase--or its decrease every year. It is
    improved every year with SSVF nationally. You also want to be
    looking at, for those individuals who are seeking out
    employment services, which ones are getting employed, what
    their wages are, and how long they are retaining that
    employment.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Is this something that is measured? And I can
    ask the VA. I know they are the next panel. Is this something
    that is measured by the VA for each community which they serve,
    the different metrics you just gave us?
        Ms. Crone. I think your best way to get some of that
    information is to directly ask the providers. They do pretty
    extensive tracking of their programs. And some of those
    programs, including the employment services, might be through
    Department of Labor.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Thank you.
        Ms. Crone. But, yes, you can ask me.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Very, very helpful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Lamborn. Representative Walz.
        Mr. Walz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I start, I think
    it maybe has all been said, but I wanted to thank the ranking
    member, Mr. Michaud, as everyone said here, just an absolute
    pillar of this committee and of Congress, a close friend. When
    I think now people from Maine, I think of Mr. Michaud, no
    nonsense, practical, hearty, dependable, consistent, all those
    things.
        So I was thinking of my district, something to give you
    that I thought fit those attributes. And in my district, every
    single can of Spam in the world is produced there. So I think
    of you. I am going to--so we will pass it down.
        Well, to each of you, thank you. You are doing the good
    work. I appreciate this, and many of you have been here. I want
    to say a couple of things.
        First of all, Mr. Landis, thank you. I have been out to be
    with you. And in full disclosure, my wife and I support what
    you are doing out there and I appreciate the email updates and
    all the things you are doing. It is a model that many of you
    have here. It is not the same model, but it is a model based on
    efficiency, delivery, and that holistic approach. And for that,
    I am very, very grateful.
        Dr. Sherin, in following up on my colleague's insightful
    questions on this peer-to-peer piece, as we sit here today, we
    are waiting. And at any point, that Veterans Suicide Bill and
    the ones you helped on are going to get there. A key component
    of that was the peer counseling piece. So I thank you for that.
    It looks like--and we just got word from the White House, they
    are waiting for it to sign it. So thank you for that. And I
    think we are moving forward.
        A couple things I want to ask each of you. This issue of
    rural delivery--and I know I hear many of you talk about that.
    Mr. Downing, you talk about it. One of the realities we are
    going to have to understand, about 15 percent of the population
    is rural, like southern Minnesota, northern Maine, places like
    that, El Paso and others that you get out in the countryside.
    But about 45 percent of our warriors come from there. I think
    that is cultural, far more than it is economic. But it is a
    reality.
        One of the issues we have to grapple with is the shortage
    of providers is both in the private sector as well as in this.
    So one of the things, as we look for these solutions, and we
    look for them, it is not as simple as just putting the people
    into the private sector because, in many cases, those providers
    aren't there anyway. And so I say that because I think--and
    many of you are thinking about this, this holistic approach,
    and I have seen this in my community. We have MACV, which an
    integrated housing unit. Minnesota Valley Action--and they do
    it right. And we integrated and started early on after folks in
    Buffalo showed us to do this veterans courts, where we
    understand, instead of the criminal justice system, it is
    entrance into the community. That is private sector, working
    with the county, working with the city, working with the State,
    working with the VA.
        So I think there are models out there. I caution us,
    though, from saying one way or another. If I go to charity
    navigator, not all the private charities are doing a wonderful
    job as many of you are. And I think it is our responsibility
    here and it is VA's responsibility to be that clearinghouse and
    to put those things into place. And I hear you on this. And I
    am saying, well, maybe one of those major responsibilities
    should be moving the resources in an accountable manner. I
    think I agree with you on this. I have two questions, though, I
    want to ask on this.
        I--and many of them are here, and I know the Secretary and
    others will be here. And I--this isn't the PIC, the turf battle
    fight or whatever, but it seemed like to me as a veteran, one
    of the things is the disjointed nature of where many services
    are. There are 40,000 charities for veterans in this country,
    whatever.
        Does it make sense to have DoL, Department of Labor, and VA
    have pieces of this? My goal was to bring it all into one. And
    that it was not to disparage either agency on that, but as a
    simple alignment. I ask each of you who deal with this on a
    regular basis.
        Mr. Downing. I stopped all my DoL programs just because I
    had a difficult time with all the different reporting things,
    and it was easier for me to meet the various State funder
    sources in the VA and move on. And through SSVF, I was able to
    train people to be--to do job search, and we have built that
    component in. And we, also, in most of the States we are in,
    are partnering now with their employment divisions, okay, and
    their training divisions, and we are finding that it works
    extremely well.
        Mr. Walz. Do you think there is expertise in VA to clear
    some of that to get to those----
        Mr. Downing. I do. I think, again, in the homeless
    program--and I want to go back here because VHA, I have real
    fears about. But the homeless program, the Center for
    Excellence, are very good at contracting. And we just need to
    fund them and encourage them to.
        I think the second thing is, in rural areas, technology--I
    manage 76 counties in Mississippi from western Massachusetts.
        Mr. Walz. Okay.
        Mr. Downing. You know, I pick up--or my staff pick up a
    phone and they can tell you where every car is, who is on time
    for their appointments, who isn't, how many people are served
    there. That is all doable. But we need to have the resources,
    and we need to have the creative minds that say, hey, that is
    acceptable. Do you know what I am saying? It is hard to get the
    big system to buy that. So I think we are very capable of it.
        Mr. Walz. Well, I will let some of you--I am going to save
    this one for VA. But I want you to think about it. I have been
    in, you know, I am sure I have spoken about it till everybody
    is sick of hearing about this. But this idea of the strategic
    vision, the quadrennial veterans review type of thing. How does
    homelessness fit into their broader strategy? Do you feel like
    it is taken into that, or do we end up having programs that get
    attached on the side all the time? I am just wondering where
    homelessness fits into that veterans strategy? If any of you--
    do you think it is there? My time is up and just--why don't we
    hold it. I will let them answer, but just give you some----
        Mr. Lamborn. Yes. Representative Walz, I just--I hate to
    keep moving, but----
        Mr. Walz. No, no. If we are on the right track and all
    that--I yield back.
        Mr. Lamborn [continuing]. We have votes in about 45
    minutes, so--and we have another panel of three people yet to
    go.
        Representative Kuster.
        Ms. Kuster. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And I, too,
    want to commend Mr. Michaud for his wonderful leadership on
    this committee and thank you for mentorship to the new members
    of the committee.
        I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. Mr. Downing,
    nice to meet you. You have a project that we are trying to get
    off the ground in my district of Plymouth, New Hampshire.
        Mr. Downing. Yes, ma'am.
        Ms. Kuster. And I understand we have had some zoning board
    issues with a couple of the sites, and I am very hopeful that
    we will be successful with this site that you are looking at
    now.
        Mr. Downing. I think we are. We had an offer that was
    accepted on the property. We are trying to work out the terms
    of that right now.
        Ms. Kuster. Terrific. Terrific.
        Mr. Downing. So--and we have talked to Taylor Caswell. And
    we are moving ahead and doing applications on the financing.
        Ms. Kuster. Terrific. And so what I wanted to ask about is:
    Can you help me understand, you or any other members of the
    panel, how we go about the funding? What is the Federal rule in
    the actual capital funding? We have talked about that, sort of,
    the initial expense. I am very confident in the model that you
    are choosing of relying upon our community providers. We have a
    great deal of interest in this community. It is rural, but we
    have strong support, and I am very much looking forward to you
    coming to New Hampshire. Because, as they have told me, you are
    the gold standard and we have a great----
        Mr. Downing. Thank you.
        Ms. Kuster [continuing]. Deal of need in that region. But
    can you just educate me on what the sources of capital funding
    are for these projects?
        Mr. Downing. First of all, we get in line with every other
    affordable housing group on the home, if and however that money
    gets passed through in your State, we applied for that. Tax
    credits, both Federal and State, then, become issues. And we
    applied for those where they are applicable. And then we
    normally have approximately a 20 percent shortfall on anything
    we are going to build. And we usually go out and borrow some of
    that money and see what we can fund develop for the balance.
    And then that is how we put our model together.
        There are two other models now that are really--we are
    looking at, one that I am doing in partnership with a major tax
    credit provider. And they are--they feel that we could more
    rapidly get to building using that model. And I have just met
    with a major defense contractor, and we are going to be meeting
    with them about buying the credits at a ``Dollar"on a ``Dollar
    " for veterans' housing. And if we could pull that off, it
    would then really rapidly increase the time.
        So that--give an example, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, now
    that we finally found the piece of land and we are in agreement
    on the price and fair and we are all moving forward, it would
    be--with a more streamlined model, we should be able to start
    building in 18 months. It is probably going to take us, in the
    model we are in right now, because of the lack of tax credits
    in the State and the size of the State limits that, I believe
    we are going to be 2\1/2\ years to 3 years to finance. Okay.
        Ms. Kuster. I would love to help you out and maybe make
    some introductions to some of our businesses in the community
    that could be helpful.
        Mr. Downing. Thank you. I would appreciate it, ma'am.
        Ms. Kuster. And we welcome you in my district.
        Mr. Downing. Thank you.
        Ms. Kuster. Thank you.
        I would like to ask--and this is for anyone in the panel. I
    am interested--we have talked about VA products and programs
    that are available and we have talked about private sector. Do
    you envision an impact, as in New Hampshire we have just
    expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. It is a big
    change for us. We are going to have 50,000 people with health
    insurance for the first time, many of them ever. And given our
    high population of veterans, do you envision this being
    helpful? And I think one of you had mentioned that
    Massachusetts--that you encourage them to take the healthcare
    coverage under the Massachusetts plan. Will this help provide
    alternatives so that our veterans can get the services they
    need in the community? And any comment from anyone on that?
        Mr. Berg. Well, I would start by saying just the expansion
    of Medicaid really, by making sort of mental health treatment
    available to a lot more very low income people, helps on the
    issue of homelessness generally.
        Now, for veterans, in the past, we have thought, okay, VA
    offers mental healthcare where that--that, at least, is more
    than people who aren't veterans get. I think there is a lot
    more talk about how these federally-funded systems should
    interact, the one for veterans and the one for nonveterans.
        The other thing I would say is that there is a certain
    number of veterans, people who served on active duty in the
    military who are not eligible for VA healthcare. Based on a
    series of complicated rules. The Medicaid expansion is going to
    be what they need to rely on to get mental health agreement.
        Ms. Kuster. Excellent.
        My time is up. But I appreciate it, and I certainly am
    hopeful in New Hampshire that that will happen and across the
    country. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Lamborn. That concludes our questions. Thank you all
    for being here on this important issue. We appreciate your
    testimony.
        I would now welcome our second panel to the witness table.
    Joining us from the Department of Veterans Affairs is Lisa
    Pape, the executive director of Homeless Programs. Ms. Pape is
    accompanied by Thomas O'Toole, the Acting Director of the
    National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans.
        We are also joined on our second panel by Jennifer Ho, the
    senior advisor to the Secretary on Housing and Services from
    the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the
    Honorable Keith Kelly, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the
    Veterans Employment and Training Service for the Department of
    Labor.
        Thank you all for being here. We will begin with Ms. Pape.
    And if you are ready, you, may begin with your testimony.

