This Legislation Increases Shelter Funding, Expands Benefits, and Aims to Prevent Veteran Homelessness
Early this year, then-President Biden signed the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act into law, a real mouthful of a law offering wide-ranging improvements for veterans and their caregivers. It includes several provisions designed specifically to help homeless veterans, as well as several others that help all veterans, including those who are homeless, and some that may help to prevent veterans from becoming homeless in the first place.
Let’s look at some of the things this bill does.
Specific Provisions for Homeless Veterans
The main change aimed at homeless veterans is the increase in the per diem rate that the VA is authorized to pay to other organizations providing temporary housing to homeless veterans. The previous rate was 115% of cost, and the new rate is 133% of costs. This increase in the repayment rate is designed to incentivize shelters to provide care to homeless veterans, knowing that the government will reimburse them for doing so, plus a little extra.
The bill also carves out room for the VA to have more flexibility in how they support unhoused veterans. Now, they can provide things like transportation to medical appointments in addition to shelter, food, hygiene items, and bedding.
Changes That May Prevent Veteran Homelessness
A few of the changes in the bill apply to veterans more generally. Still, they may offer additional benefits to veterans who are either currently homeless or in danger of becoming homeless in the future.
One such benefit is the new requirement that the VA reimburse ambulance costs for certain rural veterans. Medical expenses are a huge burden for everyday Americans, so much so that people delay care to weigh up whether they can afford to pay the cost of an ambulance ride. This hesitation can be deadly, particularly in rural areas that are more cut off from medical care. Covering the costs of these ambulance rides is bound to save lives in a very direct way. It may also prevent people from being bankrupted by medical bills and subsequently losing their housing. It wouldn’t be the first time medical expenses made someone homeless.
Another provision that could prove useful in preventing homelessness is the extension of specialized high-tech job training for veterans. Now, we know that just having a job, even a so-called “good” job, is not enough to prevent homelessness for everyone. Most homeless people have jobs, and even college professors with PhDs in astrophysics aren’t immune to homelessness. What’s good about this program extension is that it allows veterans using their GI Bill to keep their housing allowance longer, even if they fall below full-time student status during their final semester. This directly keeps people in housing. It also trains veterans to transition into tech jobs, which increasingly seem like one of the only ways to afford stable housing in areas like California that have been hit hard by housing unaffordability and the resulting increase in homelessness. The Fry Scholarship and GI Bill housing stipend has also been increased.
One more positive change in the bill is the increase of the VA coverage of home nursing care from 65% to 100% coverage. This is huge for ailing or aging veterans who want to live out their last days or convalesce in the comfort of their own homes rather than at a nursing home facility. Before the VA fully covered home caregivers, veterans may have had to choose between keeping their homes and getting the care that they needed.
There are also initiatives in place to identify veterans who are at an increased risk of homelessness and connect them with necessary services to prevent them from becoming homeless. Resources funded by this bill include mental health services, job training, and substance abuse treatment programs.
The US Government Has a Duty to Care for Its Veterans
Many veterans are vulnerable to several of the risk factors for homelessness. Either they were beforehand and those factors influenced their choice to join the military, or their time in service contributed to their overall risk, or some combination of both. There is a lot of overlap between both worlds in terms of substance abuse issues, disabilities, and insufficiently managed mental health issues. Add in the difficulties that veterans can have with reintegrating into civilian society after a time away, and you can start to see why veteran homelessness is so common.
Homeless veterans are a unique group because it seems like one of the only subsets of the population that both sides of the political aisle can agree are deserving. Through this narrow window, many people who might question the judgment and life choices of other homeless people can see that homeless veterans largely have their fates determined for them by forces bigger than themselves. They can see the reasons behind the choices they make, and beyond that, they can see their humanity.
It’s clear to everyone that the United States government must take responsibility for the people it has used for its own ends for so long, only to spit them out, damaged, once they’re no longer up to the task. If we can lean into that window, we may be able to capture that compassion, nurture it, and help it grow.
What if the government had a duty to care for all citizens? What if we had a duty to care for each other? What if we were all just people doing our best to scratch out some safety and happiness even when it feels like all of the forces in the universe are converging to stop us from doing exactly that? What might it look like if we could see each other for what we are rather than only seeing what we expect to see? That’s the world I want to see.
