Jason
Policy Issues: 107th CONGRESS PUBLIC POLICY AGENDA
As researched by
Jason Leigh
(Honorably Discharged, Disabled Navy Veteran—Vietnam era)
[Researcher's comments are inserted in green font within the statements below]
"It’s a ‘Set-up’ for the abuse of homeless and Disabled Veterans!"
JL
To Wit:
http://www.nchv.org/policy-106-agenda.html
Begin here:
• Appropriations at authorized level for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program
The capstone of employment efforts for homeless veterans has been the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP) of the Department of Labor (DOL), which has been authorized at $15 million for FY2001.
* These funds are only available to established programs like The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, but there are only three (3) other such 'approved' programs in the USA. Why? 'Read on . . .
HVRP works well because it is the best of both worlds -- a government program operated by some of the best community-based organizations in America through a tight-fisted grant program. HVRP is an employment program, anchored in communities. Providers operate veteran-specific programs that reach veterans with histories of intertwined post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse. HVRP grant winners have placed hundreds of veterans in good jobs, with twice the record of job retention expected. A highly cost-effective program, HVRP costs about $1,250 per placement, only 24 percent of the cost of Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) programs. HVRP has strong support in the veteran's community, where we care about these lost men and women. Veteran-specific programs conducted through community-based organizations accomplish what block grant proponents often only talk about -- tailoring the use of federal dollars to the actual needs of the homeless of one locality after another. As always, what community-based organizations learn will work in the broader homeless community.
Employment -- having and keeping a job with a routine and decent
pay and benefits -- is the key to ending homelessness. Having a job
at the end of the tunnel is often the difference between success and
failure for vocational rehabilitation and substance abuse treatment.
Employment is central to keeping homes and families together.
NCHV sees sound employment programs as the ultimate priority.
* The 'Veterans Industries' program allows for 'approved' homeless Veterans (some are NOT approved) to work no more than 32 hours per week at $5.54 per hour, or $732.00 monthly, while the Veteran has to pay $186.00 rent at a 'group [supervised] shelter' (such as what NCHV offers), while being limited to 174 days at the shelter out of a 365 day year. These funds ($732.00 monthly) are before taxes. Therefore, the Veteran saves little to no money to find an apartment--not having ALL of the needed 'deposits' (deposit on an apartment/dwelling--the gas-bill--the light bill--the water, etc.), and the 'contracted employer' is not required to keep the Veteran on the job after the 174 days expires. In fact: why would they offer the Veteran a 'real' job at the going private sector wage scale when they could simply wait until another Veteran comes along (there are stacks of applications in the ready) and maintain their 'slave labor' tactics--being paid directly to the shelter at $1,250.00 monthly--while the Veteran doing the work gets $732.00 per month? That's $518.00 profit per month to the 'shelter.' It's true. Check here: http://www.nchv.org/policy-106-agenda.html or see above statement by the NCHV:
"HVRP costs about $1,250 per placement."
• Create a Veterans Work Opportunity Tax Credit (V-WOTC) Jobs
Program:
Welfare to Work tax credits target AFDC clients of whom veterans make up a very small percentage and have not been effective incentives for employers to single out and hire veterans. One way to give a Federal priority to employing homeless veterans would be the creation of a Veterans Work Opportunity Tax Credit (V-WOTC) Jobs Program to employers. NCHV (The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans) proposes that any US military veteran and immediate family members be eligible for a private sector Federal hiring tax credit equal to 50 percent of their first year's wages (to a maximum of $10,000 per family member), and to a second year's retention credit equal to 25 percent of the second year's wages (to a maximum of $4,000 per family member). Today 1.5 million veterans fall below the poverty line.
* The recipient must be a US military veteran or an immediate family member
* The veteran or family must fall below the poverty line.
