Veteran Information

Have you ever wondered how much money goes toward Veteran homelessness — and what that money is used for?

The first part of that question is relatively easy to answer. For  Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, VA’s budget for homeless programs is  approximately $3.2 billion. That is a significant amount of money  dedicated to reducing, and ultimately ending, Veteran homelessness.

The second part will take a bit more detail to explain. You may not  realize it, but VA offers a wide array of services to address the full  range of housing needs that Veterans may have. Let’s break this down to  better understand what the budget pays for.

Our FY 2025 homeless programs budget covers 6 categories of interventions and services:

1. Prevention Services
2. Transitional Housing
3. Permanent Housing Supportive Services
4. Treatment
5. Employment and Job Training for Homeless Veterans
6. Administrative Costs

Prevention services aim to keep Veterans from becoming homeless and  often serve as the entrance into the full range of health care and  benefits offered by VA. This includes:

• $659 million for the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program, which awards grants to nonprofit organizations and  consumer cooperatives to provide both homeless prevention and rapid  rehousing (i.e., permanent housing) services. That’s right — SSVF doesn’t just provide homelessness prevention, but also permanent housing services.
• $104 million for Veterans Justice Programs, which provide outreach to Veterans involved with the criminal legal system.
• $48 million for Legal Services for Veterans (LSV), which awards grants to legal aid organizations to help address legal barriers to housing stability.
• $13 million for the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans, which offers 24/7 support to homeless and at-risk Veterans who need to connect with their nearest VA.

This category totals approximately $825 million, or nearly 26% of the total budget.

Transitional housing services provide homeless Veterans with warm,  safe places to stay temporarily while they search for permanent housing.  This includes:

• $320 million for Grant and Per Diem (GPD), which awards grants to nonprofit organizations to provide  transitional housing and supportive case management. This includes $277  million for grants and $43 million for direct service staff and  operating costs.
• $283 million for Health Care for Homeless Veterans (HCHV), which awards contracts to organizations to provide emergency  shelter and supportive services. HCHV also offers outreach services to  help find homeless Veterans and connect them to VA, and funds  coordinated entry specialist roles, which help coordinate community  responses to Veteran homelessness.

This category totals approximately $603 million, or nearly 19% of the total budget.

Permanent Housing Supportive Services provide Veterans with access to  affordable housing and intensive case management to ensure that  Veterans engage with all of the resources needed to remain stably  housed. This includes:

• $1.1 billion for the Housing and Urban Development-VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program.

This category totals approximately $1.1 billion, or nearly 34% of the total budget.

Treatment represents critical health care services that help ensure housing stability. This includes:

• $259 million for Domiciliary Care for Homeless Veterans, which provides residential rehabilitative treatment specifically for homeless Veterans.
• $21 million for Homeless Patient Aligned Care Teams, which provide primary care tailored to the unique barriers that homeless Veterans face.
• $89 million for care for homeless Veterans with chronic mental health conditions.

This category totals approximately $369 million, or over 11% of the total budget.

Employment and job training helps Veterans obtain meaningful  employment, which helps their overall financial stability. This  includes:

• $232 million for Compensated Work Therapy (CWT) and CWT/Transitional Residence, which help Veterans work through the clinical aspects of job preparedness.
• $22 million for Homeless Veteran Community Employment Services, which directly help Veterans find employment.

This category totals approximately $254 million, or nearly 8% of the total budget.

Administrative costs support the work to reduce and end Veteran homelessness. This includes:

• $10 million for the National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans, which leads academic research activities to improve our scientific understanding of Veteran homelessness.
• $6 million for our National Homeless Registry, which helps us  collect and analyze data on Veterans accessing VA homeless programs.
• $11 million associated with operating the Homeless Programs Office.

This category totals $21 million for research and evaluation  services, and approximately $6 million towards operational  administrative costs, which combined accounts for less than 1% of the  total budget.

When it comes to what this money ultimately pays for, our FY 2025 budget can be broken down into 4 categories:

1. Direct Services Staff and Operational Costs for Local Patient Care
2. Grants and Contracts for Direct Services
3. National Administrative Staff and Operating Costs
4. Miscellaneous

This category represents the more than 6,800 social workers, peer  specialists, nurses, program support assistants, and other health  professionals who directly work with homeless Veterans. It also includes  funding for all associated patient care-related operating costs that VA  healthcare systems nationwide need to support homeless and at-risk  Veterans.

This category totals approximately $2 billion, or more than 61% of the total budget.

