Assembly Standing Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs

Good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here today. We're calling this hearing of the Assembly Committee of Military and Veteran Affairs to order. I first wanted to thank the leadership of Cal Vets for the Housing Community Development Department for their participation today and want to welcome you to the 40th Assembly District. I think it's really important that we bring Sacramento to our communities and the work that is happening in Sacramento to benefit our communities.

And so really happy to be hosting this committee hearing here to discuss really important issues to me, to our community around veteran housing, homelessness, and services. I also want to thank the LAHSA, LA Homelessness Services Authority, which is the leading organization at the LA Continuum of Care, for their participation and welcome you.

And also want to thank our non-governmental organizations who are here, US Vets and Home for Families and Affirmed Housing was supposed to be here, unfortunately had an illness and not able to be here today. But I'm looking forward to hearing from you about your work and experience serving California veterans. And finally, I want to thank my colleague. Well, she couldn't make it either, but I was going to thank her. She tried. She tried.

Unfortunately, my colleagues were not able to be here today, but I felt like it was important for us to continue and have this hearing and hear, and we'll be having people watch online and be able to view the hearing from offices in Sacramento or home. And so I'm glad that we can share that with folks. And as far as the best available data that we have showing homelessness among veterans has dropped considerably since the end of the financial crisis in 2008.

There are plausible explanations for why that might be the case, not the least of which is the money resources at the federal and state government level that has been spent trying to keep veterans specifically from having to live on the streets. However, we have to be wary of concluding too quickly that our efforts are bearing fruit.

Veteran homelessness may be on the decline, but homelessness, in general, is rising every year, and one line going down is little comfort to a veteran who is just a week away from experiencing homelessness, which is a veteran I've actually been working with, we've all been working with to make sure they don't fall into homelessness when their housing voucher expires tomorrow.

More important to me is taking what improvement we think we see and understanding it with an eye towards multiplying that success, exporting that to other populations where the problem still seems to be intractable. Today I want to hear from you about what works and what doesn't, what we have learned from the new programs we've created and implemented in the last 10 years or so. And what are the points of weakness?

What are the fussy complications and the breakdowns in the system, the baffling exceptions or contradictory eligibility criteria we apply that undermine our own efforts? Or if it's working, why and how can we not only do more of that but, if necessary, do it for other people as well? The format today will be two panels. First, a state and local government panel, and the second, a service provider panel and housing builder panel.

After each panel, we'll have time for questions and answer between panelists in the dais, and at the end, we'll have a longer time that we will invite the public to comment. And during public comment, I'll ask for each speaker to keep the remarks to under two minutes, and we'll conclude this hearing when public comment ends. So for the first panel, I want to introduce from Cal Vet, we have John Spangler, Deputy Secretary of Legislation, and Roberto Herrera, Deputy Secretary of Services.

And we got comfy chairs up here for you. You can sit in your special spot. And for HCD, Deputy Director of Legislation, Pedro Galvao, and Deputy Director of State Financial Assistance, Jennifer Seeger. And we're going to get a couple more seats because we have so many smart people with so much good information. We need more space. And for LAHSA, the Chief Program Officer, Abbylin Miller, and Jen Escobosa for Veteran's System Coordinator. So we welcome you. And while we're making sure everybody has a seat at the table like we always like to do if the representatives from Cal Vet would like to start first.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk a little bit today about what we do here at Cal Vet and in collaboration with our community and other state agencies. Your initial comments regarding the decline in veteran homelessness. I think in 2009, there was the point in time count. The numbers from HUD came in around for homeless veterans in the state, around 17,900 ish. And since then, it's declined by around 40% in the state.

With it now, since about 2017, hovering around, it's varied a little bit between 10,500 to 11,600, but that's about where it's held. Nationally, the number of veterans, people experiencing homelessness, there's around 580,000, with veterans making up about 30% of that number. And that holds true here in the State of California as well, with 30%, roughly, of California's homeless being veteran. So California has 49% of the nation's people experiencing homelessness and about 55% of the nation's veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

With the latest report from HUD showing 3400 homeless veterans in the LA CoC, that's CoC 600 with 2700 of those being unsheltered. And I bring up these numbers particularly because it shows that however you scale it generally from nationally down to the state, down the county, the ratio is about stay the same. Currently, total inventory in California. Currently statewide 3189 veteran beds and emergency shelters, safe haven, or transitional housing. And total inventory of veteran permanent supportive housing is around 24,000.

So there's a little over, I think it's 44 Continuums of Care throughout the state. The Continuums of Care are awarded funding from the US Housing and Urban Development, HUD, and these serve as access points for individuals experiencing homelessness. They conduct vulnerability assessments and make determinations on appropriate housing and services through coordinated entry systems. And then of course below that or working with that, you have the housing authorities. I know we have folks here from LAHSA and the next panel who can speak more regarding their role. Thank you.

Thank you. And next from HCD.

Yes. Good morning, Madam Chair. Thank you for inviting us to be here today. My name is Jennifer Seeger. I'm the deputy director for the Division of State Financial Assistance at the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Just to give you a little background. So in 2013, AB 639 restructured the Veterans Bond Act of 2008, authorizing 600 million in existing bond authority to fund new multifamily housing for veterans. With the approval of Proposition 41 by the California voters on June 3, 2014, the Department of Housing and Community Development, in collaboration with our colleagues at the California Housing Finance Agency and Cal Vet, created the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention Program, commonly referred to as VHHP or VHHP. In February 2015, HCD issued its first notice of funding availability for the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention Program.

The goals of the program were to make at least 75 million annually available for the development and preservation of affordable housing and related facilities, including supportive services for veterans and their families, to maintain housing stability. Also to house veterans at a variety of income levels, with a focus of veterans experiencing chronic homelessness, ensuring that 50% of the funds would serve extremely low-income veterans and 60% of the housing units would reach extremely low housing households and be permanent supportive housing.

And then the final goal was to prioritize housing to be developed in the areas with especially high concentrations of California's most vulnerable veterans while preserving funding for other areas across the state. Since 2015, HCD has subsequently issued a total of eight notices of funding availability, with the most recent notice of funding availability being released in May of this year.

The most recent funding availability notice announced the availability of the final 63 million in VHHP funding, and this also included a general fund augmentation of 50 million that was made to the program in the 22-23 state budget. For that notice of funding availability, HCD has received a total of 12 applications requesting approximately 110,000,000 in this funding round. That's an oversubscription rate of approximately 170%, which means that by January 2024, HCD will be announcing its final VHHP program awards.

Although this is the end of funding under the VHHP program as it exists today, HCD continues to operate a variety of other programs, both for permanent supportive housing and for affordable housing that is available to a wide variety of populations, including veterans, including the Multifamily Housing Program, the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program, and also our Home Key Program. I've prepared a one page document, which I believe you have a copy of, that outlays some of the accomplishments, the key accomplishments of the program to date.

This document highlights the most recent round of funding, which was round seven, which was awarded in January 2023, and also provides data with the cumulative outcomes to date. So in this document, you can see that to date, we have assisted 3314 veterans or VHHP program assisted units in 97 projects across the state. 38 of these projects have been located in Los Angeles County and another 11 projects are located in the Inland Orange County region, which includes the counties of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino.

