Our Debt to Them
It has become acceptable in the United States for our veterans, those most damaged by the physical or mental traumas of war, to be abandoned and forgotten on our nation’s streets.Our streets, where they have been beaten, robbed, or even killed. Yet if this happened behind enemy lines we would not stand for it. Then why do we allow it now?
These are soldiers who put it all on the line to fight for our freedoms, for OUR homes. Now we stand up to fight for theirs.
We have created a very simple mechanism to deliver your support directly to the chronically homeless veterans on the streets of our nation. Because of our simple design and coordination with the HUD VASH program, we have a 100% success rate accomplishing this mission.
If you feel moved right now to help them directly you can donate here:
Current Status
UPDATE: As of 6/7/13 the pilot program has now housed 133 people in 87 veteran families in 21 cities in three states. 33 of these are children. --- We have our target. HUD announced the allocations for 8,635 vouchers nationwide. We will begin raising funds nationally on 7/15.
---Our pilot program demonstrated immediate success easily raising $100,000 and was replicated in three states. $50,000 of this raised by Dusty Hill and ZZ Top for Houston veterans.
---VM is beginning to attract national notice from several groups and funders.
--- We are in the final stages of conversation with a national organization which will be staging several concerts nationwide with half of the proceeds benefiting VM.
---The first of these will be the "Ramble" staged by the Adam Ezra Group in Boston on August 24th for the newly formed New England VM chapter.
---To date Veterans Matter is managed by four part time volunteers with all office overhead donated in-kind by the founder.
Operations
Our pilot program has proven the concept, easily raising $100,000, been replicated in three states, and has housed homeless veteran families in 21 cities. The Houston team, initiated and led by Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, raised $50,000 in 10 phone calls to match Houston’s available VASH vouchers.Our ONLY mission is to get the veteran housed as fast as possible. With the current system it takes weeks, even months for veterans to acquire deposits. So we kept refining our processes and developed a cloud based online system. Now as soon as they find housing the VASH manager enters the referral online and we can usually approve and notify the case manager, veteran, and landlord within minutes, then mailing the check to the landlord the same day.
Because we are backed by John, Dusty, and others, the landlords often allow our email notice of approval to serve as the actual deposit allowing the veteran or veteran family immediate access to the housingf.
In our pilot program we reduced the time to housing from 137 to 71 days. This means they are stuck on the streets two months less.
Outreach
Veterans Matter often partners with the regional VA for outreach to camps, soup kitchens and abandoned buildings to find the "hidden homeless" veterans and plug them into the new HUD VASH program. In the Flint Michigan outreach we met Sgt. Kevin and "his men" in a, um, "re-appropriated" house they had turned into a home.
Sgt Kevin did so to "house my men who had been kicked out of the Flint camp and had nowhere to go." We take care of our own.
The Founding
On 2/6/12 the VA's Shawn Dowling told VM founder Ken Leslie a $750 deposit was preventing four local chronically homeless veterans from being housed, with 31 more vouchers in the pipeline. Ken figured "Simple problem, simple solution: Find money and pay the deposit to the landlord" pushing them over the threshold into that ready housing.The next morning Ken called Barb Petee, an executive at Promedica Health System to get the $26,250 pilot funding from the Toledo Community Foundation's Promedica Advocacy Fund. With veterans waiting he also asked her waive the normal 3 month foundation due diligence process.
A formerly homeless addict/alcoholic, Ken has a two decade track record of giving back creating and funding several new programs in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio.
With Ken funding the start up operations, 7 DAYS later, on Valentine's Day at 5.36 pm, Barb called with full pilot funding. Three days later, the first waiting veteran family was housed. 11 days from idea to funding to execution. That's Black Ops Speed. Since then the growth of Veterans Matter has been well documented in the local press.