    STATEMENTS OF LISA PAPE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HOMELESS PROGRAMS,
      VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS
       AFFAIRS, ACCOMPANIED BY THOMAS O'TOOLE, ACTING DIRECTOR,
         NATIONAL CENTER FOR HOMELESSNESS AMONG VETERANS, U.S.
    DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; JENNIFER HO, SENIOR ADVISOR ON
       HOUSING AND SERVICES TO THE SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
      HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT; HON. KEITH KELLY, ASSISTANT
     SECRETARY OF LABOR, VETERANS EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING SERVICE,
                        U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

                         STATEMENT OF LISA PAPE

        Ms. Pape. Good morning, chairman, and Ranking Member
    Michaud, and members of the committee. On behalf of Secretary
    McDonald, let me thank you and the committee for the
    opportunity to review our progress to prevent and end
    homelessness among our Nation's veterans. As you have
    indicated, I am here and pleased to be accompanied by Dr.
    Thomas O'Toole, the acting director of our National Center on
    Homelessness Among Veterans. And I have to just say thanks to
    the panel before us for all their good work and great
    partnerships.
        This is the time to prevent and end homelessness among
    veterans. We owe every man and woman who has worn our Nation's
    military uniform no less. With the help of Congress, our
    Federal partners, and community providers, we have been making
    unprecedented strides, as you have heard today, to engage,
    support, treat, and house homeless and at-risk veterans. While
    the numbers are going down from almost 56,000 in 2013 to 49,900
    on any given night in 2014, we know we have to accelerate the
    pace, use data to drive our results, leverage mainstream
    systems, target resources in greatest need, and work better,
    faster and together.
        Our goal: A systemic end to homelessness, no veteran
    sleeping on our streets, and every veteran having access to
    permanent housing. We have will have the capacity to quickly
    connect homeless or at-risk for homeless veterans with the help
    they need to achieve the housing stability they deserve. The
    ultimate goal is that all veterans have permanent sustainable
    housing with access to high quality healthcare.
        VA knows we can't prevent and end homelessness alone, and
    we are committed to continued collaboration and fostering of
    strong partnerships. We have close working relationships with
    Federal partners, like the U.S. Interagency Council on
    Homelessness, HUD, Department of Labor, and others.
    Partnerships are key.
        I would like to take a moment to thank our local partners
    from around the country. Your interest in being part of a
    collaborative solution to ending veterans' homelessness is
    extremely valuable and greatly appreciated. Lastly, I want to
    acknowledge the homeless and formerly homeless vets who are
    watching or here with us today. I thank you for our service,
    and we look forward to providing you with the continued care
    and support you deserve.
        Our strong interagency collaborations have resulted in
    successful policies and programs. With the help of our partners
    and, as you have heard today, an unprecedented 33 percent
    decrease in the number of homeless--number of veterans without
    permanent housing who have stayed in shelters, missions, SROs,
    or in any other unstable or nonpermanent situation, and a 42
    percent decrease in those who were literally sleeping on the
    streets in boxes or in abandoned buildings.
        Our premiere collaboration is with HUD, in the Housing and
    Urban Development Veterans Affairs Supported Housing Program,
    HUD-VASH. Highly vulnerable veterans who have experienced
    homelessness for extended periods of time are best served
    through HUD-VASH. This collaborative provides housing choice
    rental assistance from HUD, with intense case management
    assistance from VA. Last year, nearly 56,000 veterans were
    assisted. We know permanent supported housing is the most
    effective tool for serving these chronically homeless veterans.
        The SSVF, Supportive Service for Veterans Families program,
    rapidly rehouses homeless veterans and their families and
    prevents homelessness for those who are at risk. In fiscal
    years 2014 and 2015, the SSVF program awarded $507 million in
    grants that expanded SSVF from 319 community agencies to 383.
    Last year, our grantees served nearly 130,000 veterans and
    their family members, of which 27,500 were children.
    Additionally, 81 percent had a successful housing outcome.
        The homeless providers grant per diem is our largest
    transitional housing program. It is for veterans who have need
    of extended rehab, focused help with employment, and housing
    searches, and are served in this program. In 2014, over 23,000
    veterans were admitted and 14,600 exited into permanent
    housing.
        For veterans entering the justice system who are already
    dealing with mental health or substance abuse issues, we have
    established Veterans Justice Outreach; 248 full-time
    specialists working directly with justice officials. VA works
    with treatment courts to ensure veterans get the treatment they
    need as opposed to using incarceration as the alternative.
        In conclusion, VA, with our partners, are now closer to its
    goal than any other point in history. We know that targeting
    resources, utilizing evidence-based practices like Housing
    First, and strengthening collaborations are key. Through
    Congress's continued support, our vast partnerships and the
    commitment of our Federal partners we have made significant
    progress in our effort. We recognize that ending homelessness
    is not an endpoint, but a way point. We can never become
    complacent about our achievements or the same conditions that
    gave rise to homelessness will spawn this once more. VA will
    not rest.
        Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. My colleague and
    I are prepared to answer questions.

        [The prepared statement of Ms. Lisa Pape appears in the
    Appendix]

        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you. Ms. Ho, you are now recognized for
    5 minutes.

                        STATEMENT OF JENNIFER HO

        Ms. Ho. Chairman Lamborn, Ranking Member Michaud, and
    members of the committee, I am Jennifer Ho, senior advisor to
    HUD Secretary Castro. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss
    our collaborative work to eliminate veteran homelessness in
    America.
        Since launching Opening Doors in June of 2014, the number
    of veterans experiencing homelessness on a single night has
    dropped by 33 percent to just under 50,000 veterans. This
    progress would not have been possible without funding from
    Congress. Thank you.
        While much more needs to be done, we know that
    collaboration and new resources strategically deployed are key
    to our progress. HUD VA and the U.S. Interagency Council on
    Homelessness work together to combat a problem that cannot be
    solved by one agency alone. We work together every day to align
    our programs and to use limited resources as efficiently as
    possible.
        Our most collaborative effort is HUD-VASH, supportive
    housing that combines housing vouchers from HUD with case
    management and clinical care provided by VA to assist
    vulnerable and chronically homeless veterans. Together HUD and
    VA use data to drive decisions about HUD-VASH allocation, based
    on both homelessness prevalence and local capacity to
    administer new vouchers.
        Since 2008, nearly 70,000 HUD-VASH vouchers have been
    awarded to public housing authorities in the every State,
    District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. About 11,000 new
    HUD-VASH vouchers were awarded in the last several months. The
    success of HUD-VASH requires new collaborative partnerships
    locally between VA medical centers, public housing agencies,
    and nonprofits providing homelessness assistance. As
    communities identify challenges such as low voucher utilization
    or a lack of affordable housing, we are helping resolve
    partnership, policy, and practice issues. By overcoming
    challenges together, our collaboration is strengthened and
    better able to address the next challenge.
        In order to ensure that HUD-VASH investments are used
    strategically, HUD and VA have a performance target to use at
    least 65 percent of HUD-VASH vouchers for veterans experiencing
    chronic homelessness. These veterans have long histories of
    homelessness and very poor health and, therefore, typically
    require long-term housing assistance and support. HUD-VASH
    supports veterans for as long as they need assistance.
        HUD and VA are both committed to Housing First. Housing
    First means veterans get intensive supportive services to help
    them, first, find and keeping housing. A homeless veteran can
    more easily engage in services and address his or her chronic
    health conditions or find a job once he or she is no longer
    dealing with the chaos and uncertainty of homelessness.
    Research has demonstrated that permanent supportive housing,
    using a Housing First approach, not only ends homelessness for
    people who, in the past, would live on the streets or in
    shelters for years, it breaks the costly cycle through
    shelters, emergency rooms, hospital, detox centers, and jails.
        We continue to work with local communities to improve the
    performance of HUD-VASH. One of HUD's major technical
    assistance efforts has been boot camps in which community
    partners are brought together to answer the question: How can
    we more effectively and efficiently end veterans homelessness
    locally? Nationwide, over 50 communities have participated in
    boot camps, which are a collaborative effort between HUD, VA,
    the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, Rapid Results
    Institute, and community solutions.
        The results are real. In some cities, the time it used to
    take for a veteran to actually get the keys to an apartment was
    6 months or more. After participation in boot camp, communities
    have shrunk that time to as little as 30 days. Many communities
    like Jacksonville, Florida, set and met ambitious goals of
    housing 100 veterans experiencing chronic homeless in 100 days.
    Large gains can be made in a short period of time when all the
    partners are at the table.
        As Ms. Pape discussed, the VA built on the progress made
    through boot camps in the 25 cities initiatives will continue
    to help communities improve the identification, assessment, and
    housing placement of veterans through HUD's supportive new zero
    2016 campaign in 71 cities and four States across the country.
    Each community is developing specific targets for the number of
    people they must house each month to end veteran homelessness
    by December of 2015.
        This effort dovetails nicely with the mayor's challenge to
    end veteran homelessness championed by First Lady Michelle
    Obama. I am excited to announce that more than 355 mayors,
    governors, and county executives from across the country have
    pledged to end veteran homelessness in their communities by the
    end of 2015 by strengthening the local partnerships.
        Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, thank you for
    your continued support of this important work. I hope I have
    been able to portray the unprecedented level of Federal
    collaboration that is accelerating our progress toward ending
    homelessness among veterans in America. Thank you very much.

        [The prepared statement of Ms. Jennifer Ho appears in the
    Appendix]

        Mr. Lamborn. All right. Thank you.
        Assistant Secretary Kelly, you may speak now. Thank you for
    being here.

                        STATEMENT OF KEITH KELLY

        Mr. Kelly. Good afternoon, Chairman Lamborn, Ranking Member
    Michaud, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you
    for the opportunity to participate in today's hearing, and
    particularly for this morning's panel. It was very energetic
    and robust and educational.
        My name is Keith Kelly, and I have the honor to serve as
    the Assistant Secretary for Veterans Employment and Training
    Services at the Department of Labor. The Department is
    committed to helping the administration meet its goal of ending
    homelessness among veterans in 2015.
        Secretary Perez and I know that one of the most important
    ways to prevent homelessness is through a good job. However,
    employment alone is not a guarantee in preventing veterans from
    falling back into homelessness. It requires a coordinated
    effort between our Federal partners such as VA, HHS, SBA, and
    HUD, as well as other State and local organizations,
    nonprofits, and the private sector.
        Currently chaired by Secretary Perez, the U.S. Interagency
    Council on Homelessness has helped us in providing a national
    partnership at every level to reduce ending homelessness in the
    nation. As you know, and stated in some of your testimony this
    morning, we have already made substantial progress.
        At DoL, our primary program aimed at eliminating
    homelessness among veterans is the Homeless Veterans'
    Reintegration Program, referred to as HVRP. In addition,
    veterans receive priority of service in all of the employment
    and training programs funded directly, in whole or in part, by
    the Department of Labor. Through the HVRP, DoL grantees assist
    homeless veterans in obtaining meaningful and sustainable
    employment. Each participant receives customized employment and
    training services to address his or her specific barriers to
    employment. Services may include occupational, classroom and
    on-the-job training, as well job search, placement assistance
    and post-placement follow-up services.
        HVRP operates on the principle that when homeless veterans
    obtain meaningful and sustainable employment, they really are
    on the path to self-sufficiency. HVRP grantees work with VA,
    HUD, HHS, and many other types of organizations. Actually,
    applicants must address how they intend to collaborate with
    others in their applications for funding.
        In fiscal year 2014, the HVRP program received an
    appropriation of just over $38 million, with which the
    Department awarded 37 new HVRP grants, 82 option year HVRP
    grants, and 18 grants for homeless female veterans programs.
    These grantees are expected to provide services to over 17,000
    homeless veterans with an estimated placement rate of 66
    percent at an estimated cost per participant of around $2,200.
        While my written statement goes into much detail about the
    Department's procedures for selecting grant recipients as well
    as measuring their performances, I would just note that HVRP
    funds are awarded to eligible organizations from a very
    rigorous competitive process. Following the award, the
    Department works closely with grantees to ensure they meet all
    our performance outcomes.
        On a personal note, my staff and I routinely visit our HVRP
    grantees when we travel around the country. And, as you heard
    this morning, we are consistently impressed with the passion
    and the creativity these dedicated organizations bring to their
    work to help homeless veterans. I would certainly encourage you
    to meet these great men and women as you travel around your
    districts.
        Just one example. We support the Volunteers of America
    Florida, a local chapter of one of the other witnesses here
    today. Through the HVRP program, they have successfully
    partnered with a security firm to put in place a direct
    referral system of the homeless veterans they are working with,
    once they are job ready. The grantee's staff assist each
    veteran with their application based on what the company is
    looking for, and then the company contacts the veteran
    directly. This streamlined process has resulted in many
    formerly homeless veterans getting back on their feet in a
    relatively short amount of time.
        Through HVRP, the Department also supports stand-down
    grants and technical assistance. The stand-down grant is
    typically a 2- to 3-day event involving various Federal, State,
    and local organizations. At these events, grantees provide
    homeless veterans with a variety of services, such as meals,
    clothing, employment services, referrals, and counseling. In
    fiscal year 2014, we awarded 66 stand-down grants for
    approximately $500,000.
        Additionally, the Department awarded two technical
    assistance cooperative agreements to support our grantees and
    disseminate best practices. One who testified this morning, The
    National Coalition on Homeless Veterans. And, finally, the
    Department of Labor is committed to the administration's goal
    of ending homeless veterans in 2015, and we look forward with
    the committee to ensure the continued success of our efforts.
        Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you again
    this afternoon for the opportunity to testify. I would be
    pleased to answer any questions you have.