In terms of funds allocated, 40% of the funds totaling 22.7 million has been awarded to projects in Los Angeles County. 13% 227, Excuse Me, 13%, or 72.5 million in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. So between the four county area, that's 53% of the funds that we've awarded to date that are funding projects in the four county area. So cumulatively, 66% of the total units created, or 2182 units, will be affordable to extremely low-income households.

1791 units are dedicated permanent supportive housing units for veterans that are chronically homeless or homeless with a disability, and 393 units are family units with two or more bedrooms. So with this summary, it gives a nice outlook in terms of what's been awarded. But as you likely know, once HCD makes an award, it can take several years for the units to be built and to be available for eligible tenants.

This is due to HCD funds being just one piece of the funding puzzle necessary to allow projects to begin construction. Most projects also seek tax credits from the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, which is also a highly competitive process. At HCD, we like to talk about the status of projects in three buckets, projects that have been awarded, under construction, and those of which are occupied. For the awards to date of the 3314 units, about 15% of those are in the awarded status.

That means they've received their commitment from HCD. They're securing other funding to be able to move the project into the pipeline and begin construction. 39% of those units have secured all of their necessary entitlements and their funding to be able to put a shovel in the ground, and 46% of the units are completed and providing housing for eligible veteran households.

So once the units are built, HCD continues to monitor the units for both financial and physical health for the term of the 55 year regulatory agreement restricting the units to eligible veteran individuals or households. Currently, the department has 41 projects with just over 1500 units fully completed and renting to eligible veteran tenants. Turnover rates in these units are quite low, with approximately 85% of the tenants having benefited from living in stabilized housing for at least 12 months.

Each of these projects are subject to annual reporting and onsite visits to monitor both the financial and physical health of the properties, as well as ensuring that the units are rented to eligible households and appropriate supportive services are being provided. Happy to answer any questions you might have about the program, and again, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

Thank you so much. And now I'll turn it over to LAHSA.

Can you hear me? Okay. I wasn't sure if the mask would be. How's this? I'm okay. Truly, I'm okay. So I want to introduce myself first and let people know just how long I've been at LAHSA, which is I'm in my sixth week. So I am here with Jen Escobosa, who is truly an expert on LAHSA and veterans.

I did have a long career at the Federal Government working directly with the VA, particularly during the Obama Administration when we were really crunching on ending veteran homelessness, and I'm hoping to bring that same spirit of partnership and relationships and outcomes here. Speaking about veteran homelessness in LA, which is the city and the County of LA, it continues to decline in the nation and California, but LA still has the largest number of unhoused veterans in the state.

According to the 2022 point-in-time count, Los Angeles City and County Continuum of Care had 3456 unsheltered veterans, despite the fact that over a two-year period from January 2018 to December 2019, the system collectively housed 4730 veterans who were unhoused. A year-long rand study of a group of military veterans that were experiencing homelessness in LA found that few were able to obtain permanent housing over the course of the period of the study, even though they lived near the region's major VA medical center.

As of November 1, there are 1514 active veterans on the veteran by name list. For those of you who are not familiar with what a by name list is, these are highly partnered and collaborative lists that we come up with so that we know who is experiencing homelessness and also particularly by population. So the idea is if we can know, then we can house. So that's the point of the by name list. Through the one team initiative, which is fairly new, correct, LAHSA has led capacity-building conversations with veteran service providers, also with the VA medical center and housing authorities at the table is leading these capacity building conversations to scale up the cadence of these by name list meetings to once a week so that providers are actively and regularly discussing veteran household needs and barriers, collaboratively problem-solving, making sure that those households are connected to appropriate services, and ensuring consistent follow-up.

This is a best practice that we use across homeless populations, and it's a way to make sure that people don't fall through the cracks. At the same time, LAHSA has increased the cadence of trainings around the by name list and the practices that go with it to ensure a universal and standardized data collection process, as well as working with the VA to create case conferencing guidelines to maximize the resources. LAHSA and VA are working together right now to develop a triage tool within the Homeless Management Information System, also known as HMIS, which will be accessible by all homeless service providers.

Through the embedded questioning and workflow, it allows all service providers to guide veterans to the appropriate eligible resources and at the same time create a referral to either the Supportive Services for Veteran Families, also known as SSVF, or HUD-VASH, which is the HUD VA Supportive Housing program that is innovative and spurred many other service and housing agency partnership models. Following its introduction, I'll take any questions.

Wonderful. Thank you. So the by name list, can you explain how people get onto this list? How does that work?

My lovely colleague Jen can do that.

Thank you. So currently, let's even say up until October 1, the way that a person gets onto the by name list is by simply any provider entering them into our HMIS system and indicating that they are a veteran. Through that, we have a monthly reconciliation process that pulls any newly added veterans from the HMIS system into what we call our community queue, and then there's a little bit of a vetting process to ensure that they are indeed veterans, that they are.

Sorry, I'm going to take it back. A little bit just to further explain why we are verifying veteran status. We live in a large county with very multicultural population, and so it is not uncommon for outreach workers to encounter an individual who reports being a veteran. And they may have served in Mexico, for example, or Canada, and so they are veterans, just not US veterans. And so there needs to be a little bit of vetting.

It's not an extensive process in which we verify that they are indeed US military veterans, that they are indeed experiencing homelessness instead of coming into the system seeking prevention services. And at that point, they are prioritized for our case, conferencing meetings to ensure that they are connected to services appropriately.

Okay, wonderful. And can you talk a little bit about if there's an estimate of how many veteran applicants for supportive housing in LA are earning more than 30% AMI? I've heard through talking to some service providers and some folks that sometimes the AMI, when it comes to veterans, can be a little bit of a challenge. Have you seen that?

We have. With the veteran population, there is the unique opportunity for them to be connected to service connection benefits, which when we have an individual who is 100% service connected, meaning that they do have the higher level needs around mental health and physical and medical services, that 100% rating gives them an income that does put them over the 30% AMI.

And is there any conversation about, I don't know, do you set AMI requirements or is that set somewhere else? And is there thinking about flexibility when it comes to veterans around the AMI restrictions? And anyone on the panel can answer this because I know it's broadly a concern that comes up.

So there was a bill this year in the state Legislature that was passed and signed by the governor. It's AB 1386, and it is specific to our program, our veterans housing program. As I mentioned, a lot of these units are still under construction and will still be leasing up in the next couple of years. We have seen some experiences of individual project sponsors having difficulty finding the 30% income right.

And that's a statutory requirement of our program, that 50% of the funds have to serve that population. So what the bill does is it provides a little bit of flexibility where a sponsor can provide a good faith effort to find households or individuals that meet that 30% guideline. But if they are unable to, then we do allow flexibility to kind of bump that unit up to 50%, and under some certain circumstances, up to even 60%.

Now, we do ask that our housing sponsors work with the local Continuum of Care in ensuring that they're trying to find those appropriate households. We also, under some circumstances, have also suggested that they reach out to Cal Vet and our partners there. And in some instances, we have been able to get the 30% households into the units. But there are some situations where it's just not an option, as folks are trying to lease up at a pretty steady space, right? Because we don't want these units to remain vacant, right? We all know that we have households that are experiencing homelessness, and we want them in those units. So this bill will provide that flexibility moving forward.

And do you, refresh my memory, when does that go into effect, or is it immediate?

January 1.

January. Okay, great.

So we'll be updating our program guidelines to incorporate that flexibility here in the near term.

You know, one of the developer who is not able to be here today is opening a permanent supportive housing development in Chatsworth, which is something I was involved in supporting and now have been actively engaged in trying to help find veterans for that housing because they had another location where it actually took them a year to lease up and fill the veteran spots. And this one is over 50% has to be veterans. It's taken my wonderful chief consultant, Christian, has gotten engaged.

I know we've engaged your agencies as well, and I know they've reached out to LAHSA, and we've been shaking the trees at service providers and kind of everywhere to make sure that we're finding veterans. And it's great to see that veteran homelessness is going down, but we still know that there's thousands of veterans experiencing homelessness and a need out there.

So, you know, when I think they put a request out to LAHSA and they got back three applications, and it seems like in a county like Los Angeles, there might be more than three applications that would come in from a request like that. And I'm trying to figure out kind of where the challenges or disconnects or how we improve this system of finding folks who need housing because we know they're out there.

I mean, I've just been at veteran fairs telling different agencies and giving them flyers for this housing to try to tell people about it. And everyone I talk to is like oh, this is great. We have a list of people, but how do we kind of better create lines of communication and referrals when there are situations like this? Because it feels like to me, we should fill these spots up. I mean, they're ready to open up maybe next month, hopefully, or by January at least. So how do we kind of figure out an improved system there?

For the specific question, I'm going to have Jen respond, but I would like to say every one of these buildings and all of these programs, everything has very specific eligibility requirements attached to it. So even when I say veteran, that means different things depending on the program. If we're talking about HUD-VASH, if we're talking about SSVF, if we're talking about another program, it is a very complex system that we work within and that is set up by statutes, by regulations, by policy.

There's some that we can remove. But what we found, at least at the federal level, is the way to work on this stuff is get together in a room, get your takedown targets, and get it done as a group, moving with operational urgency. I think that's how we move faster than one year, which I understand that frustration, but I will leave it to Jen to talk about specifically that referral process.

Yeah. And if in your answers, you can also include, because I understand the restrictions around different requirements for different programs, right? But at the state level, if there are policy recommendations about how to open that up and not have it so prescriptive that it ends up undermining instead of helping, I think that that's helpful to hear.

Well, first of all, I want to share that your experience is not a unique experience. It is something that we often hear back. And as an administrator who is often advertising these units at every one of our, we have eight by nameless case conferencing meetings, eight specifically because we have one per SPA in LA County. We have service planning areas for those of you who may not be familiar with it, just because we're such a large and populous region.

And so at eight meetings a week, we're advertising the units. And like you, I often go into it thinking we're going to have so many applicants. We definitely have the numbers for this. But as Abby mentioned, once we start filtering out the eligibility, we don't end up with the amount that we desire. For example, two weeks ago, we had a new unit, and so we were advertising this, and we're looking for 28 applicants. And it's very exciting that we have these 28 units. And then we start filtering by the eligibility and we ended up with four individuals. That being said, as a community, I can say we're very excited about AB 1386.

Sorry. All these numbers, I get them confused. We're very excited about AB 1386 and the doors that that's going to open up. And hopefully instead of the four applicants to the 28 units we can now open it up and have, the goal would be to have 30 applicants for those units.

I don't know if anyone else wants to chime in.

I'd say when we look at specifically like the Chatworth development, one of the key pieces in that project is the veteran restricted units. From what I recollect are 100% HUD-VASH based. So within VHP, there's a 10% requirement for non VA eligible to be housed within VHHP on the veteran restricted units. So 2021 eligibility requirements for HUD-VASH had shifted to allow for individuals with OTHs or bad paper to be eligible for HUD-VASH. We're at Cal Vet excited to see how Emerson is going to move forward and that Chatsworth project with getting those filled, working with GLA, I think that being able to get procedures in place for how that could operate could be scalable to other healthcare systems across the state.

Thank you. So can you explain the kind of process at LAHSA for someone who's seeking housing or shelter within the coordinated entry system? You talked a little bit about it, but if they call 211, what happens from there on?

I am again, going to set a little context, pass it to Jen. So LAHSA is, I think sometimes people say LAHSA, and they actually mean service provider or another part of the system that isn't necessarily LAHSA. So just to situate it, that LAHSA is the entity that sits, that is jointly authorized by the city and the County of LA to be the system lead. So we do a lot of leading, coordinating, facilitating, convening, but do not actually provide the services. So just wanted to set that context.

Thank you for that. And so again, the question is, what happens when an individual calls, for example, 211, and how are they then connected to services? The system that we have established right now is that 211 is they have the foundation, they know who all of our veteran service providers are by SPA, and so they immediately know to connect those individuals to that service provider.

For example, if a veteran is experiencing homelessness and is looking for shelter, is looking for an SSVF program, and he's out by LAX, the two on one provider is going to know that that would be your US vets. After that, as Abby mentioned, we are the lead agency or coordinating and helping mediate a lot of the services in between providers. So once they're connected to the provider. It is really up to the provider to determine what other services are needed if it is outside of that one specific agency.

Again, we do have the by nameless case conferencing meetings in which we are very happy to announce that we have a lot of new people to the table that weren't traditionally attending these case conferencing. And so we have housing matchers, we have the VA, we have non veteran outreach and service providers. And once at that table, when we're talking about that veteran and we're saying, hey, this person's in interim housing, how do we get them matched through permanent housing?

That's when we're connecting and advertising the PSH vacancies.

And are you? So I co founded an organization working on homelessness in my district in the San Fernando Valley, and I did outreach for over a year every Sunday throughout the valley. So I know a lot of folks experiencing homelessness in my community. Many of them fortunately got into places, or. No, I wouldn't say many. Multiple got into places during COVID with Project room Key, which was great. A lot of them are still in there and haven't been able to find permanent housing.

And so I'm wondering kind of if you have a sense of. It seems like there's a huge bottleneck around interim because there is no permanent or not enough permanent housing to put people into. And I wonder, and this is open to the whole panel. I mean, fortunately, there's been resources, especially going into veteran housing. Is that less of a bottleneck?

Do we notice, is there more of a flow to the pathway of permanent housing if you are a veteran and you do get into interim housing, or is it still a long wait to try to identify and find some permanent housing? You.

Sorry, I was processing. I wanted to make sure I'm providing the most accurate information currently in the veteran system. If my memory serves me correct, we have about 180 vacant PSH units with about 130 applications in the process. And so, again, when it comes to the veteran system in LA, again, we are incredibly blessed that everybody is really willing to be hands on, and there's a lot of communication with providers, especially now through the one team initiative.

It comes down often to veteran choice. Once we determine that a veteran is eligible and we're communicating to that person that there is this vacant unit that you meet eligibility for. Is this something that you're interested in? Do you want to go and view the unit?

We have some pictures. Do you have any questions about it? It often comes down to veteran choice, and so conversations that we're having now with developments or developers as they're connecting with us, talking to us about what the community needs as they bring in new projects, we're asking them to take things into consideration that perhaps were overlooked in the past years. Anytime somebody asks me this specific question, I think back just a little background.

I used to be a service provider myself, and so a few years ago, I always think back to this case. We had a veteran experiencing homelessness, and we found this beautiful unit. And he was absolutely adamant that he wanted to get off the streets as soon as possible, connected him to the unit. We moved him into the unit, and three days later I get a call from him and he says, miss Jen, I don't think this is going to work out.

The nearest bus stop is about a mile and a half away. I have physical ailments. I can't walk a mile and a half away to catch the bus, to go to the grocery store every single. So it's things like that that we are asking developers to consider, because when we talk about veteran choice, I'm always very careful to. I am not one of those individuals who will ever use the word entitled when it comes to a veteran.

Because when it comes to veteran choices, the choices that they're making are choices that I would make for myself and my own housing. If I have a physical disability that I'm going to live with, I'm not going to walk a mile and a half away to a bus stop to get my most basic needs met. And so those are the conversations that we are having with developers.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I appreciate that context because I think that there's a narrative a lot of times, and I don't hear it so much when it comes to veterans, but generally around people experiencing homelessness, that people are service resistant. And I think that hasn't been my experience at all. And we outreach to 500 people every Sunday and the 40 to 50 people that I would outreach to every Sunday.

When we had access or connections to help people get into Project room key, they were like, where? When? Get me in there. And the only people I can remember hesitating were people who were not sure if they could bring their pet, which a lot of people would not take housing if they couldn't bring their pet or their spouse or partner or one. He had big bulky stuff that he made his income off of, and if he left that behind, he wouldn't have any source of income. Right.

So things that people make choices about in housing all the time, whether it's not appropriate for them, I think that if we want to be successful, we have to make sure that we are presenting options that work for people and that actually help them thrive and aren't just sticking people in a cubby hole somewhere out of sight, but not really being successful. So I appreciate that.

So, for HCD, could you talk a little bit about your sense of the demand for the VHIP style funding and how many unawareed applications, for example, are there?

So, quite honestly, historically, the program kind of saw an undersubscription rate kind of. In the interim years, we've been putting out approximately 75 million. With each eligible notice of funding availability, we've typically been able to make awards just really close to that amount. The oversubscription rates have not been great.

I think some of the changes that were made to our multifamily funding programs more generally in the last two years, where we are now putting out a single, what we call a supernofa that combines multiple funding programs in a one application kind of one stop, and the VIP funding has been incorporated into that supernova. We've seen a little bit of an uptake in interest for the veterans programs, and we were oversubscribed last year and also oversubscribed this year.

So I think that trajectory has kind of changed a little bit with some of the rating and ranking criteria and some of the things that we're trying to drive forward as policy objectives ourselves.

I did want to mention kind of in response to your earlier comment about taking folks from kind of the interim housing model to the more permanent housing model, although not specific to veterans, there has been a huge investment in the last two to three years at the state level for additional resources for multifamily rental housing.

And when I talked a bit about those three buckets of awarded under construction and occupied, we have a huge number of projects that are awarded initial HCD funds, whether that be through one funding source or two funding sources that are in that pipeline that are getting ready to break ground. I think sometimes there's a misunderstanding that once the HCD funds come out, it's like you move straightforward and there is that unfortunate kind of time delay.

But there will be in the next two to three years, we're going to see a lot more construction starts from some of these funding sources that have been made available that will expand kind of the permanent housing availability in some of these communities as well.

Okay, wonderful. And I appreciate you mentioning the supernova. I actually had a Bill, AB 519 this year, fortunately signed by the Governor, and we're hoping to expand and streamline even more the state funding for affordable and Low income and homeless housing as well, to make sure that more people take advantage of it and also don't end up in having delays and having to wait until things open up the next year because they missed something, because another deadline was getting in the way.

And matching up just kind of the continuum of all the different state resources that are across various housing agencies at the state level.

Right, for sure, yes. So as an organization, can you talk about what HCD has learned from the Administration of VHIP and supportive housing programs specifically for veterans? What are kind of the lessons learned through this process?

So we're just beginning to see some of the outcome data for our projects. As I mentioned, we've got about, I think, 41 different projects now that have been pushed into operation. We get annual reports on kind of just their tenant outcomes. I did mention the 85% of the households have been able to maintain stable housing for 12 or more months. We see that as a very positive outcome.

We're not seeing the same level of turnover that we would maybe even in our non permanent supportive housing units. Right.

Because we've got those services that are tied to it. We've also seen that, I think it's about 74% of tenants have seen an increase in their income level because they're stably housed. They're able to keep a job as well. And so that's also been a positive income or a positive outcome. We're starting to collect that data now and we'll be publishing kind of more information as we receive it. But so far, I think the outcomes have been very positive.

Great. That's wonderful. And do you know when you say. I think you said 85% are stable for a year or more for permanent supportive housing. Do you know what the standard is? Yeah. For non permanent supportive housing.

I don't. Off the top of my head.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you. And after the final round of funding is awarded, what do you see as the future of VHIP Administration?

So once we award all of the funds, we will be continuing to work with service providers and the development sponsors to move these projects through the pipeline. As I mentioned, we have a 55 year regulatory agreement on these projects. So we're in it for the long haul. Right. We're monitoring those units.

We're monitoring the financial and physical health of the building and the operations and then ensuring that we are getting those eligible veterans into those units and they continue to be a source of housing in the community. So we will continue in that role.

Okay, wonderful. And I know that often women veterans are more likely to be unsheltered. I wonder, Calvette, if you can talk about why this is the case and if there are any ideas on what we can do differently to address this discrepancy.

Yeah, I would, you know, I would. I would say that particularly with women veterans, I would have to defer back to my deputy, my women Veterans deputy Secretary, to get a little bit more color on that. I'd be more than happy to inform the Committee and you, Madam Chair, regarding that.

Anyone else on the panel, maybe some.

Anecdotes that we've seen in the operation of our program? I think one of the things that we've heard is that sometimes you have female veterans that have experienced some sort of trauma or sexual abuse. Right. And so a lot of these housing projects are very male heavy, can I say? Right. And so there is a little bit of kind of fear, uncomfortableness in going into a housing development where there are a lot of single males.

When you're coming from that background of having experienced that kind of trauma, some of the things that I think we've seen our development sponsors do is have areas where they're splitting the project so that you have an area where the male veterans kind of can get together and can socialize in an area of the project that is specific to males and then also an area that is specific to females, we found that that can kind of work. Right.

That's the kind of things that we've heard as we've rolled out the program.

Have you heard anything or seen any data about also women more likely to have children and whether or not that creates barriers to finding family housing available?

Yeah, we do have family units. Most of our units are developed as one bedrooms or SROs, but the family units are kind of rare. But I also hear both sides of the coin on that one. Right. I think for single female parents, yes, with children, that's one thing. But then we also do have some folks that experience difficulty finding eligible veteran families to fill those units. So kind of both things, I guess, are true at the same time.

And back to VSSR. So knowing that this is a pilot program and in early stages, yet the VHIP which dovetails with it is about to issue its last awards. If the VSSR pilot is successful enough, should it be expanded? And how and where do we do.

Know the VSSR program? Really you.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but can you describe and talk a little bit about VSSR too for.

So everyone understands.

Absolutely.

So in FY 22-23 in the budget, there was $20 million to start a pilot specific to looking at how veterans high acuity and aging 55 and over, typically, how can we enhance their supportive services in a permanent supportive setting to make sure that folks stay stably housed? And this 20 million was provided to the Department of Veteran affairs as a grant program. So there were six grantees within the BSSR program.

