May 29, 2008 in City

Nonprofit teams with VA to offer shelter, skills training

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Photos by BRIAN PLONKA photo

Dale Briese is the off-site housing director for the Volunteers of America, which helped create housing for homeless vets: “The key issue is getting them safe.”
(Full-size photo)

The welcome mat has been placed outside a north Spokane split-level home, inviting five homeless veterans to step inside and head down a path to more stable lives.

This home on North Cook Street has welcomed its first two residents in a program that combines the social service connections of Volunteers of America and the resources of the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. A second grant application could yield another transitional home for five more homeless veterans on North Regal Street.

The homes are part of a cluster of new permanent and transitional housing for homeless veterans in the Inland Northwest funded by the VA on a per-veteran, per-day basis, said John Davis, Spokane’s coordinator of the VA’s Healthcare for Homeless Veterans program.

Twenty beds were added through St. Vincent de Paul in Coeur d’Alene, 13 have been provided by Spokane County, and now these five are available in Spokane. In the span of six months, Davis said, “We’re going from almost nothing to pretty cool. We just went out and beat the streets and found good partners and worked our tails off to get this done,” he said.

Under the grant program that created the home on North Cook, Veterans Affairs provides 65 percent of the renovation costs for the homes and asks agencies to make up the difference. When the home is ready for occupancy, the VA pays a daily rate per resident to help provide services.

In the North Cook home, that’s $33.01 per veteran for services to address struggles such as drug and alcohol addictions, mental illness, physical disabilities, and a lack of connection to the community. Residents are referred to the home by Veterans Affairs.

A full-time, on-site caseworker employed by Volunteers of America will help the veterans abide by strict rules, including a requirement that they acquire the life skills necessary to live in permanent housing. They will be required to open savings accounts and to help with cooking, cleaning and chores around the house. Caseworkers will help connect them with health care, food stamps and counseling.

Donations are being solicited to provide furnishings once the residents are ready to move into their own homes, but they can remain in the program for as long as two years, said Dale Briese, VOA’s off-site housing program director. The first two men to move in are Vietnam War veterans in their 50s and 60s.

“We have links to other permanent housing for these guys, stable programs,” Briese said. “The key issue is getting them safe.”

The program is also part of a new push by Volunteers of America to provide more housing to homeless and low-income people, said Marilee Roloff, VOA’s executive director.

“Our plan is to increase housing capacity and also housing options. It’s especially important now because we’ve lost so much affordable housing,” Roloff said. More than 200 low-income residents in the Spokane area have been displaced in the past year after affordable-housing buildings closed because of redevelopment or financial problems.

The new beds satisfy just a fraction of the region’s need, according to two recent studies. A 2005 study about homelessness in the Spokane area found that of the 6,067 homeless families in Spokane County, 611 were headed by veterans. Some 90 percent of those veterans were men. Another survey found that the Spokane VA region, which stretches from Wenatchee to Pullman to northwestern Montana, has about 3,600 homeless veterans.

Roloff said that although the Cook house’s first two residents fought in Vietnam, she wouldn’t be surprised if soon the housing programs are serving Iraq war veterans.

“You give it a while, and these are going to be kids,” she said. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there’s a lot of growth in this area. We all recognize we didn’t do the right thing after Vietnam. We’ve got to do the right thing now.”

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