The VA Built the Blueprint to End Homelessness. Will Biden Use It?

The pandemic is pushing people out on the streets. Biden can help if he looks to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

The Future of Veteran Housing, West Los Angeles

To hear Donald Trump tell it, no president did more than him to house veterans.

This message was driven home through a number of political performances, most recently the 2020 State of the Union address. Seated next to Ivanka Trump at this event was Tony Rankins, a formerly homeless veteran. In his remarks, Trump said Rankins had moved out of his car and into housing thanks to a construction job secured through one of the administration’s so-called “Economic Opportunity Zones.”

“He is now a top tradesman,” Trump bragged, “drug-free, reunited with his family.” There was a problem, however, with Trump’s rosy story. It wasn’t true.

Far earlier in Trump’s tenure — November 2017, to be exact — former Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary David Shulkin and then-Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Chief Ben Carson appeared at a Washington D.C. shelter to tout Trump's commitment to ending veteran homelessness.

Yet just four days later, Shulkin privately told staff that he was killing the $460 million HUD-VA anti-homelessness program he’d just publicly bragged about. This decision came shortly after federal data indicated a 1.5 percent increase in veteran homelessness — the first bump up since 2010. (Soon after, Shulkin reversed course under pressure from veterans’ advocates.)

Perhaps the biggest opponent to ending homelessness under Trump was Robert Marbut, a self-described professor of terrorism studies and homelessness consultant from the south. In December 2019, Trump appointed Marbut to run the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the federal cog that coordinates prevention efforts across 19 agencies, including the VA.

Prior to this gig, Marbut collected fat paychecks from municipalities across the country in exchange for his cold-blooded and cruel approach to battling the problem. Marbut proudly rejects the prevailing housing theory — "Housing First” — which posits that providing shelter is the best first step to stabilize someone’s life and help heal many of the common comorbidities tied up in this problem.

Marbut’s belief is that housing should only be offered after an individual has proven their worth. "I believe in Housing Fourth,” he once said. Marbut often speaks disparagingly about the homeless as creatures of vice. He’s long claimed without evidence, for instance, that 93 percent of money made through panhandling is used for drugs, alcohol, or sex. 

As such, he’s pioneered a “velvet hammer” theory, recently described by Bloomberg News as "a policing-heavy model that emphasizes banning panhandling, centralizing services for the homeless in massive facilities far from urban centers, and providing food and shelter only as a reward for good behavior.” His theory is realized at Haven for Hope, a vast complex outside San Antonio, Texas that features a concrete lot where up to 900 people sleep per night, exposed to the elements. (After one passes a drug test and shows “good behavior,” they are moved indoors.)

Following Marbut’s appointment to the council, 75 lawmakers wrote a letter to Trump describing his practices as “cruel, punitive, ineffectual, and expensive.” (Left out of this letter was a deep irony: Marbut, a self-declared arbiter of good and evil, reportedly had in affair while his wife was pregnant.)

Marbut scrambled federal efforts to house people, and blocked charities from giving food to those in need. Trump took other steps that perfectly aligned with his vicious record as a builder and landlord. He removed fair housing protections for vulnerable populations and moved to allow shelters to discriminate against transgender people. The former president also criminalized homelessness through executive order and consistently proposed budgets cuts for affordable housing and community development programs.

Yet despite his incompetence and cruelty, the overall rate of veteran homelessness decreased on his watch. That’s largely thanks to a bipartisan political alliance in Congress eager to drive this number down to zero.

Many in this coalition surely believe that ending veteran homelessness is the right thing to do. Others may be more cynical, knowing such work will make for compelling campaign ads. (I’m looking at you Kelly Loeffler.) No matter their motivation, the sheer amount of potent policymaking in this area over the last decade is extraordinary.

Much of this progress could be lost, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recently released report, the Economic Roundtable predicted a 49 percent (!!!!!) increase in homelessness across the United States by 2023. “Last year brought real struggle, and it’s far from over” said Kathryn Monet, CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “Remember that it can take quite a long time to become homeless. There’s numerous steps — job loss, foreclosure, eviction. The true numbers wont be borne out until long after this public health crisis is over.”

Monet expressed alarm to me over many big picture economic indicators and also zoomed in on smaller areas of concerns. One is the dire state of the hospitality industry, a historically supportive employer of veterans and others looking to get back on their feet.

While Monet is worried about the future, she’s not without hope. She noted that as landlords face the uncertainty of rent checks and an inability to evict, many have become more open to the payments guaranteed through federal housing vouchers. She further made clear that there remains strong bipartisan support to address veteran homelessness, and a road map on how to get it done. Evidence of this comes in the recently ratified Homeless Veterans Coronavirus Response Act, which allocated more money for food, shelter, clothing, and other necessities for the unhoused. The law also cut red tape and streamlined programs in an effort to more quickly find shelter for those who’ve served. Trump’s VA, to its credit, also took a number of swift actions as the pandemic hit, from suspending debt payments to expanding housing assistance.

The future for the untold numbers of civilians who are (or will soon be) without homes is far less clear. The dirty truth is that many of the lawmakers who champion muscular anti-homelessness programs for veterans hold little interest in similar civilian initiatives. This is foolish, and cruel.

The VA is now the most adept wing of government at housing people. If President Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress muster the will (and the money), Washington could not only end veteran homelessness, but secure a future where housing is guaranteed for all.

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The Obama-Biden administration did better than any other at ameliorating veteran homelessness. One of the most innovative policies that stemmed from their eight years in power came out of Los Angeles, the American city with the largest number of unhoused residents.

