In 2011, by a city count, there were 222 chronically homeless veterans here, a vulnerable, hard-to-reach population of mostly middle-age men, virtually all battling some type of physical or mental ailment along with substance abuse. Federal and city officials acknowledged that was not an exact number, but it is widely regarded as the best measure of the veteran population.
Last month, the last 41 members of that group were placed in temporary housing. Shane Groen, a director at the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness, one of the city’s partners in the program, said the goal was to have them all in permanent housing by Feb. 14.
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“We do think we can get to the point where we can say there are no more homeless veterans in the country,” Laura Zeilinger, deputy director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness, said in an interview. “And if we do this for veterans, it’s something that as a nation, if we set our mind to, we can achieve for other populations as well.”
Arizona has more homeless veterans than most other states — roughly one in five homeless adults, according to statistics from the state’s Department of Veterans’ Services. In an interview, Greg Stanton, the mayor of Phoenix and a longtime proponent of increasing investment and partnerships on homeless outreach, characterized the recent achievement as “important because we’re helping people in need, but also important because it helps our economy.”
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Across the country, the strategy is centered on an approach called Housing First, through which a home is not treated as a reward for good behavior. As Ms. Zeilinger put it, it is instead “the platform of stability that lets previously homeless people work on the other issues they’re facing,” like mental illness and addiction, which are particularly common among the chronically homeless. The term is defined as those who have continuously lived on the streets for a year or have done so at least four times over three years.
Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona - NYTimes.com
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