Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The number of homeless veterans in Nevada has decreased by 41% since last year, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced last week.
The VA, joined by other agencies, counted 644 veterans experiencing homelessness during one night in January, down from 1,094 in its 2023 count.
“No veteran should experience homelessness in this country they swore to defend,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement. The “VA and the entire Biden-Harris administration are making real progress in the fight to end veteran homelessness.”
Nicholas Barr, a professor at UNLV studying veteran homelessness, cautioned against reading too much into the raw data. The one-day count “is not super accurate,” he said.
The VA’s findings nonetheless are encouraging and part of a larger trend of decreasing homelessness for U.S. veterans, Barr said.
Since 2010, the number of veterans living without shelter nationwide has dropped by over 50%, according to the VA.
Veterans are “one of the rare cohorts for whom permanent housing options have been adequately funded over the long term,” Barr said. “There is a well-managed institution that is overseeing this effort, and that’s (the) VA.”
Barr praised a joint program between the VA and Department of Housing and Urban Development that provides housing vouchers to veterans who are homeless or are at risk of losing their homes. About 90,000 veterans use the vouchers.
Shalimar Cabrera, executive director of Las Vegas’ U.S. Vets, said her organization provided 300 beds for homeless veterans.
“After the pandemic, it took a little bit of time to fill back up and for veterans to come back into services,” Cabrera said. “We’re running at 100% or high 90% occupancy regularly now, month after month.”
The cost of housing is one of the main reasons some veterans are struggling, Cabrera said.
Veterans with the most severe disabilities make an average of $57,800 a year, over half of which comes from VA disability compensation, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
If a family is dependent on that veteran’s salary, it isn’t enough to comfortably live in Las Vegas, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator.
“The median income you need to be making in order to even just afford the most affordable apartment out there — that will never match, especially for a veteran, for instance, who isn’t working and is now on a new fixed income,” Cabrera said.
U.S. Vets has built eight housing developments across the American West since 2018. The organization helped transform the former Safari Motel on East Fremont Street into the BETterment Community, a short-term housing complex that opened in 2023.
Cabrera said her organization was looking for additional funding for additional affordable housing units.
“When people are in housing, they’re better equipped to deal with any other issues they might be facing — whether that’s employment, physical health problems, mental health, substance use, etc.,” Barr said. “All that stuff gets better when people are housed.”
On Nov. 5, the Clark County Commission passed a ban on sleeping or setting up camp on public right-of-ways like sidewalks.
The cities of Las Vegas and Henderson already have similar camping bans.
While outlawing sleeping in certain spaces might minimize the number of phone calls legislative offices get about people gathered near homes and businesses, they don’t address reducing homelessness, Barr said.
“I don’t think anyone believes that a camping ban is a strategy to reduce homelessness,” Barr said. “The people who defend the bans or are responsible for drafting or implementing them, not even those people think it’s a strategy for reducing homelessness.”
[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard