Veteran Housing Stability Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, yesterday, as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I introduced S. 1885, the Veteran Housing Stability Act of 2015. I would like to thank Senators SANDERS, BROWN, and HIRONO for joining me to introduce this bill, and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and the National Alliance to End Homelessness for their support of this legislation. At a time when the Department of Veterans Affairs, VA, has taken on an aggressive initiative to end homelessness among veterans by the end of 2015, much progress has been made yet there is still more progress needed.

The VA initiative has led to a 33 percent decrease in the homeless veteran population since 2010. These declining numbers are a reflection of the combined efforts of VA and its Federal, State, local, tribal, and community partners as they continue aggressive efforts to decrease veteran homelessness and implement a system through which veterans who become homeless can be rapidly placed in appropriate housing situations that meet their needs. The statistics are staggering--49,000 veterans are homeless in America today, 1 in 10 of all homeless men and women--a searing failure in the greatest, strongest Nation in the world's history. It reflects a failure to keep faith that this legislation will help correct. We cannot allow another veteran to slip through the cracks. We must give communities the flexibility and tools they need to create housing systems that can maximize existing resources collaboratively in order to identify and sustain appropriate housing placements for vulnerable veterans.

The legislation would reaffirm this Nation's commitment to safe and affordable housing for veterans by improving and expanding upon VA's programs to prevent and end homelessness among veterans. VA's housing programs for homeless and at-risk veterans must modernize to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the very veterans they are intended to serve. One of the challenges many identify as causing difficulty is one that mainstream housing programs also struggle with--insufficient availability of safe, affordable, permanent housing options.

This measure will address the egregious, abhorrent problem of veteran homelessness with several common-sense, effective steps to increase housing for homeless and at-risk veterans. The Homeless Veterans Prevention Act of 2015 would expand access to housing by requiring VA to collaborate with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and other entities to conduct more robust landlord outreach and encourage more landlords to rent to veterans.

Further, this bill would modify a VA program that provides critical savings to transitional housing providers, allowing these groups to spend limited funding to provide high-quality services rather than to retire the debt they would take on to acquire a facility in which to operate. VBA's Acquired Property Sales for Homeless Providers Program sells homes from VA's foreclosure inventory at a discount to nonprofit organizations for use as transitional housing for homeless veterans. As VA continues to shift its homeless programs into an approach that meets veterans at their point of need, rather than choosing a one-size-fits-all solution, more services are being provided under the housing-first model, which pairs housing with appropriate levels of case management. This pairing allows veterans to deal with the underlying issues that caused homelessness, rather than attempting to work through them while simultaneously looking for housing. It is critical that programs that offer more than transitional housing be allowed to benefit from this discount as well.

As VA focuses on resolving homelessness, instead of just managing it, housing stability is increasingly a focus across the continuum of programs VA offers to eligible veterans. This bill will also modify VA's Grant and Per Diem Program, its largest transitional housing program, to allow VA to incentivize grantees to increase their focus on permanent housing and housing stability in support of the transitional housing program. More specifically, this bill provides VA with much needed authority to allow transitional housing providers to utilize their facility for permanent housing, and to receive a reduced per diem payment to provide case management for participating veterans. This would allow communities that are reaching critical junctures in the fight to end homelessness to repurpose existing transitional housing capacity for more pressing needs, such as permanent housing opportunities for veterans.

As many initiatives across VA have faced performance challenges, it is paramount that we continue to examine all VA initiatives and identify metrics that can be tracked to keep the Department accountable. This legislation includes a provision that would require VA to set national performance targets for entities that receive per diem funding for transitional housing and examine them to determine whether the grantee's performance merits continued funding. Further, this bill also contains a provision that would prompt VA to utilize the data it collects to better target interventions offered by its assertive community teams engaging homeless veterans on the street. Requiring a more targeted effort focused on homeless veterans who are health care ``super-utilizers'' will reduce unnecessary utilization of health care and, subsequently the costs for care.

Research has indicated that housing can be an effective health care intervention when paired with appropriate services and resources. At its very simplest, homelessness among veterans is preventable when there is coordination among the many services and resources available to lift a veteran up. We cannot sit by idly and allow another veteran to slip through the cracks. We must reach out and let them know when, where, and how to get the help that they need and that they have earned.

This is not a full recitation of all the provisions within this legislation. However, I hope that I have provided an appropriate overview of the major benefits this legislation would provide.

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