In honor of Veterans Day this year, Deborah Burkart, founder of the LISC-NEF veterans housing initiative Bring Them HOMES, relects on the extraordinary strides that have been made toward creating safe, affordable, supportive homes for veterans—progress in spite of the pressures and set-backs brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current moment, she writes, demands we intensify our efforts to provide healing homes for the men and women who have sacrificed so much on behalf of this nation.
Photo at top © Gus Powell
In a year that has been overshadowed by the upheaval and devastation of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important to stop and take stock of the good: as we approach Veteran’s Day, we are thinking about the extraordinary men and women who have given so much of themselves to our country, and about the generosity of the people and organizations that have worked tirelessly to help put an end to veteran homelessness, and ensure that every veteran has the safe and healthy home they deserve.
For nearly a decade, LISC and National Equity Fund have helped develop supportive housing for veterans, many of whom have experienced trauma and are grappling with mental and other health issues including substance abuse that have created the conditions that leave them homeless. In 2020, our collaboration with Citi, a stalwart sponsor of our veterans’ housing initiative Bring Them HOMES, reached the landmark investment of $4 million.
This critical funding from Citi works on many levels: it has helped us provide predevelopment grants to seed new housing communities and fill financing gaps as well as technical assistance to help structure innovative development plans and connect projects to high-quality services providers. It has also enabled a ramped-up policy effort to help state and federal authorities leverage their assets to better serve veterans. Together with support from Northrop Grumman and MetLife Foundation, we have succeeded in creating nearly 5,000 units of supportive, affordable housing in 21 states and the District of Columbia, all with services that cater to veterans. In the past year alone, we have invested in 15 housing developments and six other projects that will result in more than 700 units for ex-military personnel.
The capital is particularly crucial in helping us work outside the box and forge new ways of doing deals and developing housing. This goes especially for our collaborations with VA hospitals, the American Legion, and other veterans’ organizations that may be short on cash but are rich in land and historic facilities that lend themselves to being converted to supportive housing.
Last fall, for example, we helped launch the renovation of six buildings that are part of the historic Soldiers Home in Milwaukee, a beautiful 19th-century campus that also houses a VA hospital. The complex was established in 1867, part of legislation that Abraham Lincoln signed just weeks before his assassination, to create a national system of homes for disabled veterans. The Milwaukee site is one of the three remaining original Soldiers Homes in the country, and was meant to help ease the transition for Civil War soldiers back to civilian life.
When it opens in 2021, the Soldiers Home, which is being developed by the Alexander Company and Milwaukee’s housing authority, will serve a very similar function to the one Lincoln envisioned. The project will create 101 apartments for veterans, along with community space, home health care services, and counseling. (To hear more from me and our partners about this historic project, check out The Road Home podcast from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.) Alongside developments like Perry Point Veterans Village in Maryland, and Victory Gardens on the campus of Newington, Connecticut’s VA hospital, projects like the Soldiers Home are truly win-win projects: underused land and structures are converted to productive use, and in the bargain we are able to provide infrastructure improvements to the campuses and create housing adjacent to a wealth of VA medical campus services. They all happen to be beautiful, meditative environments, too. Every veteran resident I have spoken to has remarked on the deep value of living in a peaceful environment with the camaraderie of other veterans.
There is, of course, so much more to be done. At the outset of 2020, some 37,000 vets were still experiencing homelessness. Another 1.4 million are at risk of becoming homeless because of poverty and unstable housing conditions. And we don’t yet know what the economic fallout of the pandemic will ultimately mean for veterans who have been living on low-incomes and are at risk of eviction. We do know that veterans who are unhoused are at extremely vulnerable in the pandemic: those who have ended up on the street have a higher incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure and other life-threatening co-morbidities.
Nevertheless, we are gratified and grateful to see innovative veterans housing projects continue to unfold, and new ideas percolate. The softening of the hospitality market, for instance, has led us to begin conversations about purchasing quality hotels in some markets and converting them to supportive units for veterans. Such deals would enable the franchise holder to relinquish an untenable business and free up good housing stock that can be used for affordable units. We are also excited to invest in new initiatives to build quality tiny homes in various markets that will provide urgently-needed homes for veterans in the pandemic era.
Moreover, my experience seeing the transformations of underused land and facilities—and the commitment of others working on behalf of veterans—gives me hope that we are helping to realize Lincoln’s vision, creating refuge for all veterans who need it. Thanks to Citi and our other supporters, we will keep fighting this good fight, to honor the veterans who have given so much to America, and who need a place to live, and to heal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Burkart, National Vice President, Supportive Housing, NEF
Since 1992, Deborah Burkart has underwritten supportive housing and, starting in 1998, affordable assisted living investments for NEF's funds. Deborah has assisted in the acquisition and/or underwriting of over $1 billion in tax credit equity for special needs projects during her over 25-year tenure at NEF, including more than 4,000 units of housing for homeless veterans in 21 states and the District of Columbia. In 2012, she founded LISC-NEF’s Bring Them HOMES homeless veterans initiative and has raised $5 million in predevelopment grant funding for supportive housing projects for veterans. She is a nationally recognized expert on supportive housing financing and policy.