Dear Community Partner,
November 11th marked the first year anniversary of the All the Way Home campaign to end veteran homelessness…we have much to celebrate!
All The Way Home is a joint effort by the City of San Jose, County of Santa Clara, the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara and Destination: Home to house all 700 of the projected homeless veterans in the county, about 10 percent of the total number of homeless individuals. The campaign sought out landlords looking to house homeless veterans and churches willing to pay rental subsides. Here are the results of the first year of our campaign:
510 homeless veterans have been permanently housed since last Veterans Day and 264 of those have been through Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers.Critical to our community’s success has been the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and local nonprofit veteran programs at Goodwill Silicon Valley, HomeFirst, Sunnyvale Community Services and Veteran’s Resource Center. Please visit our partners link to learn more about what they do to house homeless veterans.Landlord incentives were a critical piece of our success. In March, the County Board of Supervisors approved allocating $500,000 in landlord incentives to provide gratitude payments and security deposits. So far $410,000 has been used to house 148 veterans and their families. Additionally, the San Jose City Council set aside $5M in June to launch a rehabilitation program to landlords, called Rebuilding for Heroes.Said Supervisor Cortese, “Santa Clara County is committed to ending this crisis one landlord at a time. No man or woman who has served our country should be homeless in our streets.”“Today, we can proudly celebrate the significant progress we have made to house homeless veterans. However, we cannot take our foot off the gas or forget the heroes in our community who still need help,” said Mayor Sam Liccardo. “By working together, we will end veterans homelessness in our county by 2018.”In the next year, we will concentrate our efforts on housing more homeless veterans and increasing our housing placement rate in addition to connecting homeless veterans with employment opportunities.Join us in bringing a veteran All The Way Home!
- We still need help with raising funds for furniture assistance and welcome home kits for newly housed veterans. 100% of the funds raised go to help veterans. Make a donation.
- Join us this Friday at the San Jose Opera Veterans Chorus one-time-only performance. Proceeds benefit All the Way Home.
Thank you for your support in bringing our veterans all the way home!
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Maya Esparza
Director, All the Way Home campaign
Destination: Home
Destination: Home