The plan was simple but not easily accomplished. That’s because it involved creating thousands of housing units on the sprawling VA campus in Brentwood, one of the most posh and pleasantly aromatic zip codes in the country.

The radical idea of building quality public housing in the same neighborhood as Elon Musk and Steven Spielberg came from a man with his own sterling pedigree: Bobby Shriver, a nephew of John F. Kennedy.

Shriver, who now runs a veterans’ non-profit, first became involved in LA politics around 2004. That’s when a spat with the city over the height of his hedges pushed him to run for the Santa Monica city council. He won.

Once in office, Shriver turned to more substantive issues, including the growing homeless population. After a friend mentioned that there were massive unused facilities on the 338-acre campus of the VA campus, Shriver got the idea to turn these buildings into apartments. He set up a visit.

“They hadn’t been well maintained, there was a bunch of dirt, asbestos and other bullshit,” Shriver recently recalled to me. “I thought, ‘I will be able to fix this up pretty quickly.’ Of course, I was wrong.”

By the time Shriver visited the VA, the people of Brentwood had intruded onto the campus through a series of illegal land leases that supported their hoity toity hobbies. There was a dog park, a parrot sanctuary, and the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles.

Shriver strived to remake this campus into a place that supported veterans, a goal that ruffled the feathers of wealthy NIMBY residents. Also skeptical were some members of California’s political class. Shriver recalled one memorable exchange with U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein in which she asked, “Are you sure people will want to live there?”

“Senator, it’s in Brentwood,” Shriver replied. “If you make it look like Brentwood, people will want to live there.” (I couldn’t find a statement on the project from Feinstein’s former colleague, Vice President Kamala Harris, who long lived in Brentwood.)

The proposed design for the housing complex featured basic necessities and bonus amenities — like a coffee shop, a restaurant, and artistic spaces. The message from this design was clear: what we are building is not a house, but a home.

As he pushed his plan forward, Shrived faced intransigence from the VA. In 2011, he and a class of homeless veterans sued the department alleging that the campus was built to help veterans, not the elite. Housing, they claimed, aligned perfectly with this mission.

Shriver’s side won in court. But then, somewhat shockingly, Obama appealed the decision. Thankfully, the administration’s tune changed in 2014 with the arrival of VA Secretary Bob McDonald, who became laser focused on housing vets.

Early in his tenure, McDonald met with Shriver and listened to his ideas. McDonald then settled the court case and agreed to an expansive master plan that promised to refurbish the VA campus, build nearly 3,000 housing units, and lease land only to organizations that help veterans. (This latter stipulation meant that, in 2018, dozens of vets worked backstage to support Tom Hanks’ masterful turn as Sir John Falstaff at the Shakespeare Center.)

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Absent the Los Angeles kerfuffle, the Obama-Biden administration was incredibly proactive in pushing down the rate of veteran homelessness. In under eight years, they essentially halved this population. This was accomplished through bipartisan work in Congress and also by establishing and executing a comprehensive national plan to end homelessness for all called “Opening Doors.”

This was a “Housing First” initiative that involved deep collaboration across federal, state, and local entities. As part of this work, Congress provided nearly 70,000 housing vouchers lost in 2013 due to sequestration. The White House, meanwhile, established a 24/7 hotline for veterans seeking housing and services. The government also launched a predictive data program to identify and intervene with those at risk of losing their homes.

This work was complemented by the then-First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden who, as part of their Joining Forces Initiative, received pledges from more than 600 mayors, governors, and county executives to end veteran homelessness. Before the pandemic hit, an impressive 80 or so municipalities had met the government’s defintion of eradicating veteran homelessness, which essentially means the requisite infrastructure was in place to house those in need. A few states had also essentially erased the problem, like Connecticut and Virginia.

As this progress slips away, there’s reasons to be hopeful that President Biden will redouble Obama-era efforts. Biden’s commitment to the cause was demonstrated in 2018, when he offered some cash and a conversation to a homeless Air Force veteran named Rashid. After Biden heard the man was having trouble securing a VA housing voucher, he wrote down the name and number of someone who could help. (In a separate show of support, VA Secretary designate Denis McDonough spent a day last December serving dinner and distributing gifts to veterans moving into housing.)

Biden’s VA transition team was unofficially overseen by McDonald, a true champion of ending veterans homelessness. (One member on the team was Heidi Marston, a McDonald acolyte who worked in concert with Shriver in her previous leadership role at the LA VA.)

During the campaign, Biden expressed explicit support for Shriver’s LA experiment, and suggested it could be replicated across the country. Biden also pledged to build new housing for veterans with substance use disorders and to focus on the needs of women and members of the LGBTQ community who struggle with shelter.

In addition to these pledged initiatives, Biden must also open up housing vouchers — and all VA benefits, really — to veterans with other than honorable discharges. He should also secure much-needed money to hire more VA case managers, who work tirelessly to get veterans back on their feet. He should also fire Marbut.

As First Lady Biden relaunches the Joining Forces Initiative, she’d do well to reestablish lost connections with state and municipal actors who can help house people. Finally, the White House should listen to Shriver, and add housing as a core mission of the VA.

Due to the vaunted role veterans enjoy in American society, it will be nearly impossible to address the general homeless population until all who’ve served have a stable place to live. Biden must ensure this happens, and then push for a similarly agressive and well-funded mission to end the homelessness problem altogether. Such work would touch on a number pressing needs, as Monet recently pointed out to me.

“There are so many paths into homelessness, as many paths in as there are out,” she said. “There’s economic reasons, those fleeing domestic violence, those dealing with untreated mental illness. We need more social services, better healthcare, more training. But most of all, we need more affordable housing.”