Health care -- both physical and mental -- is a key for many homeless veterans to the ability to gain and hold employment. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mental health and substance abuse programs are essential to making many homeless veterans job-ready. Yet in a period of VA reorganization and belt-tightening, these are the easiest programs for VA to eliminate. The transmutation of VA's Veterans Health Administration from a facilities-based system into a "services oriented" system organized around 22 Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISNs) is significantly reducing services needed by many veterans, especially homeless veterans. Cuts in these services are unacceptable to NCHV. Inpatient care for PTSD has been drastically reduced in both duration and availability. The elimination or decimation of VA mental health and substance abuse programs erases much of the progress of the past 15 years toward getting VA to treat the neuro-psychiatric wounds of war. If the VA cannot treat these problems effectively, they will nonetheless be treated ineffectively and at higher taxpayer expense through local mental health, substance abuse, and criminal justice agencies.
• Require the DVA to Measure, Report, and Implement System-wide Services to Homeless Veterans
Today VA's clientele is, for the most part, either veterans with specialized disabilities that VA treats unusually well--such as spinal and head injury--or low income veterans. The latter are not always homeless, but those who are not remain at risk. A mission to serve the needs of homeless veterans, written into VA's strategic plans for the long term, would secure the place of these forgotten men and women. VA needs to dedicate funding of homeless veteran services not just on a year-to-year basis that does not allow for long-term focus or results. Currently it is unclear what the staffing and funding levels in each medical center are dedicated to homeless services. We suggest that Congress request a reporting, by each medical center, the current level of service and what plans each center has to build comprehensive services for homeless veterans.
The DVA Director of Homeless Services should be used as a consultant on all DVA policy decisions relating to services for homeless veterans. * There should also be a Veteran representative to advise as well, which would not only be fair--but also--very telling towards the truth of the plight of being homeless; a situation a 'Director' can only guess at. The Director has the opportunity to provide unique insight into the working relationships of community-based organizations and the DVA.
• Give the Department of Veteran Affairs discretionary grant
making authority (as most other Federal agencies already possess) under the Homeless Veterans Program office so that when new and innovative proposals surface the VA could sponsor their initiation. If the activity demonstrates value, Veterans Health Administration (VHA) could put the activity into its base-funding budget or seek other long term program funding.
• Require the DVA to setup and Homeless Veterans Advisory Committee
Committee under the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs that would provide an unfiltered and unrestricted channel of information to the DVA Secretary concerning the issues affecting homeless veterans. * There should also be an actual Veteran called upon as an advisor--to relate the personal feelings and facts of the outcome of these programs upon the Veterans in question, and answer that otherwise, could not be discovered alone by the above sited persons. The deck would be staked against Veteran . . .
• Require the DVA improve the CHALENG data collection and reporting process
Congress recognized the need for the VA to play a leadership role within communities they serve by passing legislation (PL102-405) requiring the VA to assess and coordinate the needs of homeless veterans living within the area served by the medical center or regional office. Since that legislation passed the VA has made progress towards implementing community meetings, Community Homelessness Assessment, Local Education and Networking Groups (CHALENG) for Veterans, in approximately 90% of their locations.
There are many local CHALENG processes that are meeting the full intent of the law passed by Congress and are providing valuable coordination of services to homeless veterans. However, not all medical centers have implemented this law or have minimally met the intent by surveying providers without a controlled assessment process.
NCHV is surprised that in the Fifth Annual Progress Report, published August 29, 1999 for the 1998 fiscal year, childcare came as the number two item of the unmet needs for homeless veterans. NCHV members are concerned that this conflicting data with their front line experience with homeless veterans distorts the entire validity of the CHALENG process and will misdirect the DVA in their resource allocation for services to homeless veterans.
NCHV wants Congress to impress upon the DVA the critical need for the VA to take a tangible leadership role to assess and coordinate services in communities for homeless veterans in a consistent and complete manner throughout the DVA.