Seven applied basically from, I think the furthest north is Sonoma, going down to San Diego, scattered in between. Los Angeles County has one grantee as well as Riverside, both US vets. The VSSR program is modeled. It's a staffing model.

So basically, looking at the needs of older veterans and those with high acuity, talking about like increased support with ADLs, service assistance, geriatric, social work, occupational therapy, those kinds of things, and allowing service providers in the permanent supportive setting to apply for funding to Calvet to gain those staff Members to be able to provide those services directly. One of the things with VHHP is the funding on the service provision side is not included.

So with VSSR, it provides an opportunity for some of those folks, because for those folks to bring on more staffing to support those veterans. So currently enrolled, as in VSSR, we're at 200. We're just through quarter one of implementation of the program. I'm more than happy to share the quarterly report which was just released with the Committee and ongoing as the program develops.

I think when we look at programs like Hudvash, which are, when we look at marrying a voucher with supportive services throughout the state as being a model, VSSR allows for a way for veterans who are ineligible for, you know, sites that have issues with getting adequate care from their local VA medical center due to bandwidth issues with case workers at Hudvash and what have you. So it allows for greater flexibility.

So with looking at the future, that's definitely something that we're looking to show with VSSR is particularly for those veterans who are ineligible and in areas of the state to where that could really benefit from increased bandwidth and supportive services.

And so is that kind of how you're measuring success? And I don't know if you have any top line kind of results from the report that's just come out yeah.

So we're being in quarter one. It's still establishing baseline, but looking at habitability, overall mood, identifying issues such as hoarding, again, support with ADLs, and looking at the differences that having additional staff on site make. That's the goal over time. And being able to show that these veterans who present oftentimes more complicated conditions as they age with that support, so they could stay stably housed.

Wonderful. Yeah. We would love to get a copy of that report, share it with Members of the Committee. That would be great. And I just want to thank you all so much for being here today, sharing important information with us, with the community, and we'll let you go and ask the next panel to come on up. So if I can introduce the second panel. As I mentioned, we hope to have a third panelist unfortunately came down with illness and was not able to be here.

So our second panel consists of Steve Peck, who is the President and CEO of US Vets, and Donna Deutschmann, who is the President and CEO of Homes for Families. And whoever sits down gets to go first. So. Ladies first. Ladies first. Okay. We'll give Donna the honor of getting started. Thank you so much for being here. Donna, thank you for.

Yep, there you go. Thank you for inviting me, and thank the Committee for putting this on. I'm Donna Deutchman with Homes for Families, and we build veteran enriched neighborhoods, which are single family homes for very low and low income veterans, which include the homeless, formerly homeless, once they move in. And I want to thank the three people who were up here because we couldn't do that without the partnership of Cal Vet, Cal home, and LhasA, particularly through Catherine Barger.

Thank you. And home ownership. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And Mr. Peck from US Vets.

Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. My name is Steve Peck. I'm the President and CEO of US Vets. I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was there with the Marine Corps, which is the short version of why I'm doing what I'm doing today. I'm also the President of the California Association of Veteran Service Agencies, which is six agencies up and down the state from Eureka to San Diego, providing housing and services to homeless and at risk veterans. We have developed a report which is actually going to be released later, an annual report on the situation for California's veterans. And we focused on a few areas, and these areas, I think, are common to all providers in California. We're focusing on aging veterans. We know that the aging veteran population is increasing, and it is the fastest growing population among the homeless. Aging veterans are vulnerable. They're frail, they're isolated, and it's important that we get them into housing. And we created a project which I'll talk about a little bit later when I talk about the West LA VA. We've been instrumental in initiating the VSSR program. One of our sister agencies, Sorcerer Plowshares, initiated that program, and as been said before, we have two of those grants in Los Angeles and Riverside. And we hope that that three year study will demonstrate the efficacy of providing those additional services to aging veterans, which will keep them in their housing. The concept is to improve their quality of life, making sure that they can stay in that permanent housing and not have to go into one of the veterans homes or board and care. So we hope that that additional staff provided to those veterans will prove that out over the three years. We're also focusing on suicide and mental health. There has been a lot of talk about the number of veterans in military who are committing suicide on a daily basis. And the rate of veteran suicide is higher than the civilian rate, and the rate of suicide among women veterans is even higher than that. So it is critical that we find ways to reach out to those veterans, many of whom are not going to the VA, in particular the women. As was mentioned before, if a woman who has suffered military sexual trauma walks into a waiting room with 30 veterans and 30 male veterans, she's going to be very discomforted. So many of them are not going to the VA. So we have created a Web portal, women vets on point, to reach out to them. It is headquartered at Patriotic Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, where our other homeless prevention programs are. But it reaches out. There's a chat room, there's a self assessment tool on there. There's an 800 number to call. They can receive telehealth or come into Patriotic Hall for counseling, or we can refer them to other agencies that would provide that mental health counseling. We're looking forward to the California Veterans Health Initiative, which the Governor has signed, which will devote $50 million to California's veterans for the provision of mental health. A design team is working now to design that program, and then RFPs will go out to a variety to service providers across the state so that they can increase their capability to provide mental health to veterans. We're also, along with other agencies in California, a recipient of the staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant from the Federal Government. So we've been able to add staff there so that staff will work with the staff from the California Veterans Health Initiative. And LA County has provided, doing some assessment on suicides and suicidality, trying to determine if they can determine some of the factors that lead veterans to take their own lives. As I mentioned, women vets on point this Web portal because women veterans really have a higher rate of suicide than their civilian counterparts. And finally, we're focusing on housing. Been quite a lot of talk today about housing. We are an endorser of Prop One, both the Mental Health Service act and the new housing bond. And that new housing bond will replace the funding that is now expiring from the VHHP. So we're very supportive of that. We know that with the VHHP funding, I believe there's about 5000 units that have either been built or funded. So it's been hugely helpful in communities. It helps us access funding, and the challenge is always the services part. But as an experienced service provider, we've been fairly adept at providing the services that are necessary. Our biggest project is West LA VA, which is we're charged with providing building 1200 units of permanent supportive housing for veterans, by far the largest homeless program in the country for veterans. We have. The US Vets runs the two largest programs in Long Beach and Los Angeles. And this is larger than both of them put together. So it's been quite a challenge, and it is on federal land. We were given the land, but not the money. But we are getting there. So of the 1200 units thus far, 240 have been completed and are occupied at this point. The first building was for senior veterans, and it had a variety of funding sources, so we can talk about the complications with that. And another 370, I think are under construction or fully funded. So we'll be over 600 units by the end of next year. The complications there somewhat mirror the complications with funding affordable housing in the broader community. There will be multiple sources of funding, and oftentimes each of those fundings have different criteria for veterans. So our building 207 was, all of them were 30% had to be under 30% AMI, all those veterans, 26 of those units are for seriously mentally ill, and all those veterans had to be 62 or older. So that's where the discussion began about the service connected disability that you mentioned before. It would make complete sense for a service disabled veteran to live at the VA and have ready access to the hospital. But a veteran who is 100% service connected is ineligible for a 30% unit. So that was kind of the beginning of that discussion. Now, we worked really hard at it. We had eight or 10 people working on it, kind of were able to fill that building in four months. But it was a concern. And in actuality, we gave back a few of the 30% units to the city. The city, Los Angeles HHH funding was part of that funding stack. We gave back some of that money in order to bring in veterans who were 100% service disabled. So that's the dilemma we all face, is that the low income tax credits really award to the lowest income. You have get more points if you're serving the lowest income. But then you're in the dilemma of not being able to serve, in the veterans case, not being able to serve those 100% disabled veterans. So I think that it is a HUD challenge. HUD was asked a while back that service connected funding would not be included in their income, but they refused to do that. So there are people working on that. I know, including the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and other advocates are working on that because it really makes no sense that a service disabled veteran who has the most need for a VA hospital cannot locate themselves on the VA campus. I could go on, but please ask any questions.

