Phoenix 1st city to end veterans' chronic homelessness
Phoenix says it eradicated chronic veteran homelessness on Wednesday.
Three years ago a state coalition aimed at ending chronic homelessness among veterans identified 222 living in Phoenix. As of early November, 56 remained, but a $100,000 allocation of funds enabled the city to house them all as of mid-week, winning what the mayor's office described as a friendly competition with Utah's Salt Lake City to become the first U.S. city to do so.
“Phoenix can take its place as role model city for gratitude and care towards veterans,” Mayor Greg Stanton said in a release.
Phoenix's push was part of a broader national campaign. President Obama has pushed to end chronic homelessness among veterans by 2015, a goal that officials say they are on their way to achieving.
“We are on the right track in the fight to end homelessness among veterans,” Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki said in a late-November statement.
Since 2010, veteran homelessness has declined by 24 percent nationally, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. But a single-night count from January suggests that there are still somewhere around 57,849 homeless veterans nationwide. Just under 8 percent were women.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the VA have awarded millions of dollars in grants to local groups helping to further the cause. In July, for example, the VA announced that it had awarded nearly $300 million to more than 300 community agencies to help homeless or at-risk veterans and their families.