After living his car, homeless, for a little over a year, Daniel Kallunki moved into a one-bedroom apartment near Troutdale last November, less than a month after receiving a Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) voucher.
He’s able to better manage his multiple sclerosis, a diagnosis he received in March 2014. The illness forced him to quit his job, which caused him to lose his apartment and then become homeless.
Kallunki, 39, is also now able to see his 11-year old daughter regularly – she stays with him every Wednesday and ever other weekend. Kallunki lives near her school, and he has a new job, working as a peer mentor at Transition Projects, Inc.
Living in an apartment again, he said, has been “a night and day” difference.
“I’m able to live a life,” he continued. “That’s priceless.”
Kallunki is a Navy veteran and one of more than 1,300 homeless veterans who have moved into permanent housing since 2015, including 461 veterans who were chronically homeless (homeless for a year or more).
In 2015, the city of Portland, Multnomah County and Home Forward – the Portland area’s housing authority—made housing homeless veterans a priority, joining a nation-wide Mayor’s Challenge to End Homelessness, spurred on by President Obama. One year later, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness certified that Multnomah County had virtually eliminated veteran homelessness—making the effort perhaps the most successful focused attempt to end homelessness in the Portland area’s history.
There are veterans who continue to become homeless. But those numbers are small and a new Veteran-By-Name list, which was created in 2015 and identifies all veterans who are homeless in the Portland area allows the system to quickly identify and provide housing to homeless veterans within 90 days.
But those accomplishments may now hang in the balance. Not funding veteran’s programs is largely considered political suicide. But the deepest cuts to the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department since the Ronald Reagan’s administration have been proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. The Interagency Council on Homelessness is defunded in Trump’s budget proposal, and grant funding from the Veterans Affairs administration, which played a significant role in ending veteran’s homelessness in the Portland area, expires this summer.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration released its proposed 2018 budget. Among many drastic cuts to federal programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and other anti-poverty programs—while increasing defense spending – the budget proposes to cut $7.4 billion dollars, or 15 percent, from the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department’s budget.
The cuts include eliminating the Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnership funds, which provide funding for urban renewal projects and which Portland has relied heavily upon for its homeless service programs.
Rental assistance programs would be cut by five percent compared to this year’s funding levels. Those programs, which include Section 8 and VASH vouchers, cap the amount of rent low-income people pay at 30 percent of their income.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated in its analysis of the proposed budget, released on May 23, that approximately 250,000 households could lose rental assistance, “putting them at immediate risk of eviction and homelessness.”
The proposed budget would not fund additional VASH vouchers, which combine Section 8 rent assistance and supportive services available at VA medical centers, are reserved specifically for low-income and homeless veterans. The vouchers are considered the most important federal tool that exists to end veteran’s homelessness.
Congress will not approve a federal budget until October, so it is still unknown how, exactly, federal housing programs in the Portland area will be affected.
Michael Buonocore, the executive director of Home Forward, is approaching the situation with pragmatic optimism.
“There is always a significance distance between the president’s budget and what gets passed,” he said. “Everything we’re hearing has reinforced (that) in this particular case—the blueprint is not grounded in a political reality that was reflected in Congress.”
Like many, Bobby Weinstock, a housing consultant with Northwest Pilot Project, a social service agency for elderly low-income people, thinks not funding veteran’s services is politically untenable.
“Any call for a cut in veteran's funding would be dead in the water,” Weinstock said. “Veterans have more political support on both sides of the aisle in Congress… than other homeless populations because there is the desire among both Democratic and Republican members of Congress to try to do something for the people who serve the country in that way.”
More money, not less, is needed to renew existing housing vouchers, according to a January 2017 report released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state budget policies.
The Center estimates that approximately $18.86 billion dollars is needed to renew existing housing vouchers, due to inflation and rising rents. The report found without additional funding for housing vouchers, “most housing agencies will be forced to cut the number of low-income households they assist.”
According to the report, 33,808 housing vouchers were used in Oregon in 2016. More than 400 vouchers were cut when the Senate passed a spending bill earlier this year. An additional 1,657 vouchers could be cut under a continuing resolution currently being considered to fund the federal government for the rest of 2017.
The impact of rental increases on vouchers is playing itself out in the Portland area—already, Home Forward has had to use some of its reserve funding to pay for its’ existing vouchers. “We're in a difficult situation in that we need increased funding to keep pace with the market,” Buonocore said. “Reduced funding is (an even worse) situation.”
Home Forward also decided in April to not draw names from the waiting list for Section 8 vouchers at all this year, meaning that nearly 3,000 Portland-area families hoping to receive a voucher must wait at least another calendar year.