Yeah, on that point. So a veteran who's 100% disabled, will they fall within the 50% of AMI or they'll be over that too?

Sometimes if they also have a disability income, it'll put them up at 60%. So we're requesting that veterans up to 60% that that compensation. There's a distinction. That's a compensation for their disability. It is not an income. And we're trying to get the HUD to make that distinction.

If you're 100% disabled, you automatically qualify for Social Security. So the two added together are just about 4000 a month.

Okay. Thank you.

But your life is incredibly complicated by being 100% disabled and has an enormous number of expenses attached to it, right?

Yeah. Which should be considered. So you were talking about some of the funding challenges that you are experiencing. Just so I understand what you're saying. Are you basically saying that you are applying for funding and building a patchwork of units to meet specific funding requirements? So you're doing this funding for people in this age group or meeting a certain. Is that what you're saying?

First of all, affordable housing. The reality of affordable housing is that in most cases that you have to create this funding stack, which is low income tax credits. It might be HHH, it might be DMH, it might be VHP, private funding. The funding stack for our next building, I think it's 10 different funding sources. So it gets complicated. And then if in that building 207 example that I gave the DMH funding has a certain requirement, they have to be seriously mentally ill. So those 26 must, must have SMI and be 62 and older and have less than 30% income. So it does make it complicated. Additionally, the veteran has to kind of get to contact each of those sites. So we're contacting the city and we're contacting DMH, and we're contacting the VA and we're complying with everything that LiTech requires. So it increases the length of time between the connection with the veteran and being able to give that veteran a unit. I am told that there was supposed to be someone from the feds to come to LA to try to streamline that. I don't know if that's happening or not, but it certainly would be helpful. So, as I say, we had a team of eight or 10 working on that, on every single veteran that came in to really try to speedline that, to speed up that process.

And do you know, some of the challenges are around federal funding at the state level. Have you participated in the supernova process and how has that experience changed things for you?

This new supernova that was supposed to.

Streamline, instead of having to go to multiple different applications and timelines and deadlines and requirements, streamline it into one application?

I'm not sure that we have done that yet. I'd have to ask. We have just been awarded the Litech on our next building, and that was a month or so ago, so I'm not sure if we did the supernova or not.

Okay.

OK. And how about you? Have you gone through the.

Possibly.

Yes, we were just last Monday awarded a CalHOME. Wonderful. For our next North Hollywood project, I believe. And Stacey is with me. The homeownership piece. And it was part of the supernova. Right.

It's separate. It's called the homeownership.

Homeownership. But the process was. How was it? Because this is my grant writer that I keep turning to.

I found it to be the same.

You can come on up.

I'm fine, thank you. It was the same process as in the past, and I don't find it difficult. I can't speak to the supernova.

Curious and, and in terms of kind of what the homelessness and supportive housing landscape was like before HUDVASH and VHIP. Can you talk a little bit about how that's changed?

Certainly. VASH vouchers do a couple of things, aside from providing funding for the services. Funders like to see that you have VASH vouchers. It helps assure them that the mortgage will be paid. So all of those funding sources together really are aided by the fact that you get VASH vouchers. So we have been lucky or persistent or both with LA County, they have awarded VASH vouchers to all of the 240 units that we've built thus far and additionally to the five additional buildings that we're building now. So at the moment, we're getting VASH vouchers for all those units, which certainly makes our putting that funding stack together a little easier. We're going to go back to them this week as we begin to look at funding for phase two for the additional 600 units.

And what we've been talking a little bit about, that there has been a decline in veteran homelessness. What do you think are the successes that we can attribute that to?

It is both the housing and the services. At Patriotic hall, we've created a veterans one stop service center providing homeless prevention. That's employment, mental health, using SSVF funds for veterans. So there are many, many more resources now certainly than there were. And there has been an emphasis on building permanent housing. That we're readily getting VASh vouchers for all of the units that we're building at West LA is significant, and that wasn't necessarily the case a while back. And the VHHP funds have helped us in a couple of places, Riverside and West LA. So having those funding vehicles available really makes it a lot easier. But the services are critical, and the VASH vouchers, you probably know, provide a minimum amount of case management. So US Vets always augments that we go out and raise money to augment those services, because the veterans that we're serving, we know are vulnerable, have many different vulnerabilities, and often a single case manager for 30 or more veterans simply isn't enough to stabilize that population. So we got and raised additional funding.

And, Ms. Deutchman, can you talk a little bit about what led you to this veteran neighborhood model?

Absolutely, and I'd like to address the last question, too. I think in addition to what they're doing at Veteran Hall, I think the SSVF, the work that CalVET is doing in the community at stand downs, I think the veteran stand downs have been amazing. The job fairs that have been in almost every community have been an essential part. I think the CalVET services have been really pumped up in the last few years and very visual to the veterans at large and I think that's a huge help. What led us to build these veteran communities is the fact that more and more we were seeing veterans coming home and incredibly disheartened by the fact that they could not find affordable housing, they couldn't find family housing, and that was the key. They had been living on bases with their spouse and their children. They were deployed for incredibly long periods of time, and when they came back, they had no credit history to speak of. They hadn't lived in an apartment or a home, and they couldn't use any background history to get into an apartment or a home. They needed a unique opportunity that would allow them, in their specific condition, their specific situation, to build equity and to do so in a safe environment where they could learn the skills that they still didn't have, even though they had all of the incredible loyalty, the incredible skills that they learned in the military. They didn't have the self sufficiency skills that we all learned during our 20s when they were deployed. And they needed to learn those skills in a safe environment supported by each other. And we thought, what if we flip things on their head and provide permanent housing with transitional services so that these veterans could receive the services for four, five, six years, starting before, a year before they move into their home and receive a home that costs about the same as a one bedroom apartment. Raise them out of homelessness, raise them out of substandard apartments where they're all living in a studio apartment with their family, and give them an opportunity not to fall off the precipice that they're on, because most of them are on the precipice of becoming homeless, if they're not already, and give them the skills they need and the hope they need to become homeowners and raise themselves up economically. And the best thing about this is, if they increase their income, they will not lose their housing opportunity as you do in something like Section Eight. They maintain their mortgage, and they can use that increased income to build their family. And what we found is many of them go back to school. They increase their income. In fact, those that are not on a fixed income have been found to raise their income in every 24 months by about 38%. Their marriages stay solid, they go back to school. Their kids graduate, 99% graduate high school, and they go to college. 100% of the families, of course, all the veterans have health insurance, but 100% of the family members have health insurance. So what happens is we move these veterans out of poverty and into the middle class, and these are low and very low income veterans that we're talking about, many of whom come out of homelessness. One of our veterans just spoke the other night at a military ball, and he had been found by VPAN, which is the Veteran Peer Access Network, as a homeless veteran. Started with VPAN, and now he's going into a house in December.

