The document outlines a strategic approach to ending veteran homelessness by emphasizing the importance of coordinated efforts among various stakeholders, including service providers, local government, and the faith community. It highlights the necessity of creating and maintaining a comprehensive master list of homeless veterans to facilitate communication and targeted support. Regular meetings and actionable goals are essential for tracking progress and making necessary system-level changes.

1. 1
Ending Veteran
Homelessness
Cynthia Nagendra

2. • No Veteran in your community is ever
forced to live on the street.
• When homelessness does occur for a
Veteran, it is rare and brief.
• Homeless Veterans are quickly
housed and few return to
homelessness.
• If a Veteran is about to become
homeless, prevention is available.

3. Where do we start?

4.  Identify and coordinate with all the
necessary partners and
stakeholders to begin meeting A
LOT (every week)
 Create a Master List of Names
Some Key Strategies to End
Veteran Homelessness

5. • One program or agency cannot end veteran homelessness alone
• To oversee this effort, the primary planning/oversight group should
involve people who can make decisions for their agencies from:
• homeless service providers network, the VA and VA-funded
providers (SSVF, VASH, GPD), and other major funding partners
• Think of non-traditional partners to engage for other activities
(especially to provide housing units):
• Mayor’s Office
• Landlords/Property management companies
• Faith community
• Businesses
5
Coordinating with Partners

6. • Yes, meet every week
• Make the meetings action-oriented and make all partners accountable
• Use the master list to determine veterans’ housing needs,
barriers, next steps
• Identify changes that need to happen at the agency and system-
level and make those changes
• Establish common goals and targets: how many veterans are we
going to house each week/month/this year?
• Be willing to change how you do things at your program
6
Coordinating with Partners

7. • Set deadlines, benchmarks, and
targets and track all partners’
progress towards shared goals
7
Coordinating with Partners

8. 8
Master List
Create a Master List of Names
of all Veterans experiencing
homelessness living on the streets
and in emergency shelter

9. 9
Why You Need A Master List
• Ensures that all providers and partners are on the
same page and have a clear sense of the people,
(not just numbers), that need housing
• Facilitates communication between the local VA and
Continuum of Care (CoC) and aids in the
identification of veterans that may be ineligible for VA
services
• Enables all partners, including the CoC and VA, to
quickly find and house all homeless veterans as soon
as a housing opportunity becomes available

10. 10
How to Make a Master List
Identify all homeless veterans
in your community
• 2014 and 2015 Point In Time Count
• HMIS
• Coordinated Entry System

11. 11
How to Make a Master List
• Contact every shelter and transitional
housing program in your community that
may have veterans
• Work with local VA healthcare programs
• Work with your local homeless outreach
team to find unsheltered veterans

12. How to Make a Master List
Begin to create a shareable master list
and start “working it” immediately.
• Start with however many names of veterans you
have now and continue to build the list as you find
more homeless veterans
• Share this list at your veteran-focused regular
meetings with partners
• All partners should start “working the list” together

13. How to Make a Master List
Manage and update your list as
regularly as possible.
• Your starting list may have names that are no
longer in need of services so scrub the list of
people who should no longer be on it
• Remove those already housed
• Remove those who can’t be contacted (after
many attempts)

14. How to Make a Master List
Manage and update your list as
regularly as possible.
• Most importantly, find every veteran and keep building
the list
• Add names every day of those newly found in emergency
shelter
• Work with the outreach team to find and engage all
veterans and add them
• If no outreach team, get volunteers to go outreach (like
PIT Count volunteers)