        [The prepared statement of Mr. Keith Kelly appears in the
    Appendix]

        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
        I will now yield myself up to 5 minutes for questions. Ms.
    Pape, programs to provide assistance to homeless veterans are
    provided by actually each of the three departments that are
    represented here in this panel. Earlier this year, VA, in
    particular, provided the committee with a list of 20 separate
    programs that VA operates to provide assistance with housing,
    healthcare, or employment for homeless veterans.
        Now, as we all know, large government bureaucracies are not
    known for being sometimes able to effectively communicate and
    coordinate efforts. So how do you ensure that these programs
    work in coordination to provide a seamless continuum of care
    for veterans in need and do not duplicate services?
        Ms. Pape. Thank you, chairman, for that question. And it is
    an important question. As you heard on the panel before us, the
    programs that we listed, the 20 programs are really
    complementary of each other and may build on each other. That
    is not to say there is not any duplication. Of course, right,
    we are constantly working to ensure that there is not, but they
    are more complementary. And we do many avenues and, even across
    department, to ensure that folks know about the programs and
    that we are not duplicating services to an extent that is not
    helpful in the system. So we track and monitor and evaluate
    regularly to ensure that the right veteran is going to the
    right level of service for the right amount of time, which is
    really key for this population. We also have regular subject-
    matter expert reviews to ensure that programs are staying in
    their lanes but complementing each other.
        Let me ask if Dr. O'Toole would like to add, this is--
    evaluation is his area.
        Dr. O'Toole. Great. Thank you. And, Mr. Chairman, it is a
    spot-on question and issue and one that, I think, is extremely
    important for us to have a focus to. Coordinating care is a
    challenge in the general healthcare system, not to mention
    issues specific to homeless and homeless veterans within the VA
    system.
        I am a primary care provider and have been taking care of
    homeless persons and homeless veterans now for almost 25 years.
    And tomorrow I will be in clinic and see probably about 10 or
    15 veterans in the morning, and each one is going to have a
    litany of different problems and issues that will likely be
    crossing into the territory of four or five different programs
    within each context. And how we connect the dots in those
    programs is really a significant issue and challenge and, also,
    an area of very specific focus for us.
        Mr. Lamborn. And how do you do that?
        Dr. O'Toole. Well, the most important thing is we pick up
    the phone and talk to each other. And we--when we do pick up
    that phone, we need to know who it is we are talking to so it
    is not a cold call. And that is basic primary care, basic care
    coordination 101, and it is how we have to do it.
        And VA has made significant strides within the homeless
    program arena in the past few years in the context of this
    initiative in reaching out to community partners and really
    including them in that process as well. Our local facility has
    a homeless summit on a quarterly basis where all of the
    community agencies that we partner with come in, meet. So,
    again, there is that face time.
        From a data and analytics perspective, this is where we are
    moving in the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans is
    specifically directing its energies to how do we find and
    identify those veterans who are falling through the cracks? It
    is a complicated, bureaucratic system, and it is easy to have
    that happen. And being able to use our analytics capacity to
    identify down to the Social Security number who those veterans
    are and how can we redirect those services is, right now, where
    we are really focusing our energies.
        Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you so much. Representative
    Michaud.
        Mr. Michaud. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Before I ask
    the question from Ms. Pape, I want to thank you and the many
    employees at the VA for your efforts to care for our veterans
    and to serve our veterans as well all across the country. I
    think too often the media headlines level broad accusation
    against all VA employees, not just the ones who are--have bad
    performance issues. There are good news stories, and there are
    good VA employees. So keep up the good work and continue to
    improve on that as well.
        But likewise, with the first panel we had earlier this
    morning and the veterans service organizations who work with
    the Department and veterans, I want to thank all of you as well
    for your continued effort in that partnership working with the
    Department to make sure that Congress does what we have to do
    to provide the resources that we need for the Department. And I
    want to thank you for that, the essential work that each and
    every one of the VSOs and organizations do for our veterans.
        My question is: It seems that further reduction in
    homelessness will become increasingly difficult as the more
    severely mental ill and substance-dependent veterans are
    treated and housed. Is that a fair assumption? And, if so, what
    is the VA strategy plan for addressing these chronic
    homelessness?
        Ms. Pape. Thank you, Mr. Michaud, and thank you for
    acknowledging the work we are doing.
        So it is a fair assumption, right, as--as we start to
    continue to reach into the communities and find every homeless
    veterans, we find harder-to-reach folks who are living in
    camps, not directly in urban settings where we have to find
    them, know them by name, and engage them into services. One of
    the initiatives Ms. Ho referenced was this 25-city initiative
    that VA is running with our Federal partners, as well as some
    other contractors we are working with. It is to build a
    coordinated entry system at the community level where it
    literally identifies by name every homeless veteran, so that
    even if they don't engage, we will know, and the community will
    know, who they are, so that we can continue to go back to them
    until we can get them to engage.
        Eventually, to our pleasant surprise, many, many of these
    veterans finally raise their hands and say, We want services.
    And that is because we have our partners at the table. They may
    not want it from the VA, but they will take it from one of our
    partners that you saw at the table and move them in. So it is
    knowing them by name, engaging them, and building a systemic
    system. And it cannot be the VA alone. It has to be all of us
    together.
        Mr. Michaud. Thank you for your answer. And you are
    absolutely right, it has to be all of you together. And as--VA
    can't do it all, and I am glad to see that you are reaching
    out. And I meant what I said about the VA's employees because I
    really look at, every time I go to stand down at Togus and
    Main, you know, and I see Susie Whittington, I mean she has
    just got so much energy out there and she really cares about
    all the veterans--homeless veterans in Maine. And I wish we
    could just bottle that energy and just send it throughout the
    whole, you know, Department as well. I am sure there are other
    employees such as Susie throughout the Department.
        So, once again, I want to thank this panel for your
    reference and the previously panel as well. With that, Mr.
    Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Representative Michaud.
        Representative Walorski.
        Ms. Walorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, again, I would
    like to express my thanks as well for what the VA and the other
    agencies are doing in the housing and Department of Labor as
    well as for homeless veterans. I mentioned before, I have a
    homeless shelter in my town that is privately funded, the
    Miller Homeless Vet Center. And it has done a phenomenal job
    being very, very close, on the frontline. And I can't commend
    them enough for what they do. And they have the same heart and
    passion as well.
        The question I have, though, when we are talking about
    ending homelessness in veterans by 2015 is: The VA Inspector
    General came out last week with a report from the National Call
    Center for Homeless Veterans which identified over 40,000
    missed opportunities where the call center did not refer
    homeless veteran callers to medical facilities or close
    referrals without making sure homeless veterans actually
    receive their services. So what is the follow-up on that?
    What--where is the VA in addressing the concerns of the
    oversight of the IG?
        Ms. Pape. Good question. You know, we share your concerns.
    I read the report. It is disappointing for all of us, and
    frankly, it is just unacceptable. We regret that any veteran
    who was calling for information and a referral did not get the
    service that they needed.
        That said, you know, this was a journey for us. And when we
    set up the call center, it was a smart idea. We knew we needed
    a quick way to get veterans access to information. Frankly, it
    grew faster than we were able to execute and we didn't grow
    with it.
        Ms. Walorski. How many employees are in that call center?
        Ms. Pape. For the homeless hotline----
        Ms. Walorski. Yes.
        Ms. Pape [continuing]. There are about 60 employees, and it
    is coupled with the Veteran Crisis Line. That said, we have
    already--even prior to the IG report coming out, we have
    already started making improvements because we have to. Our
    veterans deserve that.
        Ms. Walorski. So in the improvements that you started to
    make, were those improvements in holding employees accountable
    or were the improvements in getting rid of the answering system
    so that it can't be left on auto to leave--what steps have you
    taken to keep the employees accountable?
        Ms. Pape. It is both. So we are in the process of
    finalizing an automated queuing system so that the answering
    machine can be gone, and that queuing system will allow vets to
    pick a number, 1, 2 or 3, or stay on the line and talk to a
    responder.
        We have also started looking into a workforce tracking
    system, which will allow an automated system for us to know how
    long calls are being talked on, who is doing what, where the
    documentation is. And all of that is getting worked on right
    now as we speak.
        We have also targeted staffing to come in during the peak
    hours--I think one of the congressmen said that--so that now
    they are coming in and staggering hours so that we have staff
    on duty. Right now, our service level is about 90 percent of
    the calls are being answered.
        Ms. Walorski. So those people--well, I guess, the answering
    system that was in use when the IG came in and looked at that,
    was that service not adequate to be able to pull all the
    information from what time the veteran called, what number they
    called from? Were those kind of--was it possible to go in and
    retrace and try to find some of these folks? Or are they just--
    is that information just gone----
        Ms. Pape. No you could--you could----
        Ms. Walorski [continuing]. And the new system has it?
        Ms. Pape. Right. You could get that information. But it was
    an answering machine, so some of it was inaudible, right, and
    it was not automated. So somebody literally had to go in and
    track that. Now, with an automated system, that information
    will be at our fingertips. And some of that is at our
    fingertips right now that we are now tracking.
        Ms. Walorski. So what did you find out--when you went in to
    kind of go in and implement the IG's findings, what did you
    find out those employees were doing when the Inspector General
    said there was lapses of up to 4 hours where they weren't there
    but they were obviously being paid? What were they doing? Did
    you find out?
        Ms. Pape. I know that some of the things the employees were
    doing were training. They were on training. They were on leave.
    They were on--they were looking, doing documentation and----
        Ms. Walorski. For 40,000 phone calls? How long of a period
    of time does it take to get 40,000 phone calls in there? I
    mean, will we--we will never find these people. But, you know,
    that is--it is interesting to me, it is $3.2 million in a
    department that loses 40,000 phone calls, two-thirds of that
    money is in the system itself.
        So were employees fired? Did somebody talk to them about,
    you know, are there things on the--are these people all still
    there, and these are all the people that we are going forward
    with?
        Ms. Pape. So management is looking at how to address issues
    in performance and will be addressing that. I don't know if all
    the employees are still there. I do not think anyone has been
    fired, but we can get back to you on that. I can----
        Ms. Walorski. And then whoever is in charge of that
    department, when that IG report came out and was basically
    proof to the VA that there was a huge issue going on in that
    call center and 40,000 call opportunities were missed, what
    happened to the person in charge of that department?
        Ms. Pape. So leadership, again, is reviewing and assessing
    the performance. And if there is wrongdoing found, they will be
    taking care of that.
        Ms. Walorski. They will be fired?
        Ms. Pape. I won't say they will be fired. There are many
    ways; counseling, suspension, reprimands. And, of course, if
    there is something egregious, there could be----
        Ms. Walorski. I just think it is a huge impediment, Mr.
    Chairman, that--because we all want homelessness ended by 2015,
    right? But we want to make sure that the things get corrected
    in the VA because, I think, the American people have loudly
    said, That is enough and that has to stop. So I appreciate your
    interest in looking at it as well.
        Ms. Pape. Thank you.
        Ms. Walorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Lamborn. Chairman Patrick.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick. That is all right.
        Mr. Lamborn. Kirkpatrick.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. It happens all the time.
        Mr. Lamborn. I apologize.
        Ms. Kirkpatrick. I want to thank the panel for your--and
    the previous panel for your hard work toward the goal of ending
    homelessness for our veterans.
        Ranking Member Michaud, I want to thank you and Chairman
    Miller for your leadership on the committee. Chairman Lamborn,
    I want to thank you and all my colleagues and the committee
    staff for your hard work. This has been one of the most
    productive committees in the 113th Congress, and thank you for
    that.
        For my final remarks in the 113 Congress on this committee,
    I want to read an email I got this morning. It is from a
    gentleman, William Putnam, who is the former trustee of Lowell
    Observatory in Flagstaff who has just now moved to New
    Hampshire. So if the committee will bear with me. He says,
    ``Ann, I just had a wonderful experience at the VA Hospital in
    Manchester near here. Some 5 or 6 years ago, I gave up on the
    VA after it became clear to me that all the people wanted was
    to take more chest X rays of me. I figured I must glow in the
    dark already and that piece of iron hasn't shifted its position
    inside me since the day it got there in the first place nearly
    70 years ago.
        ``However, I will give them another chance, thought I. So I
    made an appointment and got there in the rain--ugh--at 10 a.m.
    But hardly had I found a place to park my car than some guy
    with a courtesy van showed up to offer me a ride some 250 yards
    to the main entrance. He was right there again when I wanted to
    go back. I found my way inside, and some other nice guy
    directed me down a long hall and around a few corners to a
    waiting room where I showed my paperwork to another polite guy
    behind a computer. He poked away at his machine. And in a
    matter of less than a minute, a little man appeared in a nearby
    doorway and called my name. He introduced himself and said,
    'Follow me down to our office area. I think you will find the
    weather is better there.' In fact, it wasn't raining at his end
    of the building. And it turned out he was the head technician
    for primary care pack team 2 of which Dr. Carter Hale is the
    leader.
        Dr. Hale was ready for me and did a few more of the usual
    high-level medical inquiries. He was a nice guy, friendly,
    knowledgeable, and radiated a sincere desire to be helpful to
    an old vet with all the miseries of a tired and lonesome man.''
        Mr. Putnam just recently lost his wife.
        ``After his examination, Dr. Hale took me to a nurse's
    cubicle where he left me to go write up his analysis. And the
    lady shot me full of flu vaccine, then pointed me down the hall
    to where the real blood thirsty ones were. They were really
    nice about it, too, and finally, it has been nearly two hours
    so far, told me I could go home. The pharmacy people would be
    in touch with me soon.
        ``I had barely gotten back home when--a 20-minute drive--
    when my cell phone rang. I now have a date with the pharmacy
    people for next Tuesday. You know, Anne, I misspent much of my
    youth here is Kyle, Hampshire. It is kind of nice to feel home
    again. But, mostly, I thought you might enjoy hearing a nice
    thing said about the Veterans Administration.''
        I had his permission to read this. And I want to
    congratulate Ms. Kuster. She's getting a great constituent. So
    thank you very much. I yield back.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Kirkpatrick.
        That leads to Representative Kuster.
        Ms. Kuster. Well, after that, I would take the risk, but
    thank you very much. And I think it is appropriate.
        And I, too, want to commend our chair, Mr. Miller, and Mr.
    Michaud, and just what an extraordinary experience this has
    been for me as a new member.
