The Department of New Jersey and partners Foundation for Sustainable Veteran Housing want to share their ‘playbook’ with other departments.
With an estimated 33,000-plus homeless veterans nationwide, the issue continues to be a priority for The American Legion.
The Department of New Jersey and their colleagues in the community hope their efforts in that state can serve as a blueprint to help eventually end veteran homelessness completely.
The Foundation for Sustainable Veteran Housing (FSVH) is spearheading a plan to convert aging American Legion posts around New Jersey to provide housing to homeless and at-risk veterans while also serving as community centers and giving the Legion upgraded facilities.
“The mission statement says to put affordable housing for homeless, at-risk and aging veterans on American Legion-owned properties. And at the same time we’re rebuilding and giving them brand new buildings,” said past department vice commander Jim Scanlon, an FSVH board member who’s also a consultant for the National Commission on Homelessness and chairman of the department’s Affordable Housing Committee for At-Risk, Homeless and Aging Veterans.
The project began at Post 107 in Hoboken and continues to expand across the state.
“This is bigger than just what we were doing in Hoboken,” said FSVH founder and board president Joe Mindak. “So that’s why I started the Foundation; we’ve got to pull all these efforts together somehow.”
FSVH’s partnerships with the Legion, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Monarch Housing Associates, Soldier On, and Redcom Design & Construction have led to projects in Westfield, Emerson, Montclair, South Amboy and Gloucester City.
But they don’t want to stick with just New Jersey.
“How do we help everyone else around the country?” Mindak said.
While FSVH intends to build enough units to house the 575 or so homeless veterans in New Jersey — the current work should create 250-300 housing units with more to come — they want to share what they’ve learned with other American Legion departments to help end veteran homelessness everywhere.
“We obviously don’t have the capabilities or capacity or bandwidth to go out to (for example) Iowa, work on a project out there. But what we’re trying to do is build a playbook. It’s almost like a franchise,” Mindak said.
“We’re more than happy to do some consulting; this is how we do it, this is how we got vouchers, this is how you do fundraising, these are the places you go for funds. And we can connect them with our partners.”
The projects in New Jersey have included “wraparound” services — help with resume writing, job training, PTSD therapy, rides to the doctor’s office, for example — that would be unique to other parts of the country.
But FSVH and the Department of New Jersey are confident they’ve come up with an adaptable blueprint to share with the rest of the country.
For more information: https://www.fsvh.org/.
- Homeless Veterans