That's phenomenal. And I know we have some VPAN folks here in the room today, too, doing great work. I love the model that you all have. I've been able to tour the location, the community here in Santa Clarita and then also as part of a build out in the Antelope Valley. And, you know, spoke with some of the residents about how it had really changed their lives and impacted their lives and really was just a beautiful sense of community. People knew each other's neighbors and supported each other, and it was really evident that the work that you had done that year leading up to moving in really makes a difference for folks. I wonder if you have a sense of if there's kind of a certain type of veteran or veterans in a certain situation who are more likely to be a fit for this or more likely to be successful in this kind of a model.

I think our veterans are very diverse. I really do. I think that we have fully disabled veterans. We have every type of service. We have single parents, we have single veterans. And in Palmdale, and here in Palmdale, we have 10 homes for elderly veterans. And the intergenerational aspect of the neighborhoods works beautifully. So I think that they have to be willing to participate in the services. I think that distinguishes them.

Yeah, and I mean, the survey that you all do and tracking the successes of the families really shows that it's a model that's being successful. Sometimes homeownership, it's not always successful. And people can get into situations where they bite off more than they can chew or didn't realize all the additional costs that were going to be a part of it. How do you think this model is successful in keeping people housed and being a part of homelessness prevention? I guess.

Well, one of the things is that we make sure that the homes have solar. We build the communities with an eye towards the costs. This is very important policy, so let me talk about it for a minute. The materials we use are excellent. So we look at maintenance long term. We don't use inexpensive materials. We make sure that they're not cheap countertops, for example, so they're not going to have to replace them in seven years. We use 40 year roofs. So we think about that. We don't build pools because pools have high cost insurance. We do have playgrounds, but we even look at fall zones to make sure the insurance is small. I ask your colleagues to consider any efforts to do inclusionary housing that requires the houses to be as large as the market rate houses because we're building three bedroom houses, but we're not building 3000 or 3500 foot houses. We're building 1600 foot houses. When there is a policy to have inclusionary housing that is as large, where the affordable houses are as large as the market rate houses, you are building a house that a person is going to not be able to maintain. It's exactly what you just asked. So you're moving a person into that home and calling it affordable when they're not going to be able to maintain that home and it is not going to be a success. So even if the builder is saying I can't build a 3000 foot house and sell it for $250,000 or I can't build a 3500, think about the person who's moved into that house. They will never be able to maintain it, never be able to heat it, never be able to air condition it. What should be happening with inclusionary housing is that the lot should be smaller for the affordable units and somebody should be able to come in and build smaller units that are affordable or townhouses or something to that effect.

Thank you. That's helpful. And do you also track default rates in the program?

We have 0% foreclosure rates. However, I will say this, that we have a Veteran Services Department, that if somebody has a sick child or is ill themselves, loses a job, we will provide one to two months mortgage assistance one time in the lifespan of their mortgage. One time.

Okay.

And only one to two months.

Great. That's great. That can be the thing that really makes a difference, though, that one time. And I just want to open it up. I don't know if there's anything else that you wanted to cover that wasn't touched upon or policy recommendations. Here's your shot. I mean, you can call my office.

Support a couple of things that Donna said. One was that CalVET really has stepped up. There are funding sources available in California that aren't available anywhere else, and we always make that point when we advocate back in DC that the feds should match the kind of funding that's coming out of the state. It's pretty extraordinary. And also, building community is just critical. When we were tasked with building the 1200 units at West LA VA, we were tasked with building a community, not just a bunch of housing. So we're going to have a number of amenities there. There's going to be a lot of support service available there, both for veterans in the housing and veterans out in the community. So we'll be providing homeless prevention services, but also there'll be a restaurant, a coffee shop, a grocery store, cleaners. So this is really their home. And that home is created by creating community. And we do a number of things at our large size to bring veterans into the solution. We have resident councils, we have town halls. We want to make sure that the veterans are contributing their ideas on the services that we provide and connecting with each other. We know that when veterans become homeless and when anyone becomes homeless, isolation is a significant issue. So we have a number of events to bring them out of their housing. There'll be walking paths, biking paths. The Metro station is being built right there by the VA. So building that community is just critical to their long term success. One more thing, which is low income housing. So there's a lot of funding available for homeless housing, affordable housing for people who are not homeless, they're working poor, there is in very short supply. So we're creating a community out in Riverside of small homes, 500 square foot homes for veterans who have an income, but not an income that's great enough to afford them market rate housing out in the community. But that is a real gap. At our project in Ventura as well, I think we have 35 units for low income veterans, but there's certainly too little money for veterans who are not homeless but who are on the edge simply because they can't afford the housing that's in their community.

Yeah, that's a massive, massive issue and something that we really, I think the work that's been done around veteran homelessness and the success that we're seeing in that, we need to expand and make sure that that expands to low income and truly low income housing. It was wonderful to hear from everyone today and just, again, appreciate you all being here and those who traveled down from Sacramento. Thank you very much. It's encouraging to hear that a lot of these efforts are really making an impact and really making a difference. And I think it's not the time to take off the gas when that's happening, but to continue on. Even though we've made a huge dent in veteran homelessness, I don't think any of us will be happy until it's down to zero. And I know that's where we're trying to get to, and that's the work we're trying to do collectively. And I'm happy to be supporting and being a part of that as well. I do want to open it up to public comment and have the public have an opportunity to get on record for the hearing today. And just if you can line up at the mic here, we'll take everyone at the mic and you can have up to two minutes. Please say your name and where you're from. And just a reminder, this is an opportunity for comment and statements and not questions or back and forth. And so come on up and please state your name and where you're. Yeah. And please keep it to the subject of the hearing. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Brianna Suspens. I live here in Canyon country, and I'm here, and a group of us are here to make all of you aware, all of you veteran support organizations and as well as you, Representative Shiavo. I'm just thankful that all of you are just amicable towards the veterans. And I want to make you aware of a distinct group of veterans that exist. So we're called involuntary veterans. There are more than 8500 active duty, and 85000 reserves and national guard members that were affected by the COVID 19 mandate. In my personal story, I was in the air force for almost 5 years, and that included serious threats and mistreatment, after my religious exemption was denied. After more than 140 days in isolation and quarantine, non-reccomendation for promotion reprimands and discrimination, I was forced out of the air force with less than honorable discharge status. That means that for us involuntary veterans, we do not have access to the GI Bill, to pay for school, affecting employment and ultimately putting us at risk for homelessness, suicide, ad mental health instability. So, we're regarded according to the VA as having disqualified service for a mandate that is no longer in effect, and we have been forgotten in the loophole, and even lawsuits are being dismissed because the mandate no longer exists. So, a VSO, also I spoke to, has told me to upgrade my discharge status, it's under a two year delay. So my story is just among many, many others. And I'm asking for all of your support, the organizations as well as you, to not forget the involuntary veterans when you think of veterans. And we're asking for advocacy, help upgrading our discharges, there's a good Bill for the NDAA Amendment, the Americans Act, that we're just looking for support as well, mental health support, and to be recognized ultimately for our honorable service. Just that we're not forgotten. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Name and where you're from?