        Both my husband and I have experienced this incredible
    pride and honor. My father was in World War II. He was a pilot,
    flew 63 missions, and was shot down on Christmas Eve and spent
    6 months in a POW camp. And my father-in-law was landing on the
    beaches of Normandy when my father was flying overhead. They
    were both in the Battle of the Bulge. And so this has just been
    an extraordinary experience for me as a member of Congress to
    be able to serve on this committee.
        So I really don't have any additional questions. I want to
    thank you for the work that you are doing. I certainly want to
    thank my colleague, Ms. Kirkpatrick, for that beautiful letter.
        And I just want to say that of the people that are out
    there working for the Veterans Administration, for HUD, for all
    the private organizations, all of our VSOs to meet people from
    organizations like Soldier On, I just want our veterans to know
    how much we do care, how much we do want to solve--this is the
    most complex issue, poverty, the issues of the brain having
    dealt with mental health in our family, issues of employment,
    PTSD, MST, the list goes on and on. And I just want our
    veterans to know that we have the most bipartisan committee in
    the 113th Congress and, I hope, in the next Congress as well
    and that there are people here in Washington, DC who care a
    great deal.
        So I thank you for the work that you do. I thank my
    colleagues, and I just want to thank the chair and the vice
    chair for the opportunity to work with you this year. Thank you
    so much.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
        Representative O'Rourke.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        First of all, thank you to each of you for what you do and
    for your answers to the questions so far.
        For Ms. Pape, I wanted to follow-up on a question raised by
    my colleague, Ms. Walorski, on these 40,000 missed calls. When
    did you become aware of the OIG report and the number of calls
    that were missed? Roughly.
        Ms. Pape. While the OIG was finishing up the investigation
    is when I started to become aware that there was 40,000 calls
    missed, so the IG and the VA worked together as they start to
    close out.
        Mr. O'Rourke. How long ago was that roughly?
        Ms. Pape. Several months ago, April, May.
        Mr. O'Rourke. I take you at your word that you are pursuing
    this and you are going to make sure that we hold those who are
    responsible accountable and fix the problem?
        Ms. Pape. Yes.
        Mr. O'Rourke. I will say an issue that has consumed this
    committee has been accountability and the culture at the VA and
    hearing and knowing there is a little bit more urgency behind
    these issues and that it doesn't take us months to figure out
    who is responsible and to hold them accountable but we do it as
    soon as we have the appropriate information, I think would go a
    long way to restoring much needed faith and trust in the VA,
    especially around appropriations time and, obviously, for those
    whom we serve here, the veterans who depend on these services,
    so just that would be a message to you in terms of your
    response on that issue. And I hope you can update this
    committee sooner than later that you have dealt with this issue
    and held those accountable who were responsible for the failure
    here.
        Ms. Pape. Absolutely. Just yesterday having conversations
    with our leadership about ensuring that this issue gets
    resolved quickly. None of us want veterans not getting service
    they need. It is just unacceptable, and we are on it. Thank
    you.
        Mr. O'Rourke. The latest point-in-time report shows around
    56 homeless veterans in El Paso. I have a couple questions
    around that. One, does that include veterans who are currently
    in homeless shelters?
        Ms. Ho. I can take that if you would like. Thank you,
    Representative, for that. The point-in-time count, communities
    go out and they count people who are getting homelessness
    assistance, either in a shelter or a transitional housing
    program, and people who are outside, so those are the groups
    that are counted in the point-in-time count.
        Mr. O'Rourke. So what I will want to do is offline, after
    this hearing, see how I can bridge the divide between what the
    El Paso Homeless Coalition counts and El Paso for Homeless
    Veterans, which is 154 who are sheltered with about 60
    unsheltered, and so I thought the unsheltered numbers, 56 and
    60, were close enough that that is who you are counting in the
    point-in-time. I just want to make sure I fully understand
    that.
        The kinds of questions I was asking Ms. Crone in terms of
    what should we be measuring--and I realize it is not all about
    data, but I do want to be able to measure those things that
    will give us an indication of where we have successes and where
    we have problems, where we need to spend our time and our
    resources.
        And then, related to that, prior to my being sworn in in
    November of 2012, we learned that a very large shelter in El
    Paso was approached by the VA to provide homeless services
    exclusively to veterans and to families of veterans who are
    homeless, and many, many months and maybe even years went by as
    this shelter tried to meet all of the recommendations and
    mandates I guess from the VA, and they spent hundreds of
    thousands of Dollars in doing this, and at the end of the day,
    the deal fell through. And, essentially, if I could sum it up,
    the VA said your facility does not meet our criteria, despite
    the fact that it had passed every single regulation and
    inspection in El Paso, from the Fire Department, the Health
    Department, every city code inspector, et cetera. The capacity
    for that shelter is exactly the number of those who are
    unsheltered today in El Paso. I realize this is somewhat of a
    parochial issue but it is very, very important to me and the
    people I serve.
        I would love your commitment to sit down with us and go
    through what happened here and how it is we are going to ensure
    that we shelter and provide services for those who are
    unsheltered in El Paso right now. In other words, if there was
    a commitment and funds associated with that, can we get them
    reintroduced in the community in another way. I am running out
    of time, so I would love just to have your commitment to sit
    down with me and go over that.
        Ms. Pape. Committed. I am there. You are so close to ending
    homelessness, we can get there. I am happy to sit with you.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Thank you.
        Ms. Ho. I just want to mention that the point-in-time count
    happens in the third week of January, so an opportunity to
    participate in that would also I think mobilize the community
    on that.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Wonderful.
        Ms. Ho. And that you had 56 unsheltered veterans and 67
    sheltered veterans in the January 14 count.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
        Representative Walz.
        Mr. Walz. Thank you.
        And thank you all for your commitment on this. It is
    evidence of your passion, your expertise, and you care deeply.
    And I, for one, am grateful for that. And I said I think what
    you understand and the folks who have been involved in that
    issue, the deep implications of that holistic approach in
    getting that home, because for what it means, it is the
    restoring the dignity and to be in many cases restoring the
    life. And in Mankato, the homes I was talking about in
    Minnesota, Radichel Townhomes there, all the good things, and
    they had wonderful things to say about everything, but I asked
    a veteran there, I said, Bill, what is the best part about
    this. And he said, It is a place where my grand kids come that
    feels normal. It is that reintegration into the community. It
    is that grandpa's got a home. It is a place I can go. It is
    nothing out of the ordinary. It is grandkids visit their
    grandparent every day, and he is a grandparent.
        And so I think your commitment on it is right. I think we
    are all there. I think there are different approaches to it.
    And I think when we have setbacks, the commitment to getting
    them right.
        I just had a couple of questions. I want to be clear with
    all of you, Mr. Kelly especially on this. When I brought up a
    few years ago this issue of alignment, it wasn't out of
    criticism of any of your agencies. I think the things you do,
    you do incredibly well. It was more of a concern at that point
    in time especially the disparate nature of all of the services
    that were available. There were many well-intended programs,
    both governmental and private sector and public-private
    partnerships, but how to deliver them. So my question is, is
    the areas of expertise that HUD or DoL, are those so specific
    to what you do that it is most effective and efficient to
    reside there as opposed to bringing the experts over to VA as
    one stop? I know that is a broad, and it is not meant to be a
    loaded question. I know it can be. I just want to get my mind
    wrapped around it if that is the right way to go as we see
    because we are at a transformation point in VA, and this is the
    time to talk about these things.
        Mr. Kelly. Thank you for the question, and let me respond
    to it this way. The expertise in the whole employment arena,
    veterans or nonveterans, is at the Department of Labor. What is
    most important is collaboration amongst our fellow agencies.
    DoL brings to the table the employment and reemployment piece
    of it. Now, that is only one part. You certainly have to have
    the housing and the healthcare issues. So it was critical, it
    seems to me, that the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness,
    was created to make sure all of these things are addressed. I
    would offer, from our point of view, we have dealt with that
    very same thing at DoL with regards to employment and training.
    I just got back from a meeting with the Agricultural folks to
    look at veterans in agriculture training. Probably USDA is the
    best lead for that on the various programs they have. I would
    offer that same analogy here. It is just most important that we
    do TOUCH base with each other, and all come to the table with
    our expertise.
        Mr. Walz. And I am grateful for that. How do you respond,
    though, and I am sure this not a new one, and you heard our
    first panelists, and they are committed just like you are, and
    they are understanding where you are at, but they expressed
    that and folks express it to me that it is again navigating
    that disparate bureaucracy to try to get there. I say that not
    as a pejorative. It is just the nature of things. Private
    businesses have bureaucracies. Some of them are good, and some
    of them are bad, so it is not an either/or. How do you respond
    to them on that one when you heard some of the comments from
    the first panelists?
        Ms. Ho. Congressman Walz, thank you for your leadership on
    this and for the opportunity to speak to this. I ran a
    nonprofit in Minnesota for 11 years that had different Federal
    grants, and so sitting in the Federal Government it is a very
    different view. HUD knows housing, and as Lisa tells me all the
    time, the VA is a healthcare system. They are just very
    different programs. I think the magic of the work that we have
    done together is by being able to work together not only
    federally but locally to make those systems sync up so that we
    are drawing the expertise of the public housing agencies and
    the homeless assistance providers and the healthcare providers
    at the VA. You know, could it be done in another way? Perhaps.
    But the reason that we are getting close to ending veterans
    homelessness in communities around the country is because they
    just get the right people around the table focused on the same
    goal. And so ----
        Mr. Walz. And I agree with you. Is the next piece we are
    getting is that integration with the folks who were on the
    first panel of enhancing that? There is always going to be a
    certain amount of frustration. Again, I get it, if we just
    handed out the money and told people to do it, this room would
    be packed with cameras about where did the money go then. And
    that is our responsibility of trying to do it. Some of it would
    go to good places; some of it wouldn't. I understand there is
    that piece of it. My question is bringing more of them in to
    hear, and I know you do, of seeing the first panel as partners
    and equal partners to what you are doing and their expertise to
    bring it. Mr. O'Toole, my time is almost up if you want to
    finish with it.
        Mr. O'Toole. Real quickly. We are in a transformative
    process within the VA of going out into communities and
    partnering with communities, whether it is in our integrated
    primary care teams, all of which are doing outreach, our
    assertive community treatment teams doing mental healthcare in
    the community, as well as bringing these community agencies
    into the VA. It is about de-siloing, the care. I think your
    observation is spot on, and I think we are making progress. We
    aren't where we need to be yet, but we are making progress in
    getting there.
        Mr. Walz. Thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, and thank you all for being here,
    for your work for veterans, for your testimony today. There
    will be questions for the record, and I would ask that you--oh,
    I am sorry. We have another member of the committee that just
    came in the door.
        Ms. Brown, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Brown. Thank you, and I was watching you on television.
    You do this very well. Thank you. First of all, I want to put
    on the record that I am grateful for the work that Secretary
    Shinseki did as far as cutting down the homelessness problem
    that we have experienced in this country for a number of years.
    And so when history is written, he certainly should get the
    credit for cutting it down to one-third as we celebrate. And I
    am also grateful that we just got over $600,000 in my area for
    the HUD voucher program. One of the questions that I raised
    earlier is there doesn't seem to be adequate beds for female
    veterans, in particular those with families. Can we address
    that, please?
        Ms. Ho. I would be happy to take that question,
    Congresswoman. Thank you for that, and thanks for the
    opportunity to talk about the way that we are targeting towards
    female veterans. First of all, we track the number of female
    veterans that are appearing in our shelter system, and we track
    the number of female veterans that get access to the HUD-VASH
    program. And so what we know is that HUD-VASH is serving female
    veterans and their children at a higher rate, and we are doing
    some specific targeting around that, understanding that a mom
    with kids is in a uniquely vulnerable situation. So one of the
    great uses of HUD-VASH is really around targeting around moms
    and kids.
        To the question of how much housing is needed, this really
    is an area where the work that we are doing with specific
    communities is very focused because historically, if you took a
    look at the way that homelessness programs worked, they worked
    largely in isolation. And one of the big transformations that
    is going on right now is around this concept of coordinated
    assessment, kind of a one-stop shop, with kind of a triage
    referral. But also helping communities recognize every single
    resource that they have and then looking at the numbers and
    figuring out what the gaps are and strategizing around how to
    fill those gaps in a very deliberate way.
        It sounds like just good strategic planning, but
    historically, that is not necessarily the way that communities
    operated. Homeless programs operated in isolation. Nobody had a
    good count of all of the resources. There wasn't a good
    understanding of the difference between the number of people
    experiencing homelessness on a single night versus people who
    come through the system over time. So we are getting smarter in
    all of those areas, and that is helping communities do these
    gaps analyses to figure how much of what do we need, and
    equally importantly, are there things that we used to need when
    we were doing it the old way that we are not going to need as
    much of any more.
        Ms. Brown. Thank you.
        I had read in the paper that they were cutting out meals
    because the city was cutting back on programs of the State, so
    I called in the Department of Agriculture. And they came in,
    and so the groups came together and did a grant. And they are
    working together. So it is not just HUD. It is all of the
    stakeholders working together to make sure that we do
    everything we need to do to fill those gaps in.
        Ms. Ho. I had the pleasure of working at the U.S.
    Interagency Council on Homelessness before I came to HUD, and
    that is 19 Federal agencies working together on a single
    Federal strategy, and that is the first time that this level of
    collaboration not only with the partners that I have at the
    table here today, but the other agencies that are part of it.
    Everybody shows up, and everybody is trying to figure out what
    is our piece of getting this job done.
        Ms. Brown. Thank you very much, and thank you for your
    service.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, and I will, once again, thank you
    all for being here, for your work to help veterans.
        There will be questions for the record, and I would ask
    that you respond to those in writing. The second panel is now
    excused. I ask unanimous consent that all members have five
    legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include
    extraneous material. I would also like to thank once again all
    of our witnesses on both panels and audience members for
    joining us this morning. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
    and this meeting is now adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 1:52 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

