A local group called the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance has been helping homeless veterans in the Dallas area over the past few years. According to NBC 5, the group has made fighting veteran homelessness a top priority.
“No one should ever have to face living without a home, particularly the veterans who have served our country,” MDHA’s Chief Program Officer Sarah Kahn told NBC. “This is a top priority for the agency. It has brought together and has been able to galvanize a lot of support from community partners and providers to be able to tackle this problem.”
The organization’s annual Point-In-Time count found around 300 homeless veterans in Collin and Dallas counties earlier this year. MDHA revealed last week during a Veterans Day housing fair that 60% of those individuals are in the process of getting permanent housing.
NBC reported that the organization had brought veteran homelessness down by 18% since 2019.
“Ultimately homelessness is a housing problem,” Khan explained to NBC. “And veterans who become homeless really do so for the same reasons that other people become homeless. Incomes have not kept pace with housing costs, several households have faced economic fallout from the pandemic, which makes it harder to pay the rent at the end of the day along with the other supports that you need. They may also be facing traumas and have support needs because of their experience in active duty, layered on top of the other economic hardships that other people are experiencing today.”
According to Khan, the national average of homeless veterans has been on the rise. The number rose in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, NBC 5 reported.
A Department of Housing and Urban Development revealed that veterans make up 8% of homeless adults.
Khan told NBC that despite the record amount of homelessness in the nation, Dallas and Collin counties had experienced a 20% drop in the past two years.
“We are well on our way to achieving being an effective end to veteran homelessness, which really means that our homeless response system has the capacity to provide housing resources to every veteran who becomes homeless and to connect people with housing as quickly as possible,” Khan said.
According to NBC, funding was a big help in bringing the number down. MDHA received $70 million in private donations and federal COVID-19 relief. They are working with the city and other nonprofits to come up with strategies for spending the funds.
“We are in a position where there’s a historic level of new resources in the community to be able to combat homelessness,” Khan told NBC 5. “We have seen tremendous collaboration across public and private partners to bring those resources together and to target them to best practice interventions that provide rental assistance with wrap-around supportive services to individuals and families.”
MDHA is also working to address the return to homelessness rate. In May, the organization said the current rate is around 21%.
MDHA board chairman Peter Brodsky told NBC that addressing the needs of every client is an essential part of that process.
“The better we get at assessing clients’ needs and matching them to the right type of housing, the more our rate of returns to homelessness will decrease,” Brodsky said. “And reducing inflows helps reduce the rate of homelessness. We have already seen a decrease in the rate of returns from clients who are placed in permanent supportive housing. For instance, only 4% of the veterans we placed returned to homelessness in 2019.”
