Homeless Groups Net Grant for Vets

Three homeless aid groups in Cincinnati are getting a bit of help from the federal government. On Sept. 19, the Secretary of Veteran Affairs announced it awarded nearly $600 million to homeless aid groups around the United States, and three local organizations managed to secure $600,000 of that funding. The money will be awarded primarily to Ohio Valley Goodwill Industries, but Goodwill has partnered up with Strategies to End Homelessness and the Healing Center at Vineyard Community Church to make full use of the money. Kevin Finn, executive director of Strategies to End Homelessness, says the money will help make up for stimulus funding that was recently lost — at least in the case of military veterans.“It’s going to go to helping veterans and their families that are either at risk of becoming homeless or already homeless,” Finn says. That makes the grant funding different in two major ways: First, the money can now be used to help veterans’ families, not just veterans. Typically, aid to veterans is allocated in a way that can only benefit veterans, but this money will help their husbands, wives and children. Also, the money will also be used to help vets at risk for homelessness instead of just vets who are already homeless. With the traditional, limited funding, homeless aid groups can only reach out to people who are already out in the streets; with this new funding, groups like Strategies to End Homeless will be capable of taking preventative measures that keep vets in a home. The new funding, which Finn estimates will help about 200 families, will be divided between the local organizations so they can each take on different roles. For Strategies to End Homelessness, that mostly means working on short-term solutions for homeless or at-risk vets. “The biggest (services) will be rentals and financial assistance to either get them to be stable in housing or keep them in their housing and prevent them from becoming homeless,” Finn says. After that, care will shift to Goodwill, which will work on job training, job searching, tutoring, computer training and other important tools to help keep vets employed and housed. “If the financial support can keep them from being homeless in the short term, then the services that the Goodwill case manager will put in place will hopefully keep them from being homeless in the long term,” Finn says. To reach out to vets in need, the organizations will use current connections, street outreach programs and phone hotlines to make sure the program reaches as many people as possible while staying efficient. To Finn, one of the most important tasks of Strategies to End Homelessness is to make sure no funding is wasted and the organizations coordinated by Strategies to End Homelessness do not have redundant programs. Strangely enough, aid to vets has become a political issue recently. Forty Republicans in the U.S. Senate recently blocked the Veteran Jobs Corps Act, which would have funded job programs for military veterans. Ohio Rep. Connie Pillich recently introduced a resolution in the Ohio General Assembly to encourage U.S. Senate Republicans to pass the bill.