                                    APPENDIX

                 Prepared Statement of the Chairman Jeff Miller

        Welcome to today's Full Committee oversight hearing--the last of
    the 113th Congress--``Evaluating Federal and Community Efforts to
    Eliminate Veteran Homelessness.''
        At this time of year perhaps more than any other, the thought of
    anyone--particularly anyone who served our nation in uniform--without a
    home or a safe place to sleep is simply heartbreaking.
        Unfortunately, homelessness--or the constant threat of it--has
    become a way of life for far too many of our nation's veterans.
        In 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initiated a five-
    year plan to eliminate veteran homelessness and, as that deadline fast
    approaches, I am pleased to report that VA has succeeded in reducing
    veteran homelessness by approximately thirty-three percent.
        Yet, as long as a single veteran struggles with housing instability
    or homelessness, our work remains.
        Troubling, a VA Inspector General (IG) report issued just last week
    found that VA's National Call Center for Homeless Veterans missed well
    over forty-thousand opportunities to link homeless veteran callers to
    VA medical facilities and ensure they received needed services.
        Some of these missed opportunities resulted from the unavailability
    of Call Center staff during peak business hours when veteran callers
    were transferred to answering machines instead of Call Center
    employees.
        This is unacceptable for any government program but particularly
    for one that serves a population as vulnerable as this. A population
    that for some, the ability to merely make a phone call is logistically
    challenging.
        I look forward to hearing today how VA is correcting the serious
    deficiencies that the IG found and holding those at fault accountable
    for their management and oversight failures.
        Unfortunately, the Call Center is just one concern I have with VA's
    many homeless programs.
        Based on information from VA, the Department has roughly twenty
    different programs designed to get homeless veterans off the streets
    and provide them with housing, healthcare, and employment assistance.
        The Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Labor also
    have programs aimed at achieving these same goals. I am encouraged to
    see the level of cooperation between these government agencies.
        I understand that homeless veterans are a varied and complex group
    and one program alone cannot effectively treat the unique needs of them
    all.
        However, the plethora of different programs that are in place today
    beg the question of whether significant overlap exists that both wastes
    taxpayer Dollars and limits the effectiveness of any single program's
    ability to effectively care for veterans in need.
        I also have concerns about the increasingly insular focus the
    Department is placing on ``permanent'' housing.
        Except for the very few veterans for whom housing instability may
    be a lifelong concern due to underlying health conditions, the foremost
    goal of every program serving homeless veterans should be providing a
    bridge to an independent, purpose-filled life--not a permanent,
    government-sponsored home.
        Over the last several years, the American taxpayer has devoted
    record amounts of their hard-earned Dollars to eliminating veteran
    homelessness, with funding for targeted homeless programs increasing by
    almost three-hundred percent and funding for healthcare for homeless
    veterans increasing by more than eighty percent since fiscal year 2009.
        But despite this considerable investment, veteran homeless will
    never be completely eliminated so long as veterans struggle with
    underlying health conditions and economic crises.
        Quickly and effectively diagnosing and treating those underlying
    health conditions and providing veterans who are able with job training
    and placement services is critical to empowering homeless veterans to
    successfully reintegrate into stable community environments.
        To truly honor and respect the service of a homeless veteran is to
    provide him or her with a pathway to a life of dignity and self-
    sufficiency, not just four walls and roof.

            Prepared Statement of Ranking Member Michael H. Michaud

        Thank you Mr. Chairman.
        The VA's goal of ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015 is
    an ambitious goal. Remarkable progress has been made by VA to meet this
    challenge, but there is much still that remains to be done.
        As we all recognize, VA cannot meet this goal alone--it will take
    the concerted action of the Federal government and the assistance of
    organizations and individuals all across the country.
        I look forward to the hearing today so that we can evaluate the
    effectiveness of this effort, and applaud the real progress that has
    been made.
        According to reports, homelessness among veterans has declined by
    33 percent, to roughly 50,000, since 2010.
        This is an accomplishment we can all take pride in, but there are
    still homeless veterans, and it is simply unacceptable that any of our
    veterans do not have a roof over their head.
        I am also concerned that we are not taking adequate steps to
    address special populations, such as homeless women veterans and those
    that need serious and sustained assistance.
        Today's hearing provides us with the opportunity to continue this
    discussion. It provides us with the opportunity to discuss how we
    define the goal of ending veteran homelessness, the resources that need
    to be committed, and the work that remains to be done in the year
    ahead.
        I am excited about today's hearing, but it is also bittersweet for
    me.
        This marks my last hearing as a Member of this Committee, and this
    Congress.
        Although I am looking forward to the opportunities and challenges
    that lay before me in the years ahead, I will miss this Committee and
    the work that it does.
        To the incoming Ranking Member, Ms. Brown, in your 22 years on this
    Committee, you have been a strong voice for veterans and the VA.
    Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy being Ranking Member as much as I
    did.
        To my fellow Democrats on the Committee, I cannot thank you enough
    for the work you have done. You have made it very easy for me to serve
    as Ranking Member. I appreciate the energy and the new ideas you have
    brought to this Committee. I hope you will all continue our efforts
    here in the next Congress and in the years ahead.
        To my friends on the other side, I applaud you and thank you, too,
    for your efforts. I cherish the friendships that I have with many of
    you. This Committee is truly a special place. Although there are times
    when we share different perspectives on how best to serve our veterans,
    we often worked together, without regard to party and without the usual
    rancor that many believe is elemental to the legislative process.
        I hope the American people look to this Committee as a model, and
    insist that their representatives do what we do so easily here--work
    together to get the job done.
        I wish to thank our staff, on both sides of the aisle. They work
    tirelessly, often with little credit, to make this Committee function
    and to do their best for veterans. I want to thank Nancy and my staff
    on this side of the aisle for your tireless effort. I want to thank
    John Towers and the Republican majority staff as well. The committee
    staff has done a phenomenal job over the last couple of years. I really
    appreciate the work that you have done, especially the administrative
    staff who do the day-to-day tasks that enable everything around here to
    function, and make us look good.
        I wish to thank the many employees at the VA, and their efforts to
    care for and serve veterans. Too often media headlines level broad
    accusations against all VA employees, and not just the few who have
    performance issues. There are good news stories, and there are good VA
    employees.
        I wish to thank the VSOs and veterans who work with us to make real
    the promises that this nation has made to all of our veterans. You are
    partners in our efforts and essential to our work. Keep up the good
    fight!
        Finally, Mr. Chairman, I really do appreciate our friendship over
    the years. And as you mentioned, we meet a lot of individuals here in
    Congress. A lot we consider friends. There are some we consider friends
    in a more special way. I consider you a very good friend. We have
    switched roles over our time as Members of Congress; me being chair,
    you being ranking member and vis-a-vis. And I really appreciate your
    openness, your willingness to listen to me as a minority member and as
    a ranking member. I want to thank you very much.
        I know you have talked on the House floor, and in this committee
    about coming to the State of Maine, about how you want to be able to
    shoot a moose. Hopefully, you will not forget that dream. In the
    meantime, I have something I would like to present to you, Mr.
    Chairman.
        In Maine, in the woods, moose lose their antlers. I have a
    constituent that goes through the woods to collect discarded moose
    antlers to carve. This is the half of a moose antler carved with an
    eagle's head.
        Mr. Chairman, I would like to present it to you in your drive to
    actually get a full moose in the State of Maine. And I would like to
    present this to you as a parting gift for your friendship and your
    loyalty. But also, for the work you have done for veterans over a
    number of years, putting aside partisan politics to do what is right
    for our veterans. So here is a freedom antler with an eagle from the
    State of Maine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

      Prepared Statement of Baylee Crone, National Coalition for Homeless
                                    Veterans

        Chairman Jeff Miller, Ranking Member Michael Michaud, and
    distinguished members of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs:
        Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this Committee
    today. My name is Baylee Crone and I am the Executive Director of the
    National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. On behalf of the more than
    2,100 community and faith-based organizations NCHV represents, I would
    like to thank all of you for your steadfast commitment to serving our
    nation's most vulnerable heroes.
        This testimony will focus on our understanding of the progress made
    to end veteran homelessness in this country, particularly:

             National progress made toward ending veteran
            homelessness.
             Matching services to the needs of homeless and at-risk
            veterans.
             Successes of permanent housing, transitional housing,
            employment, and prevention interventions.

        Additionally, this testimony will outline the benefit of
    coordinated outreach and intake systems in rapidly directing veterans
    to the local services that meet their most immediate needs.

    National Decline in Veteran Homelessness

        The national decline in veteran homelessness since 2009 is without
    precedent. The success we have seen to date, and our future success
    relies on the strengths of VA's front lines--the community providers
    and VA case managers who fight the daily battle to do more, better and
    faster. The momentum is on the side of rapid change, and we are closer
    than ever to achieving our mission of effectively ending veteran
    homelessness. However, ending veteran homelessness is not a moment; it
    is a moving target.
        To make progress toward our mission, we must see drops in the Point
    in Time (PIT) count, but that is not the only aspect of change we must
    see. We must see immediate engagement of services when a need arises,
    rapid response to those on the streets, and a continuation of
    successful permanent housing placement. We must empower community
    agencies to meet specific needs of individual veterans using targeted
    services through data-driven programs.
        As the number of veterans on the street and in temporary shelter
    goes down, we will need to be more, not less, diligent in ensuring that
    we provide a hand up to those who remain on the street and find
    themselves at high risk. We will end veteran homelessness, but reaching
    that benchmark happens when the systems in place are ready and able to
    immediately meet a veteran's needs should he fall into homelessness or
    be at high risk. As we make progress, resources will need to be
    redeployed, not withdrawn.
        Across the country, our community organizations and VA partners are
    stepping in with a safety net and a hand up to self sufficiency and
    independence. We are fostering empowerment, we are halting cycles of
    abuse, and we are educating and protecting. These activities may not
    show up in a point in time count, but they are, and will continue to
    be, the actions protecting against homelessness for many veterans.

    National Declines: The Point in Time Count

        Looking at one measure, the 2014 PIT count, tells an important part
    of this story: on a single night in January, 49,933 veterans were
    homeless. This 33 percent decline since 2009 is more than a statistic--
    it represents a real, measurable, downward trend in homelessness among
    veterans. Veteran homelessness dropped 10 percent in one year,
    representing the steepest decline since veteran homelessness dropped 12
    percent from 2010 to 2011. Homelessness among unsheltered veterans
    dropped 14 percent in one year, representing a greater than 40 percent
    decline since 2009. These significant drops happened as community
    organizations and VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) have improved outreach and
    targeted services for those with the most significant barriers. The
    challenges remain daunting, but they are surmountable with close
    coordination of complementary programs on the local level.
        While the PIT count presents a useful benchmark for tracking
    progress, it only shows part of the picture of who experiences
    homelessness throughout the year and who receives services from VA and
    other community programs. The PIT count is a snapshot; other data build
    out a more nuanced scene of the challenges we face and the road ahead.