If funding for VASH and Section 8 vouchers are cut, Buonocore estimates that Home Forward could continue paying for its’ existing vouchers for another year. After that, he said, “we would have to start planning for a following year and work with the community about how we absorb those cuts.”
Weinstock worries more for other populations of low-income people who rely upon HUD funding, such as low-income seniors, people with disabilities and people who are poor simply because they have minimum wage jobs.
“If the federal government reduces the amount of money flowing into Section 8 program, that will basically increase homelessness,” he said.
And even if funding for VASH vouchers remain flat, it’s possible that homelessness among veterans would increase once again.
Much of the success of Portland’s effort to end veteran homelessness is due to a massive influx of federal funding starting in 2015.
Transition Projects, Inc., one of Portland’s largest homeless service agencies, received two grants from the VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program in 2015, totaling $7.3 million dollars. The SSVF program pays for supportive services such as rental assistance, outreach, case management, and helping veterans apply for benefits through the VA and the Social Security Administration.
The number of VASH vouchers also dramatically increased from 70 vouchers in 2009 to 591 vouchers that are currently being used. In addition, Home Forward dedicates 50 vouchers to veterans ineligible for VASH vouchers. Veterans are also given priority when affordable housing units operated by Home Forward became available.
The city and county spent an additional $1.3 million dollars on homeless veterans services each year in 2016 and 2017.
Altogether, the funding paid for a wide range of services that made rapidly housing homeless veterans possible. The money paid for hiring 29 people who work as case managers, screeners, attorneys, job and benefits specialists who worked directly with veterans.
$1.6 million was used to provide rental assistance, which subsidizes the amount of rent a person pays until their income rises, to 450 households. A 25-bed shelter for homeless veterans opened last year, and a 50-unit studio apartment building that opened in July 2016 is also master-leased.
The funds also created a Landlord Recruitment & Retention Team, which works with landlords who prioritize renting to veterans. Among other things, the team negotiates lowering rents, eliminating screening criteria and reducing security deposits.
A pool of flexible funding was also created to help people pay for security deposits, application fees, past due utility bills from prior housing, or transportation to meet with landlords or property managers, if necessary--which all can be barriers to quickly moving someone into housing.
Both VA grants expire this summer. Alex Glover, TPI’s housing services director, said that TPI has already reapplied for both of them, saying that “we are well-position to be refunded.”
According to data kept by TPI, there are fewer veterans becoming homeless than those moving into permanent housing. Glover said TPI and the other agencies involved in veteran’s homelessness would begin shifting the funding’s focus to preventing veterans from becoming homeless.
“There's not too much being done to prevent homelessness at this point,” Glover said. “We still see a constant need for re-housing of homeless veterans and prevention services for homeless veterans.”
Glover said that TPI and other services have already started planning what to do in the case the funding is not renewed, including identifying more households most vulnerable to reentering homelessness, and cutting staff positions.
He said that no one would immediately become homeless if funding were cut. “As far as what’s been communicated from the VA, if the projects aren’t renewed, there will be some scaling down over time,” Glover said. “(And) there are other programs…we could leverage.”
It would be hard to sustain over time, however. “If this funding is not renewed, veterans are going to spend a lot more time on the streets or in shelters before finding housing,” Glover said.
Kallunki doubts that he would have been able to move into his apartment so quickly without the robust amount of services available to him.
“I had a lot of worries about running into road blocks,” he said, including turning him down for housing because of his credit and rental history, which Kallunki describes as “solid, but it (isn’t) perfect.”
When he applied for his apartment, he saw that the application required that his wages be two and a half times more than the rent, among other things. Kallunki, who is now on Social Security disability, receives $1,070 a month in addition to a veteran’s pension.
“The criteria was overwhelming me,” he said. He thought that he wouldn’t get into the apartment.
His case manager met with the landlord in person, which smoothed the way for Kallunki’s application. “For people who are on disability or Social Security, it’s darn near impossible to get housing now without some kind of voucher or family help or help from the state,” he said.
When describing the administration’s budget priorities, various members of the Trump administration have said that local government must assume responsibility for some programs currently funded by the federal government.
According to a blueprint for the administration’s 2018 budget released earlier this year, publicly-subsidized housing is no different. “State and local governments are better positioned to serve their communities based on local needs and priorities,” the budget document says.
Deborah Kafoury, the chair of Multnomah County, said it is impossible for the county to completely absorb the cuts currently proposed. “People are in housing now because of the federal funds. The federal funding was crucial.”
“We don't have the funds to not only continue the work that we're already doing and bail out the federal government from it’s obligation,” she continued. “I don't know why the federal government would want to cut something that's been so successful.”
Buonocore agreed. “It is of a scale that is bigger than local governments can solve by themselves” – something that could be said of any anti-poverty or low-income program.