• Fund the VA Homeless Providers Grant and Per Diem at $50 million
In the FY 1999 Appropriations Bill, Congress allocated $14 million for VA’s homeless grant program, and another $6 million for its homeless per diem program. These programs, begun in 1992 to fund the development and operation of transitional housing programs for homeless veterans who are free of drugs and alcohol, have made over 4,000 beds available with only $41 million over those years. Like HVRP, the money activates the genius of community-based organizations with veteran-specific programs. Congress needs to make the per year allocation to VA’s Homeless Providers’ Grant and Per Diem Program a line item appropriation at $50 million in FY 2001 through FY2005. VA continues to play – and must continue to play – a key role in providing health care to homeless veterans, both through its own facilities and direct care programs, and through contracts with community-based providers whose unique programs and understanding of homeless veterans make them better fit to meet specific needs. In addition, half a dozen years of experience show that VA’s regulations for its Homeless Providers Grant and Per Diem Program need revision to allow: Providers to use in-kind contributions to count toward the matching funds they must provide for operational expenses. Funding expansion of existing programs as well as new programs. Give priority to veteran managed organizations.
Veterans become homeless while waiting for their VA claims to be processed and often a resolved claim can provide the means for a homeless veteran to get into housing. It is unconscionable that a veteran would be forced to live in homelessness while waiting months or years for a claim to be resolved. There are several model DVA Regional office programs that provide exemplary models that should be developed into a national DVA model, with sanctions for not complying.
* These "DVA Regional office programs" are limited to resources and certain requirements of the Veteran. That's correct: not all homeless Veterans would qualify! So why not 'demand' that the filing process for benefits become easier--and yet faster--since the VA has the funded resources to do this? Why then--isn't it a Law imposed upon the VA by Congress, the Senate and most certainly--the President? And yes: it does take months--if not years to obtain benefits from the VA--when the Veteran needs those benefits--NOW! You try being homeless--and then being informed that nothing can be done for you until months--or YEARS have gone by. Would you be up in arms?
Guaranty Program There has been very little effort on the part of the DVA to look for opportunities to lease/sale foreclosed property to community-based organizations that provide services to homeless veterans over the last several years. NCHV calls on Congress to request a report comparing available properties to actual lease and sale activity. The DVA should also be required to develop and implement a plan to increase usage of these properties by homeless veteran community-based providers.
homeless veteran community-based service providers The DVA has the authority now to place work-study students in sites outside the DVA, however there has not been a focused effort to go beyond the DVA walls. Community-based providers operate with very minimal operating funding. This would be a cost-effective way to build capacity within community organizations and to give valuable real life work experience to students.
HOUSING AND SHELTER:
• Ensure that Veterans Receive an Equitable Portion of HUD Resources Nationwide
NCHV calls upon the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Congress to take all necessary steps to ensure that homeless veterans are in the process of resource allocations in every state and in all 900 areas for distribution of HUD housing funds, as full partners in the process. State and community boards must include veteran representation in creating and distributing grant proposals and funding. NCHV urges Congress to require that HUD report to Congress annually: Veteran community-based providers participation in fund allocation at every level. What funds veterans receive for any purpose at every level. A customer satisfaction survey to veterans who are potentially eligible for or who actually receive HUD-funded services.
Introduced by Representative Metcalf (R-WA) that would require 20% of HUD McKinney Homeless funds to be directed at veterans.
Introduced by Senator John McCain on January 26, 1999 requiring every entity receiving a Federal grant for providing emergency shelter to the homeless to do the following: Find out whether individuals are veterans. Provide counseling on the availability of veterans benefits (including employment assistance and health care) as determined by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to be appropriate.
Contact the VA to provide coordination of consulting and other services to these veterans. Providers that failed to comply would become ineligible for additional Federal homeless grants. The Secretaries of Veterans Affairs and HUD would be required to coordinate these efforts.
• Strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) helps all homeless, and NCHV has signed on in coalition with a broad range of organizations -- ranging from the US Conference of Mayors and Catholic Charities USA to the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America -- to call for raising FEMA funding to $150 million for FY 2001.
NCHV also strongly recommends that a veteran specific director be added to the Emergency Food and Shelter Program Board at the national level. Since veterans makeup 23% of the homeless population we feel a representative for this Federal program is justified.