    National Declines: Beyond the Point in Time Count

        In FY 2014, 80 percent of unsheltered veterans moved out of
    unsheltered status within three days. As VA stated in their annual
    report, ``this metric pushes the system to move literally homeless
    veterans off the streets and into safe and stable temporary housing.''
    In that same period, 50,730 veterans achieved permanent housing through
    the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program, far
    outpacing the VA's goal of 40,000. These data points begin to show us
    the full picture: veterans are engaging VA when they need help, are
    moving rapidly off the streets, and are successfully moving into
    permanent housing.
        The VA has also innovated to improve efforts on the ground. The VHA
    Programs Office updated its Homeless Gaps Analysis to include quarterly
    actual data and VAMC operational strategies. They also launched the 25
    Cities campaign to promote community-based solutions to ending veteran
    homelessness in high-need areas. The picture gains more clarity:
    results are being meticulously and consistently tracked to improve
    targeting to meet specific local and individual needs. The system has
    improved, and it is working.
        Looking at the PIT count, service usage trends, and changes in data
    processing helps us to track progress, but still, the full picture of
    change is not clear with this information alone. The stories of
    homelessness are pervasive in our work: an elderly veteran on a fixed
    income loses his roof in a bad storm but cannot afford to fix it; a
    mother with debilitating post-deployment headaches is unable to work
    and must choose between asking for help and keeping her family
    together; a recently transitioned young veteran living in his car
    struggles to keep up in school to retain his GI Bill.

    Matching Needs to Services

        At NCHV, we demand that individual needs match specific services.
    We do not have a ``homeless veteran population''--we have individual
    veterans who are homeless and who have specific and unique needs
    profiles to be addressed through a coordinated system of care. Wherever
    chronic, episodic and recent, or at-risk homelessness exists, the VA
    and its community partners must be ready and armed.

    Needs of Chronically Homeless Veterans

        We see veterans who are chronically homeless. Those individuals
    make up the majority of the unsheltered point in time count numbers,
    and are those targeted through the HUD-VASH program. As of September
    30, 2014, 91 percent of vouchers allocated to local communities for
    HUD-VASH led to permanent housing. Of those admitted into the HUD-VASH
    program, 71% met the definition for chronically homeless. By exceeding
    its target of 65%, VA showed a commitment to ending homelessness for
    those most vulnerable veterans in need of the intensive services
    offered by HUD-VASH.
        These data points are built on a foundation of behind-the-scenes
    coordination. Progress has required collaboration between the local
    Public Housing Authorities, local landlords, and VA personnel and
    grantees. Through this collaboration, they have identified high-need
    homeless veterans, streamlined verification, inspection, and approval
    processes, and rapidly placed these veterans into available housing
    units.

    Needs of Episodically and Recently Homeless Veterans

        We see veterans who are episodically or recently homeless. Those
    individuals make up a large portion of the sheltered homeless count, a
    smaller portion of the unsheltered count, and a significant portion of
    those needing services who are outside of formal counting systems. They
    are couch surfing and in and out of transitional housing, shelters, and
    treatment programs.
        These veterans connect to services through an extensive local
    outreach network. In communities across the country, homeless veteran
    service providers partner with the VAMC, community clinics, and
    Continuum of Care partners to ensure that homeless veterans seeking
    care encounter a ``no wrong door'' approach to outreach: no matter
    where the veteran accesses services, he is assessed and referred to the
    local agencies that can best meet his specific needs.
        If the veteran needs a place to sleep that night and services while
    a housing plan is developed, intake workers can refer him to
    residential treatment programs through VA, like Grant and Per Diem
    (GPD). As of the end of FY2014, VA had reached its annual goal for
    discharging veterans into permanent housing from GPD. If the
    coordinated intake process identifies the need for employment
    assistance, the veteran can be referred to a local Homeless Veteran
    Reintegration Program (HVRP). This program placed over 10,000 veterans
    into gainful employment in FY2013, with a cost per placement under
    $3,000 per veteran.
        Again, improved results rest on the shoulders of behind the scene
    changes. GPD programs across the country are lowering barriers to entry
    to make services more accessible. They develop service menus based on
    each individual veteran's goals so that the transition from
    homelessness to stable housing is a rapid and sustainable one. HVRP
    grantees have integrated innovative employment placement strategies
    into their programs, continuing to successfully place homeless veterans
    in competitive employment even in a challenged economy.

    Needs of At-Risk Veterans

        We also see those who are at risk of homelessness. These veterans
    may be one lost paycheck, one expensive utility bill, one broken down
    car away from losing their housing stability. They are often not
    counted in the Point in Time count, but they are here at our doorsteps
    and are often engaged in services through the Supportive Services for
    Veteran Families Program (SSVF). In FY 2013 alone, over 44,000 veterans
    and veteran family members were assisted through homelessness
    prevention SSVF resources. The data shows that these individuals
    obtained and maintained housing: among veterans receiving SSVF
    prevention services and exited to permanent housing destinations, 90
    percent did not use VA homeless services within a year after their exit
    from the SSVF program.

    Magnifying Impact through Coordination of Services

        We can end chronic homelessness; we are already doing it through
    HUD-VASH and Housing First. We can functionally end episodic and recent
    homelessness; rapid rehousing infrastructure, transitional housing, and
    income interventions are joined together to make this happen. We can
    get ahead of homelessness through prevention; SSVF serves more veterans
    and their families more cost effectively every single year. The full
    picture is complicated, but it is lit up with hope.
        Ending veteran homelessness starts with the veteran, and people are
    complicated. Some individuals with complicated needs profiles will be
    served by several programs. This does not mean that services are being
    duplicated, but rather that organizations and programs work together to
    address specific barriers to permanent housing.

    Serving Chronically Homeless Veterans

        Targeting chronically homeless veterans for rapid placement
    sometimes requires utilization of other programs to fill needs when no
    other resources exist in a community; this could include SSVF for
    security deposits in competitive rental markets or GPD as bridge
    housing between living on the streets and moving into housing while a
    unit is inspected and approved.

    Serving Episodically and Recently Homeless Veterans

        Serving episodically or recently homeless veterans, especially
    those who do not qualify for HUD-VASH, requires bridge housing and
    employment and income services to make affordable housing within reach.
    This could include pairing the vocational services of an HVRP case
    manager trained in labor market information and employment placement
    with the benefits and transitional housing services of a GPD program. A
    veteran may be referred to both programs, but for complementary, not
    duplicative, services. Utilizing some aspects of both programs, the
    veteran will obtain enough income to afford an apartment on his own.

    Serving At-Risk Veterans

        Sustaining at-risk veterans in the housing they have requires quick
    action and creative coordination; this could include a utility bill
    paid through SSVF and the intervention of another community
    organization with a strong landlord relationship to prevent an
    eviction. Because of their longstanding reputation for service in local
    communities, this community organization is often a GPD provider.

    Evolving Needs, Evolving Programs

        Needs will never disappear, but they are already evolving--and
    programs are adapting to them. SSVF has evolved based on constant
    feedback and best practices, and it is serving more vulnerable veterans
    per Dollar every year. HUD-VASH's integration of Housing First
    principles gives strong case management and consumer choice the
    driver's seat in collaborative care. HVRP's adoption of Job-Driven
    Training and connection to American Job Centers and DOL labor market
    information allows homeless veterans to receive front-line connection
    to gainful employment.
        We believe in and will defend effective deployment of targeted
    resources to fuel research-based interventions when and where they are
    needed. We must be diligent in the collection of empirically sound data
    so programs and the organizations executing these programs are
    responsive locally. They will need to continue to magnify impact by
    simultaneously addressing various barriers. Local programs are our
    force multipliers, pulling the entire community into the mission of
    ending veteran homelessness through the gravity of its importance.
        At NCHV, we do not advocate for the unqualified growth of resources
    for the sake of expanding programs. We believe a surge is still needed
    now, not because we set a goal for 2015 and want to check a box, but
    because we have the momentum now to make it happen. Building and
    sustaining those strongholds requires maintenance of infrastructure so
    homelessness is not simply paused, but truly stopped.

    In Summation

        Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony at today's
    hearing. It is a privilege to work with the House Committee on
    Veterans' Affairs to ensure that every veteran in crisis has access to
    the support services they have earned through their service to our
    country.

        Baylee Crone, Executive Director,
        National Coalition for Homeless Veterans,
        333\1/2\ Pennsylvania Avenue SE,
        Washington, DC 20003, 202-546-1969

                        NCHV Disclosure of Federal Grants
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Grantor:                                    U.S. Department of Labor
    Subagency:                                  Veterans Employment and
                                                 Training Service
    Grant/contract amount:                      $450,000
    Performance period:                         February 2014 - February
                                                 2015
    Indirect costs limitations or CAP           20 percent
     limitations:
    Grant/contract award notice provided as     No
     part of proposal:
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Prepared Statement of Steven R. Berg, Vice President for Programs and
                  Policy National Alliance to End Homelessness

        Chairmen Miller, Ranking Members Michaud, and members of the
    Committee, on behalf of our Board of Directors, our President Nan
    Roman, and our thousands of partners across the country; thank you for
    providing the National Alliance to End Homelessness the opportunity to
    testify today. We are grateful to you for holding a hearing on veterans
    homelessness and what we are doing and can do to end it. The National
    Alliance to End Homelessness works closely with federal policymakers as
    well as with state and local government, businesses, nonprofit
    organizations and many others who believe that homelessness should not
    be tolerated in the United States.

    Homelessness Among Veterans

        Our nation witnesses far too many veterans living on the streets.
    The number of homeless veterans has declined substantially in recent
    years, but is still far too high. While most veterans are well housed,
    a substantial minority are burdened with high housing costs, which
    combined with other factors can leave them at risk of homelessness. As
    a nation we have undertaken a concerted effort to solve the problem,
    which is a good thing, since without that effort there are many reasons
    to believe that the problem would become worse. Thousands of Americans
    are returning from the Middle East, with the kinds of demographic
    traits and disabilities that we know to be risk factors for
    homelessness, to an economy with unemployment that is still too high.
    Without continued hard work, there would be a grave possibility that an
    entire new generation of veterans will become stuck in homelessness.
        It is important to recognize that not all homeless veterans are the
    same. At the one extreme, some homeless veterans have severe
    disabilities, particularly related to behavioral health, and have lived
    on the streets or in shelters for long periods of time. This pattern
    has been referred to as ``chronic homelessness,'' and it costs
    taxpayers substantial money in emergency healthcare, jails, shelters
    and other emergency ``services.'' Returning these veterans to safety
    and housing often requires long-term rent subsidies, and intensive
    social services and medical care.
        While this is probably most Americans' stereotype of what a
    homeless person is like, and while there are certainly a percentage of
    homeless veterans who are like this, it is a minority. Most veterans
    and other Americans who experience homelessness do so because of
    personal economic crises. They do not have profound disabilities. Their
    lack of housing is often a serious barrier to getting their lives back
    on track; but program models knows as ``rapid re-housing'' have shown
    that if that barrier is removed through return to housing, they can
    succeed through their own devices or with short-term help to afford
    housing.
        The Alliance is enthused and hopeful in light of the work that has
    already been done and the reductions that have already occurred. The
    federal government's part in this work is being carried out pursuant to
    a commonsense plan, organized around a clear understanding of the
    problem and a commitment to solve the problem. The rest of this
    testimony will review what has happened so far, and what needs to
    happen between now and the end of 2015 to bring about the best possible
    results.

    What's Been Done, What Remains to do to House All Homeless Veterans

        In 2008 the Alliance presented testimony at a hearing held jointly
    by the Senate Appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over VA
    and over HUD. The topic was what to do about homelessness among
    veterans. At that point we talked about how we as a country needed to
    take four big steps in order to end homelessness for veterans. I am
    happy to say today that VA, HUD and Congress have taken three of those
    steps, and are in the middle of step four. We could still stumble, we
    could still not succeed; but if we finish what's been started in the
    right way, we can see the number of homeless veterans fall
    substantially, to the point where communities that use the help
    available to them and follow through can end veterans homelessness by
    the end of 2015.
        Step one: ``command and control'' infrastructure. Step one was to
    put in place a national plan and monitoring system that would be based
    on real data to determine what is working, what isn't, and how much
    progress is taking place. That piece is in place. The creation of the
    National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans has been extremely
    important in this regard. The Center, a joint project of VA and the
    University of Pennsylvania, provides a context for leading national
    experts on homelessness to use the rich data that is available on the
    use of VA programs, combined with other research and data on
    homelessness. The close cooperation of the National Center with the
    program offices within the Veterans Health Administration, and with
    staff in the Secretary's office, provides a ``command and control''
    function that is essential.
        Step two: a full range of interventions. Step two was to expand the
    range of program models to make effective practices available for the
    full range of veterans who are homeless. This, too, has been
    accomplished. At the time, in 2008, most housing for homeless veterans
    was being provided through the Homeless Grants and Per Diem program, a
    two-year transitional housing model. This is a model that works very
    well for certain people, but we believe anyone running such a program
    would agree that it is not for everyone. To end homelessness requires a
    range of programs so that everyone can get what he or she needs. As
    noted above, some homeless veterans, particularly those experiencing
    chronic homelessness, have permanent disabilities combined with other
    issues that make a transitional program unrealistic for them. The HUD-
    VASH program was put in place to address these needs. On the other
    hand, people who become homeless due to a short-term economic emergency
    can escape homelessness with short-term help to deal with that crisis.
    The ``rapid re-housing'' model, implemented at VA through the
    Supportive Services for Veteran Families program, has proven extremely
    effective at ending homeless for this group, at substantially less cost
    than either permanent or transitional supportive housing programs.
        It is important to note that there are eligibility issues. Not
    everyone who served on active duty in the military is eligible for
    these programs, because of discharge status or the complex rules
    relating length of service and the era in which a veteran served. This
    has been further complicated by recent statements by VA. Our hope is
    that some of these issues can be resolved by Congress; and that better
    coordination of discharge upgrade programs carried out by veterans
    service organizations with homelessness programs will resolve the
    issues for some; and that HUD-funded and other programs can, despite
    the financial stress that they are under, re-house the rest.
        Step three: Go to scale with program capacity. Step three was to
    fund those various interventions at the scale necessary to get the job
    done. As of this writing, VA budget requests and Congressional
    appropriations are on the verge of getting this done as well. Our
    estimate is that if Congress funds VA's FY 2015 budget request, it will
    finish the job of putting money on the table for communities to be able
    to provide housing, through HUD-VASH, GPD, and SSVF, for every veteran
    who experiences homelessness today and through the end of 2015. SSVF is
    the newest of these programs, and it has proven to do exactly what it
    sets out to do. VA has requested permission to move funding from other
    parts of its budget to increase grants to communities for SSVF, based
    on the latest solid data about what is needed.
        Step four: making it work at the community level. That brings us to
    step four, which is for every community to organize itself so that
    every homeless veteran is located, identified, and matched up with the
    right intervention to end his or her homelessness; and that these
    interventions work at peak efficiency, focused on quickly re-housing
    every homeless veteran they serve. We as a country are in the process
    of taking that step. VA is mobilizing its staff at local medical
    centers to make this happen. Mayors are taking part in campaigns to get
    other mayors to commit to this. Providers from the HUD-funded
    homelessness system are reaching out to VA-funded providers to share
    information and coordinate their work. The Alliance, based on years of
    work with communities that have succeeded in reducing the number of
    people who are homeless, believes that there are five key things that
    need to happen at the community level:

