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WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2016 — The Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs departments and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness today announced that the number of veterans experiencing homelessness in the United States has been cut nearly in half since 2010.
White House officials said data shows a 17 percent decrease in veteran homelessness between January 2015 and January 2016 -- quadruple the previous year’s annual decline -- and a 47 percent decrease since 2010.
Through HUD’s annual Point-in-Time estimate of America’s homeless population, communities across the country reported that fewer than 40,000 veterans were experiencing homelessness on a given night in January 2016, officials said. The January 2016 estimate found slightly more than 13,000 unsheltered homeless veterans living on their streets, a 56 percent decrease since 2010.
Veteran Homelessness Drops Nearly 50 Percent Since 2010 > U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE > Article
This is great news. However, there is more work to do. We need to find a place for all our veterans who want one.
I'm pretty sure HUD rental assistance programs amount to welfare.
So? I can't think of a better use of tax dollars than taking care of our veterans.
Why are so many homeless?
So they basically did it with welfare. Sigh.
Why do you hate our veterans?
Beyond that, what we really need is a long-term program of bare-bones housing coupled with public works jobs for those homeless eligible to work, veteran or not. We know that we have trillions of dollars of infrastructure repair and upgrade that MUST be done over the coming decade or two.
Why not kill two birds with one stone, errr, wad of cash?
Unfortunately repairing infrastructure requires skill. You cant just throw shovels to homeless people.
That depends entirely on what portion of the infrastructure one is repairing. There are plenty of supporting and low/no-skill roles that people can play without skill, especially when starting out (ie, New Deal style work programs), and people can pick up skills along the way.
I'm not talking about asking some random homeless guy to figure out how to fix an aging suspension bridge.
I guess where I am going with this is I have a friend that is an engineer. He works with a small construction company, he said they are under staffed because there just isn't enough people with the skills to do the jobs. He cant hire the homeless so to think the government can is not accurate. There are regulations and certifications for almost any job in infrastructure repair. I suppose it could be done but it would require a massive training and certification initiative.
Just because someone is homeless doesn't mean they don't have skills. Besides, vets have already shown they are able to be trained.
They're prior employees, so unless we are talking about injuries that happened on the job or something along those lines there is no reason for the government to treat them special.
Didn't say that, but do they have the skills necessary to do the job, most likely not. Yes they can be trained but it will be expensive.
I guess where I am going with this is I have a friend that is an engineer. He works with a small construction company, he said they are under staffed because there just isn't enough people with the skills to do the jobs. He cant hire the homeless so to think the government can is not accurate. There are regulations and certifications for almost any job in infrastructure repair. I suppose it could be done but it would require a massive training and certification initiative.
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