NCHV is concerned about the number of recently discharged service members that do not have adequate life skills to reintegrate into civilian life and prevent them from becoming at risk for homelessness. NCHV supports a proactive assessment of all separating service members to determine those at risk and provide training in life skills for those service members prior to release.
• Provide homeless prevention initiatives for incarcerated veterans
The Bureau of Justice Statistics report, "Veterans in Prison or Jails", issued in January 2000, stated that the percent of incarcerated veterans that had been homeless in the year prior to arrest were 23% in local jails; 12% state prisons; and, 6% in federal prisons. What is not asked, of those leaving the prison systems how many will be homeless. NCHV is concerned about those veterans that want to have that second chance but do not have access to the resources available to them prior to release. We propose several national initiatives:
Verify veteran status through Department of Veterans Affairs of self-identified veterans in federal and state detention systems.
Provide access to veteran specific counseling while incarcerated.
Develop pre-release discharge planning.
The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) sees in this Congress and its leaders an opportunity to put forward practical, cost-effective proposals that will fill the serious gaps in services for the men and women who have served this nation well -- even heroically -- and have since become homeless.
Homeless veterans are not a permanent population, but veterans who have problems so acute that they sometimes become homeless. In a great many cases, these problems are directly traceable to their experience in military service -- often combat -- or to their return to civilian society. America has a contract with those who have served to restore them as best possible to productive lives. The public policy priorities NCHV sets forward are aimed at making the best use of existing facilities, programs and organizations to put our quarter million homeless veterans on their feet again.
None of these programs call for great new outlays of Federal funding, nor for the creation of significant numbers of Federal jobs. Some make use of existing staff and facilities, and some rely on community-based organizations (CBOs) already in place in localities across the nation.
• Allocate $750,000 FY 2001 and each year thereafter through FY 2006 to NCHV for technical assistance to homeless veteran service providers.
The appropriations would be for NCHV to provide technical assistance to build the capacity of service providers to meet the needs of veterans to help them transition out of homelessness.
Currently NCHV does not have the resources to expand our capacity to meet the needs of community-based providers. What? So the Federal government is giving NCHV $750,000.00 each year (from 2001 through 2006)--but they, "don't have the resources," to supply the 'mandated' usage of those funds? So, NCHV, where does the money go? For funds to support YOUR needs--and not the intended needs of the Veterans these 'funds' were given to aid? WHAT?
The Department of Veterans Affairs is not able to provide that technical assistance and HUD does not address the specific needs of veterans. So: the DVA 'is not able to provide,' and HUD can't help, neither can the NCHV, which is supposed to 'provide' these funds to Veterans, which they were given by the Federal government. Are you beginning to see the light here? Yes: it's a very dim--and dubious light that shines only upon those who are benefiting from it: the DVA--HUD--and the NCHV, but apparently--no--obviously, Veterans certainly aren't attaining any such aid as they are entitled to.
NCHV is the only group that has direct lines of communication already established with grassroots organizations providing direct services to homeless veterans (and other local organizations), veteran service organizations, the VA, HUD, DOL (and other federal agencies), and a myriad of national and local homeless organizations.
Our members are where the rubber meets the road. They are responsible for services delivered and they have told us through member surveys, at our conferences, on a day-to-day phone and fax basis that they need help leveraging their resources, getting funding and finding solutions to inadequate funding.
Members want to be competitive within HUD and other federal, state and local agencies grants programs, as well as within the private sector. NCHV is proposing to be the bridge that helps each veteran arrive back home. Veteran-specific programs can more effectively target homeless veterans, who comprise one-third of the homeless male population in the United States.
* Note that fully 1/3rd of all homeless males are U.S. Veterans! Why? Note also--that this is the very last sentence--or statement--made in this report. Should it not be the very first sentence submitted not only by the 107th Congress--but also from the NCHV--who created this report?
Jason Leigh
Recent Disabled Veterans loss of benefits National News click here