             Leaders in each community need to oversee the effort,
            using a solid plan and data to monitor progress.
             Communities need to set clear numerical goals for how
            many veterans need to be housed, how quickly.
             Leaders, program operators, and others need to be
            accountable for taking the specific actions they have committed
            to.
             Proven strategies need to be implemented in a skillful
            way: outreach, crisis housing, rapid re-housing, permanent
            supportive housing, and a coordinated system to ensure that
            each veteran gets access to the program that's right for him or
            her.
             Leaders need to communicate with the entire community
            about what is getting done, and what help is needed,
            particularly by landlords and employers in the community.

        VA needs to make every possible effort to get its employees,
    grantees and contractors behind making sure that these five things are
    happening. VA has a number of efforts under way to provide technical
    assistance that will help make that happen.

    Making Sure Homelessness Stays Ended

        When these four steps are complete, there will be few if any
    veterans who remain homeless on a given night. Which leads to the next
    step, the first step beyond veterans homelessness--to put in place a
    system that will find vulnerable veterans before they ever become
    homeless, and prevent their homelessness entirely. We are quite a way
    from having such a system. For the time being, ending homelessness will
    mean that while additional veterans may become homeless, as soon as a
    homeless veteran is discovered, help is there to provide whatever is
    needed in order to end that instance of homelessness. Programs to find
    veterans who become homeless, ensure their safety, and rapidly rehouse
    them will need to continue in place. This system will need to
    transition over time into an effective system of homelessness
    prevention. In the end, a prevention system will employ the kind of
    research and data analysis that the National Center already has under
    way. It will require careful thought about the right kinds of
    interventions, and how they should be targeted to veterans who would
    most likely become homeless without them. It will require work by this
    Committee and others to redeploy these resources so that we can all
    say, never another homeless veteran.

    Congress's Part

        Besides oversight of the ongoing effort, there is work for Congress
    to do in order to bring this result about. Most important are the
    following:
        Ensuring that funding remains available. The appropriations
    committee has responded well to VA's budget requests for these efforts.
    There is, however, great uncertainty over the federal budget over the
    next few years. As those discussions take place, it will be important
    to stand behind the work to end veterans homelessness.
        Short-range fixes. There are some minor changes needed to federal
    statutes to remove certain barriers to implementation. These changes
    should be made via the earliest possible legislative vehicle. They are
    the following:

             Provide VA with more flexibility to use funds for the
            programs that are needed most at the time. The current limit of
            $300 million per year for SSVF, in particular, underfunds this
            program and should be raised to ``such sums as are necessary.''
             Codify existing eligibility rules for VA homelessness
            programs. For many years, the GPD and now the SSVF program have
            served homeless veterans with various other-than-dishonorable
            discharges, even if, because of complicated rules regarding era
            and length of service, the veterans are not eligible for the
            full range of VA health services. A recent communication from
            VA, now suspended, called this practice into question, based on
            a new reading of statutes. Estimates by providers indicate that
            as many as 15 percent of homeless veterans would be left
            without help from these effective programs is this ruling were
            to go into effect. Congress should at least clarify that these
            veterans are eligible for these homeless services.
             Authorize the National Center on Homelessness Among
            Veterans. As noted above, this Center provides a forum for
            expert examination of VA and other data and research, ensuring
            that VA's practices are informed by the best possible analysis.
            To have it authorized in statute would ensure ongoing support
            as the U.S. makes the challenging transition from solving the
            problem of veterans homelessness, to ensuring the problem never
            recurs.
             Ensure VA has waiver authority to allow changes in
            GPD. Many GPD providers are finding that reductions in the
            number of homeless veterans, and the focus by VA on moving
            further in that direction, are causing severe difficulties.
            Congress should provide VA with waiver authority to allow GPD
            providers in communities where veterans homelessness has
            declined substantially to experiment with different models,
            including very short term housing for veterans experiencing
            housing crisis; and recovery housing for veterans who were but
            are no longer homeless, but are recovering from addiction or
            other severe difficulties.
        Longer term statutory change to prevent veterans homelessness from
    recurring. Existing VA programs that were designed to serve homeless
    veterans will need to do different things and serve different people
    when the number of homeless veterans is very small. They will, however,
    need to be there, to provide help when veterans have crises that leave
    or threaten to leave them without places to live. To move to a
    prevention-based homelessness system, there will need to be careful
    thought about what services are needed, which veterans need them, and
    how incentives can be established that will reward providers for
    effective work. This project should be undertaken and completed by the
    next Congress.
        Promote the local efforts. Every member of the U.S. Congress is a
    leader in his or her local community. As noted above, success at ending
    homelessness requires local commitment and local action. The Alliance
    encourages members of this Committee, and all members of Congress, to
    get involved with the issue locally, and do what they can to make sure
    that the communities they represent understand what they have to do to
    bring the number of homeless veterans down to zero.

        Steven R. Berg
    Curriculum Vitae

    Experience:

        Vice President for Programs and Policy, National Alliance to End
    Homelessness, October 1997 to present (previously Director of
    Programs).
        Senior Policy Analyst, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
    September 1996 to September 1997.
        Staff Attorney, Connecticut Legal Services, September 1990 to
    August 1996 (Norwalk and Bridgeport Offices).
        Executive Director, Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County,
    August 1987 to August 1990 (previously Staff Attorney).
        Staff Attorney, Contra Costa Legal Services Foundation, September
    1983 to August 1987.

    Education:

        Harvard Law School, J.D. 1982.
        Lewis and Clark College, B.A. 1978.

    Disclosure

        The National Alliance to End Homelessness is party to a subcontract
    to provide technical assistance to communities, as part of a contract
    with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Under this subcontract
    the Alliance will be paid a maximum of $130,000 for its work.

         Prepared Statement of John F. Downing, Chief Executive Officer

        Chairman Miller and members of the Committee, I am honored to be
    here today on behalf of Soldier On and the 3,815 veterans we serve each
    year. Soldier On has become the largest provider of supportive services
    to veterans in the United States and operates eight SSVF (Supportive
    Services for Veteran Families) grants throughout five eastern states.
    This was accomplished with early assistance from Congressmen Richie
    Neal and James McGovern of Massachusetts. With the help of Congressman
    Chris Smith of New Jersey and Congressman Chris Gibson of New York,
    Soldier On has also been able to expand its SSVF services to 36
    counties in New York and 8 counties in New Jersey. In addition, Soldier
    On serves 76 Counties in Mississippi, 23 counties in Pennsylvania, and
    the four counties of Western Massachusetts.
        Next year, we are slated to increase our breadth of service and
    assist more than 5,315 veterans and family members with a special focus
    on the chronically homeless veterans whose lives are reduced by an
    average of 20 years compared to their stably housed counterparts.
        The Department of Veterans Affairs' goal to end veteran
    homelessness by 2015 was not a goal that could take place without
    examining and combatting the underlying effects of poverty that cause
    homelessness. The lack of safe, affordable housing with services on-
    site has allowed veterans in poverty and those suffering from untreated
    and undertreated mental health and addiction disorders to be left
    forgotten and alone in their prolonged states of homelessness.
    Eliminating homelessness requires society to look at the causes of
    poverty, which are rooted in a capitalist society and its impact on the
    standard of living and lack of educational/vocational training
    opportunities. The reality is that our goal has been to bring each
    homeless veteran back to the center of their life.
        With great help from the National Director of Homeless Programs,
    Lisa Pape, Soldier On became a leading Grant/Per Diem shelter bed
    provider for the VA and realized that we needed to provide veterans
    with a stable living facility with services delivered where they live.
    Soldier On has built a first of its kind limited equity cooperative in
    Pittsfield, Massachusetts that has become home for 39 formerly homeless
    veterans. The safe, sustainable, affordable housing development was
    honored with a HUD Doorknocker award in 2011 for its quality and
    innovation in assisting veterans. Transportation and case management,
    along with medical and mental health services are delivered to each
    veteran where he or she lives so that appointments are met and the
    veteran receives the support necessary to ensure success and dignity.
    Currently, Soldier On is in the development phase of constructing eight
    more of these facilities throughout the East Coast including one on the
    grounds of the VA in Leeds, MA. This enhanced use lease project
    received great support from Paul Macpherson and will utilize VAi2 funds
    and will be a first of its kind project in which the VA and Soldier On
    will partner to serve veterans in limited equity units of their own.
        Soldier On has made a commitment to partner in SSVF with agencies
    which have a history with tenancy preservation and housing search
    upgrades for eligible veterans as well as mentoring programs that train
    and enable veterans to provide services to keep them safely housed. We
    couple these services with a housing resiliency stabilization program
    that works with ``high risk'' veterans in need of rapid rehousing and
    support. These veterans can call into our hotline which is staffed 24
    hours of the day so that a case manager can be sent to a veteran's home
    within 48 hours to address their individual needs. As a result of this,
    we found our costs were driven down. These SSVF supportive services
    cost an average of $2,400 to $4,400 for at-risk veterans in need of
    housing who are not getting VA care compared to the $42,000 it costs
    for a veteran who is in GPD care.
        The VA is continuing to try to provide services using a medical
    model which does not and cannot help all homeless and at-risk veterans,
    and often leaves the most disconnected of them unserved. Following a
    model promoted by Vince Kane and the VA National Center on Homelessness
    Among Veterans in Philadelphia, we must divert the current VA funding
    to proactive programs such as Housing First with services delivered to
    veterans where they live. The VA needs to become more community based
    and responsive to partnering with community providers in offering
    integrated housing, healthcare and employment services where the
    veteran lives so that we can create an environment in which veterans
    can heal. We must look at the mind, body, and spirit together. We can't
    just divide a person into parts and disorders that we can treat in
    different silos. This creates a cost system that is dehumanizing and
    degrading to the men and women who served our country. Delivering
    services to people where they live eliminates decompensating episodes,
    non-compliance, and relapse.
        By providing veterans with Housing First, services delivered to
    where they live, and training for employment opportunities, we can
    strengthen our veteran communities and restore the dignity and support
    that has been taken from veterans after years of neglect and
    disservice.
        Thank you for your time.
        John F. Downing, Chief Executive Officer Soldier on, 421 North Main
    Street Building 6, Leeds, MA 01053, 413-822-8364
        The Fight Doesn't End When They Get Home,
        421 North Main Street Building 6 Leeds, MA 01053 (413) 582-3059 and
    360 West Housatonic Street Pittsfield, MA 01201 (413) 236-5644
    www.wesoldieron.org

     Prepared Statement of Phil Landis, President and CEO Veterans Village
                                  of San Diego

        As a matter of disclosure you should be aware that I am a member of
    the VA Advisory Committee on Homeless Veterans and I am neither
    speaking for the VA nor the Advisory Committee today.
        VVSD is a nationally recognized non-profit and non-governmental
    organization that has served veterans since 1981. Using five pillars:
    prevention, intervention, treatment, aftercare, and employment
    services, VVSD assists veterans who have substance abuse and mental
    health issues, including men and women recently returned from Iraq and
    Afghanistan. Working with addiction case managers and mental health
    professionals, residents rebuild lives, repair relationships, and
    return to society as productive citizens.

