VA Homeless Programs
Message from Monica Diaz, Executive Director, VHA Homeless Programs Office
January 2025
Now that we’re through the holiday season, I never want to wrap anything ever again—but there is one last thing I need to put a bow on.
We have already announced some major accomplishments from fiscal year (FY) 2024, but our recently completed State of Veteran Homelessness 2024 infographic brings them all together. You could call it our FY 2024 Wrapped.
Last year, we hit some all-time highs—like the 88,000 formerly homeless Veterans under lease through the Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program and the 150,000 Veterans and family members served through Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF).
We also permanently housed nearly 84,000 Veterans and their family members or prevented them from becoming homeless, the highest number since FY 2019. Check out the infographic for some other high notes from last fiscal year.
As 2024 closed, HUD was also wrapping up its final Point-in-Time (PIT) Count numbers for the year, revealing a 11.7% reduction in Veteran homelessness since 2023. It’s an impressive drop—even more so because it comes at a time when overall homelessness numbers in America rose by 18%.
We’re lucky to have the funding and congressional support we need to continue chipping away at the number of Veterans experiencing homelessness. But our progress is not simply a matter of throwing money at the problem.
We have been laying the groundwork for these efforts for years. In 2022, we began to set goals for ourselves in our campaign to end Veteran homelessness. For those first two years, we aimed to house 38,000 Veterans each year—a number that we exceeded each time. In 2024, we aimed even higher, setting a goal of 41,000 Veterans. And it’s a number we beat again, housing nearly 48,000.
Having these moonshot goals pushed us to change how we approach things and to begin working together as One Team to better support Veterans facing homelessness.
That change in approach—the groundwork that we laid in 2022 and 2023—set us up to achieve significant success in 2024. This success demonstrates that we have the right solutions that could be used as a blueprint for ending overall homelessness in America.
But there are some unexpected challenges coming in 2025. The wildfires currently ravaging the Los Angeles area are straining resources that serve the city’s homeless population and will make securing affordable housing more difficult in the future.
To address the immediate needs of Veterans, we’re working with the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System to place Veterans experiencing homelessness, including those who are newly displaced, in area hotels as needed.
The medium and long-term impacts on the L.A. rental market are still uncertain. So far, wildfires have destroyed an estimated 12,000 homes in the Los Angeles area, leading to a surge in demand for rental properties in an already constrained housing market. Rental prices are up significantly more than average, with some reports indicating increases of up to 50% in violation of California law.
With a substantial depletion of housing stock and many displaced residents, securing affordable housing will be increasingly challenging for everyone, including homeless and at-risk Veterans. Once the fires have been extinguished, we’ll use all the tools at our disposal, including flexibilities in the HUD-VASH voucher program, to ensure that Veterans are able to obtain the housing that they need.
From top to bottom, we are truly committed to connecting with the population we serve and ensuring they know that we’re here to help no matter what. More than 25% of those who work with homeless Veterans at VA are Veterans themselves, and they understand firsthand the struggles of transitioning from military service to a civilian life.
This year, we will be highlighting these Veteran staffers in our monthly employee spotlights, starting with Antonio Dion Harris, a peer services coordinator with the National Veterans Justice Program, who speaks to the benefits of Veterans serving Veterans: “When a Veteran meets another Veteran, there’s an instant bond. There’s an instant connection… We can walk alongside them on this journey so they’re not alone.”