This category represents nearly 850 grants awarded to community  providers — including nonprofit organizations, faith-based  organizations, and consumer cooperatives — as part of the SSVF, GPD, and  LSV programs. These funds are used to provide homeless prevention,  rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and case management to homeless  Veterans. It also represents nearly 320 contracts issued through the  HCHV Contracted Residential Services programs to provide emergency  shelter and supportive services.

This category totals approximately $1.1 billion, or nearly 34% of the total budget.

This category is the operating budget for the VA Homeless Programs Office,  which serves as the backbone of the federal response to Veteran  homelessness. This office develops policy, allocates resources, and  provides guidance on implementing the budget. It also includes the  funding for research, education, and evaluation of our programs and  services.

This category totals approximately $41 million, or just over 1% of the total budget.

This final category includes miscellaneous costs associated with  transitional housing and care for homeless Veterans with chronic mental  health conditions.

This category totals approximately $114 million, or nearly 4% of the total budget.

Our FY 2025 homeless programs budget will finance the services  provided to Veterans and build upon the housing and supportive services  delivered to Veterans in FY 2024, including permanently housing more  than 43,000 homeless Veterans.

The Department of Defense (DoD) released the DoD Annual Report on  Suicide (ARSM) in the Military: Calendar Year (CY) 2023 today. The  report provides annual data on suicide counts and rates among Service  members and their dependents and outlines current and ongoing suicide  prevention efforts across the Department.

Every death by suicide is a tragedy. That's why on May 7, 2022,  Secretary Lloyd J. Austin established the Suicide Prevention Response  and Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC) to conduct a review of  clinical and non-clinical suicide prevention and response programs which  provided over 100 recommendations. As a result of the SPRIRC  recommendations, in September 2023, Secretary Austin announced a suicide  prevention campaign plan across five lines of effort: fostering a  supportive environment, improving the delivery of mental health care,  addressing stigma and other barriers to care, revising suicide  prevention training, and promoting a culture of lethal means safety with  83 enabling actions.

In the first year since Secretary Austin's establishment of the  suicide prevention campaign plan, the Department has completed 20 SPRIRC  recommendations and we have an aggressive path forward with  unprecedented investments for FY25 to combat current trends. The  Department will continue to build on these efforts to demonstrate our  unwavering commitment to the wellness, health, and morale of our Force,  and honor the    

memory of those lost to suicide.

About the data and findings in the Annual Report on Suicide in the Military:

• The Department assesses suicide rates - the number of suicide  deaths per 100,000 people per year - to better understand changes or  trends in suicidal behavior. Suicide rates fluctuate from year to year.  
  • In this context, 'not statistically significant' means that  experts who analyze the data cannot be certain this is a true change  and, instead, changes from one year to the next could be due to natural  variations in data. "Statistically significant" means that there is high  confidence we are observing a true change.
• In CY 2023, 523 Service members died by suicide, which is more than  the previous year (493). The Total Force rate – which is the focus of  the ASRM report – of suicide deaths per 100,000 Service members was 9  percent higher than in 2022.
• Active Component suicide rates have gradually increased since 2011.  The 2023 Active Component rate is higher (12 percent) than 2022. This  12 percent increase was not statistically significant.
• Active Component suicide rates were similar to the U.S. population  in most years between 2011-2023 after accounting for age and sex  differences.
• Most Service members who died by suicide were young, enlisted men.  

Suicide  is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders  (including depression, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorders,  schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical  disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome) and substance use disorders  (including alcohol use disorder and the use of and withdrawal from  benzodiazepines) are risk... Wikipedia.org 

• 📞 Help is just a phone call away: Call or Text or Chat the 988 Suicide &  Crisis Lifeline at 988 any time of day. The Lifeline provides free and  confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis  resources for you or your loved ones.
• Specialty: Psychiatry, Clinical psychology, Clinical social work
• Usual onset: 15–30 and 70+ years old
• Risk factors: Depression, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder
• Prevention: Limiting access to methods of suicide, treating mental disorders and substance misuse, careful media reporting about suicide, improving social and economic conditions
• Deaths: 793,000 / 1.5% of deaths (2016) and rising each year.

• Call or Text or Chat the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 988. Hours are available 24/7 and the cost is free. 
• OR Text  HOME to 741741 to reach a trained Crisis Counselor through Crisis Text  Line, a global not-for-profit organization. Free, 24/7, confidential.
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• Please help us help our Veterans.
• Veteran Suicide is still extremely high in 2024 heading into 2025.