    Veteran Treatment Center (VTC)

        Factors underlying Veteran homelessness such as mental health
    issues and substance use disorders are often related to conditions and
    experiences veterans encounter during their time in service to our
    country. (e.g., Military Sexual Trauma (MST), Combat injuries treated
    with opiates). All too often, the very medication used to treat their
    pain leads to a physiological dependency on opiates. When the opiate
    medication is stopped, many experience withdrawal symptoms and seek out
    ways to `self-medicate'. Unfortunately, many of these men and women
    ``treat'' their withdrawal symptoms by using street drugs, such as
    heroin. This predictable path often results in failed drug screens and
    separation from military service. They are often denied honorable
    discharge making them ineligible for VA Healthcare benefits. This
    administrative separation results in lost jobs, lost income, lost
    housing, and lost benefits which results in addicted veterans being
    homeless on the streets and unable to obtain lifesaving services. The
    VA is committed to three month long research studies with veterans to
    determine new evidence based practices and treatment protocols. These
    12 week group treatment research programs unfortunately do not provide
    for ongoing individual therapy or follow up.
        The emphasis on permanent housing first is an admirable and
    reasonable idea for many homeless veterans. However, for veterans with
    co-occurring disorders, housing without treatment is a major risk
    factor for those in need of higher level of services. The absence of
    Shelter Plus Care options for these homeless veterans makes remaining
    sober and stabilized on psychotropic medications nearly impossible if
    housed alone. If untreated or unmanaged, these diseases are progressive
    and life threatening.

    Citation:

        Protective Factors and Risk Modification of Violence in Iraq and
    Afghanistan War Veterans. (767-773) Eric B. Elbogen, PhD.; Sally C.
    Johnson, MD; H Ryan Wagner, PhD; Virginia M. Newton, PhD; Christine
    Timko, PhD; Jennifer J Vasterling, PhD; and Jean C. Beckham, PhD. 2012
    Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.
        This study shows that treatment and rehabilitation services such as
    those offered at VVSD support that `` . . . clinical intervention
    directed at treating mental health and substance abuse problems,
    psychosocial rehabilitation approaches aimed at improving domains of
    basic functioning and psychological well-being may also be effective in
    modifying risk and reducing violence among veterans.''
        Although the VA provides comprehensive medical care to those who
    meet the criteria for immediate services, veterans with less urgent
    problems are not viewed as a priority and have two choices: (1) Wait
    several months for an appointment or (2) be seen at the hospital
    Emergency Department. This results in veterans feeling devalued, acute
    problems not receiving necessary medical attention, and excessive cost
    for emergency room care that could have been handled on an urgent care
    basis. An urgent care walk-in system is desperately needed to address
    the day to day medical issues veterans experience.
        Many medical providers working at the VA seem to lack in-depth
    knowledge about substance use disorders and the risks involved with
    prescribing large amounts of controlled substances. (e.g., one day
    outpatient procedure results in a veteran filling his prescription for
    180 Oxycontin).

    Grant Per Diem and Employment

        The VA is putting most of their Dollars into Rapid-Rehousing &
    VASH. They have eliminated new funding for GPD. GPD funding focuses on
    treatment and employment combined with transitional housing. I feel
    there is a need for both. The VA continues to fund existing GPD
    Programs which are essential to serving the range of needs of homeless
    veterans. The SSVF Program requires that GPD referrals be made during
    the first 30 days of living in such programs and requires all GPD
    veterans secure permanent housing within 90 days. This is often too
    early to know if SSVF is an appropriate referral source and should be
    reviewed as a mid-course correction. HUD has put more emphasis in
    recent years on reducing the length of stay for homeless people
    (including veterans) who reside in transitional housing programs which
    may not always be in the best long term interest of some veterans.
        Joint HVRP/HUD: These 2 programs work well together. HVRP is
    focused on veterans securing jobs. HUD is focused on Housing for
    Homeless Veterans and other homeless people. The challenge is that with
    the high rate of PTSD and unemployment among younger veterans, evidence
    suggests there is a need to increase HVRP funding.

        Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF)

        Since the inception of our Supportive Services for Veteran Families
    (SSVF) Program in 2013, we have to date enrolled 180 veteran households
    who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Of the 180 veteran
    households, we were successful in placing 90% of these families into
    permanent housing. We've seen that more and more veterans are
    struggling to find employment and it has become even more difficult for
    them to secure sustainable income when there is not a roof over their
    head. The SSVF program is a great tool in fighting homelessness amongst
    the veteran population. The program prevents homelessness amongst
    veteran families and works with those who are homeless to rapidly enter
    permanent housing utilizing the Housing First model; this model is
    centered on placing homeless families into permanent housing, and then
    providing the appropriate services tailored around addressing their
    housing barriers.
        This model works very well for the Post 9/11 generation who only
    need a ``hand up''. Many of the Post 9/11 veterans that come across
    SSVF seeking services don't need the totality of our assistance. One of
    the benefits of the Housing First model is that the singular focus is
    on addressing the participant's housing crisis. However, we've seen
    that SSVF participants who are not ready to address their primary cause
    of homelessness, whether it's substance abuse or mental health issues,
    are not ready to maintain long term housing stability. Therefore,
    having the option to be in a formal treatment setting or transitional
    housing program benefits them in the long run and gives them the
    opportunity to work on their barriers prior to obtaining permanent
    housing.
        One of our goals at VVSD is to break the cycle of homelessness
    amongst veterans and their families. In order for us to succeed in our
    efforts, we think it's crucial that we address the various reasons
    veterans become homeless. Not all veterans are ready to sustain
    themselves in housing and not every veteran will have substance abuse
    or mental health challenges, but having both SSVF and the VVSD Veteran
    Treatment Center in the same agency allows VVSD to make a difference in
    the veteran community. One size does not fit all and homeless veterans
    deserve the opportunity to choose the program that is most appropriate
    to meet their needs.
        In conclusion: At Veterans Village of San Diego (VVSD), we believe
    intensive treatment leads to self-sustaining independence, the
    maximizing of human potential and a meaningful, fulfilling life. Our
    veterans are worthy of nothing less. Furthermore, we believe in
    providing services tailored to the veteran's needs and desires
    utilizing a client-centered approach focused on addressing their
    primary causes of homelessness.
        Respectfully,
        Phil Landis, President & CEO

                   Prepared Statement of Dr. Casey O'Donnell

        Good morning Chairman Miller and esteemed committee members. My
    name is Dr. Casey O'Donnell. I am currently the Chief Operating Officer
    of Impact Services Corporation in Philadelphia. For the last 20 years
    Impact has been providing both housing and employment focused programs
    to homeless Veterans who suffer from both mental illness and alcohol
    and/or drug abuse. Impact's current continuum of housing include one-
    hundred fifty (150) beds of supportive transitional housing under the
    VA's Grant and Per Diem (GPD) Program and supportive permanent housing
    under HUD's Supportive Housing Program (SHP). Impact's program was one
    of the first and is one of the few programs in the nation exclusively
    serving dually diagnosed formerly homeless Veterans. Since, 1994,
    Impact has also been providing employment services to over three
    hundred (300) homeless Veterans annually under the Department of
    Labor's Homeless Veteran Reintegration Program (HVRP). In addition to
    these programs, Impact has recently received a ``Surge'' Priority 1
    grant under the VA's Supportive Services for Veterans Families (SSVF)
    Program and Impact has been a partner in collaboration with Project
    HOME and the Veterans Multi-services Center in Philadelphia in SSVF for
    the last three years. Over the last year, Impact has been extremely
    active in the VA's Boot Camp and Twenty-five Cities initiatives working
    to end Veteran homelessness in Philadelphia. Finally, Impact will break
    ground on twenty-six units of affordable, permanent housing for low-
    income Veterans and their families on Monday, December 15th. This new
    permanent housing for 26 Veteran families will be available in
    September 2015 and will contribute to ending Veteran homelessness. We
    are working in close collaboration with the VA National Center on
    Homelessness among Veterans to provide all of these services from a
    Trauma Informed Care model. Along with other community based housing
    providers I was invited to participate in the National Center's
    workgroup to implement Trauma Informed Care across the nation both
    within the VA and among community based partners. The National Center
    has been an invaluable collaborative partner in the provision of care
    to homeless veterans and the Center's work related to training and
    implementation will been critical to success. We believe that our
    testimony is derived from a place of competence and experience.
        Men and women who have proudly served our country through military
    service should not be allowed to suffer in their addictions and mental
    illnesses on the streets of any city for one night longer. It is all of
    our job to find Veterans a safe place to live, recover from trauma and
    substance abuse, and improve the quality of their lives. In fact it is
    believed by those of us who are providers that ``trauma informed care
    is necessary to eradicate homelessness among veterans''.
        Setting the deadline of December 31st, 2015 to end homelessness
    among Veterans has become a critically important milestone for our
    country. The deadline has provided us with a sense of urgency and
    dedication. The deadline is producing hard work, determination and
    teamwork where previously there was disconnection and a lack of
    accountability. Over the last eleven (11) months, in partnership with
    our many collaborative partners, we have placed 556 homeless Veterans
    in permanent housing in Philadelphia. We have approximately 540
    Veterans left to house before the deadline of December 31st, 2015.
        The goal of ending Veteran homeless in Philadelphia is within our
    sights.
        We are ending Veteran homelessness in Philadelphia by developing a
    ``Safety Net'' system that ``catches'' Veterans before they become
    homeless, provides intervention when necessary to keep them housed,
    gets them housed again if they have slipped back into homelessness and
    most importantly, addresses their mental health challenges and/or
    addiction in an appropriate manner at whatever level needed as early as
    possible to prevent or address long-term homelessness. This safety net
    is critically important as we look at the Veterans of Iraq and
    Afghanistan who are potentially vulnerable, may be suffering, and may
    be headed towards homelessness. Research provided by the National
    Center on Homelessness Among Veterans suggests that this rapid safety
    net approach is allowing approximately 80% of Vets to stay housed after
    ninety days of case management and temporary financial assistance
    through SSVF. Recent data provided by the City of Philadelphia's Office
    of Supportive Housing also shows that the number of actual homeless
    Veterans on the streets and in many programs has decreased by 15% from
    2013 to 2014. We expect that percentage to dramatically decrease in
    2015 and to come to ``functional zero'' by January 2016.
        This Safety Net system has only been possible within the context of
    real partnerships that are being forged between the community and the
    VA as part of the Boot Camp and Twenty-five Cities Initiatives in
    response to the December 31st, 2015 deadline. These partnerships have
    brought HUD, the VA, local municipalities, housing authorities and
    community organizations like Impact, to a common table where systems
    have been changed by bringing two continuums (the City and the VA) into
    alignment on outreach and assessment and eventually on placement and
    retention to ensure that Vets are being moved into housing.
        Further, I would like to say that housing without jobs or increased
    benefits is only a short term strategy. Supportive housing integrated
    with programs to get Vets into jobs and/or access to benefits or
    increased benefits provides a long-term recipe for self-sufficiency. We
    would like to see the VA and the Department of Labor work closely to
    integrate community based job training and job development into the
    current housing activities funded for Veterans. A good place to start
    would be a pilot with community-based Veteran organizations like Impact
    to better integrate SSVF, GPD, and HUD-VASH housing with the HVRP
    Program.
        Finally, Impact currently operates four (4) Grant and Per Diem
    (GPD) programs that move homeless Veterans with a mental health
    diagnosis and drug and/or alcohol addiction through various stages of
    recovery to self-sufficiency according to their needs. Our program is
    currently full. It is full because there remains a critical need for
    GPD to provide stable housing and services for Veterans suffering from
    mental illness and substance abuse and/or dependency. Impact is
    extremely interested in working with Congress and the VA to test out
    several additional models of housing utilizing the VA's GPD program as
    the foundation of funding. Specifically, we would like to see a
    percentage GPD beds converted to provide supportive services and
    permanent (as opposed to only transitional) housing for formally
    homeless Veterans with mental health and substance abuse issues that
    require a higher degree of support than independent living can provide.
    We would also like to operate additional Safe Haven beds in
    Philadelphia that would have the ability to provide ``wet'' housing for
    chronic alcohol addicted veterans during a flexible period from ninety
    (90) days up to two (2) years. This will provide adequate time to work
    with the Veteran to get them stabilized and ready for recovery.
    Graduates of ``wet'' Safe Haven housing could move into Impact's
    current GPD transitional housing and eventually into independent living
    or supportive, permanent housing funded by HUD and/or the VA.
        In conclusion, on behalf of my colleagues at Impact, myself, and
    the veterans that we serve I would like to thank the members of
    Congress for this opportunity to testify.
        Sincerely,
        Casey O'Donnell,
        PsyD Chief Operating Officer Impact Services Corporation,
    codonnell@impactservices.org, 215-423-2944 ext. 152
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