Yes, my name is Natasha Robinson. I'm a Santa Clarita resident for 30 years and I work for the County of Los Angeles. I'm the mother of the gravely disabled veteran. I wanted to thank you for hosting this extremely important meeting, and I wanted to make a special comment to Ms. Deutchmann for her team's effort in building housing for the veterans. She's absolutely right on each and every point. What she mentioned. I won't reiterate that. I'm just asking, please give me your direct contact number before you leave. And I'm here to speak on behalf of my gravely disabled son. He couldn't be here on his own because he is hospitalized in West La VA Medical clinic for almost a month. Why? He's hospitalized because he was pushed to the acute psychiatric crisis by certain events conducted by their certain residential department management company here in Santa Clarita in violation of the residential lease agreement, specifically refusal to update nuisances which aggravated my son's military connected disability severely. He endured for several months. We did all proper complaints, we did all proper videotaping, everything. We requested reasonable accommodations to abate nuisances. Nothing was done, he was harassed, he was humiliated, he was pushed to this condition that he is hospitalized right now. It's heartbreaking. And right now, that residential company, which is a large apartment owner's multistate, is trying to evict him unlawfully. I can recite the law, statutes, everything, specifically violations of the Fair Housing Act, Code of Federal Regulations, Title 24. It will not help my son right now, but I hope that with your help, he will find housing, he will find justice. Because there is another topic which just boggles my mind. There is no legal help for the veterans whatsoever. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist as a veteran clinics. It doesn't exist in any kind of. It's not even possible to find ethical and knowledgeable private attorney representing tenant landlords matters. And believe me, I'm speaking from horrifying experience, because it is not the first time when my son is abused for manifestation of his disabilities in public. And examples of those disabilities could be that he could talking to himself, making strange gestures, not able to walk or lose balance, because a majority of my son's disabilities, it's heartbreaking, horrifying mental disabilities connected to his honorable military service, honorable discharge with multiple accommedations. And it's heartbreaking how people treat veterans like my son, who is not even sometimes able to explain himself or to say what happened. So I'm asking to help him. He is willing and ready to accept services. He was homeless almost four times because of his mental disabilities. I cannot save him the fifth time, unfortunately, my health, my financial resources depleted extremely. But I sacrificed everything as a mother to save him, to give him a chance, because as long he is alive, there is hope. And this is not the first time when he's treated, we are treated like that for the last 10 years it was a horrifying chain of events similar to this one. Instead of the landlord, large landlord company, it was a homeowners Association here in Santa Clarita. And everything started also with nuisances, with verbal abuse to my disabled son, to me, disturbance of peace in everything, same thing. Violations of the covenants, conditions and restrictions, violations of the Fair Housing Act. But again, HOA, instead of the landlord and its harassment was from the tenants residing near our property under Section Eight. Section Eight is a great program, absolutely great. But people are misusing that. And what happened then? The verbal abuse and noise disturbances, which were highly horrifying for my son. It aggravated his military disabilities to extreme point. He was hospitalized multiple times, and those disturbances arose to the physical assault in battery on both of us. January 14, 2018. Please allow me to show you just one picture from that's. Nobody helped us then, but we survived so far. We saw justice. We couldn't get true justice. We couldn't get any help. I'm begging you, please make a difference now. I will survive, but my son will not without me.

Thank you.

And I don't know if I will survive because I keep collapsing and I don't know for how long I will last. Thank you very much. By the way, I just wanted to mention that experience that Ms. Deutschmann were talking about. I didn't know about this stuff, and I live in Santa Clarita for the 30 years even. I search extensively. I know the similar organization tunnels to tower. They are very active in Florida. They build in villages for the veterans, like Ms. Deutsche has explained, that's what should be done. And the county has land, the county has resources, and it's impossible for the gravely disabled people to look for this kind of stuff. It's a huge disconnect. It's impossible. That's why they're just dying on the streets.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for your advocacy. I know you connected with our chief consultant here who can support. I know there's other organizations here in the room. Hopefully they can connect up as well. Thank you. Your name and where you're from.

I'm Jessica Schleger. I live here in the community of Santa Clarita, and I'm just thankful. Thank you for sending out the email letting the community know about today's hearing. I wouldn't have known about it, except I did receive the email. I'm actually an occupational therapist, and I'm interested in working in this field. And I've been looking for a number of years already, probably about two years, to work in the field of either Veterans affairs, people with mental illness, homelessness, the unhoused, or all three combined like we're talking about today. And it's very hard because, as you know, mental health is not prioritized like it is with physical disabilities. I'm working currently in OT, but with pediatrics in Santa Clarita. But I'm really looking to work in this field. And I've had conversations. I don't need to go into all the names, et cetera, but there's little out there but not enough. And of course, that's what we're here for. So I would love to just talk to people in this field. See, I loved hearing about the two people who are just up here I'm taking extensive notes. I'll be talking to you. Maybe there's jobs out there that I can help with doing group therapy for the veterans or people who are unhoused or with mental illness. And I love how we talked about OT services, ADLs, hoarding. I've got great ideas for groups that I've worked in. When I was getting my degree. This is back in 98 in Michigan, I worked in the VA, and we did groups with those who had Schizophrenia and found great success with those people, and I loved doing that. But again, I've been working in physical disability all the rest of the years that I've been as an OT and would love to go back to this field. So I'm here hoping that there's other people who know about jobs that are available. So I'm very happy you put this out to the community. Thank you very much.

Wonderful. Thank you for being here, and thanks for your enthusiasm. Name and where you're from.

Bernard Thomas. I'm the Director of the Veteran Resource center at College of the Canyons. We're probably the largest service provider in Santa Cruz for veterans. We serve probably about 300 veterans every semester, probably about 400 every year. And education and training is what we specialize in, and that's a key component to veterans transitioning successful. We partner with a lot of the service organizations that are here today. I just want to thank you for coming out and initiating this discussion. It's a really important one. When veterans come to our center and they find themselves without residence, we usually will work through VPAN to connect them with services within the organization. But for them to have a long term plan, a lot of times, the education is what they need or training. And so thank you for what you do.

Thank you.

Madam Chair. Good afternoon. My name is Johnny Escobito. I'm business agent for Iron Workers Local 416 and a Member of LAOC Building Trades. I hear everybody's story. I know the housing industry. I know the need for housing, affordable housing, military housing. Steve, I'll give you my business card once we're done here, maybe you can partner up with state building trades, LAOC Building Trades, and work something out with possibly getting some type of funding, getting some of the funding from the ULA United to house LA funds to be able to support your projects. It's a real shame that our veterans have to go through what they go through to any veteran in the room. Thank you for your services. I'm here to represent my organization and to let everybody know that we at the iron workers. We have a program, it's called Helmets to Hard Hats. So if you're a veteran or if you're still even in the service, active military, you come to us, you get top priority. We are the iron workers. We do concrete, reinforcement, riches, rebar, and we also do structural. Basically, you turn in your helmet and you get a hard hat. Starting wages with us right now is going to be, we get a raise in January. It's going to be 24 and change an Hour for first peer apprentice. And Journeyman is going to be at $49 an hour. Full medical, pension, life, everything, livable wages. What everybody in California needs. It's something that we go without. People overlook that. And the way things are, the cost of living is, you know what? It's no benefit to anybody. We accept women in our programs. We had somebody talking about the Triple H bond. You know what, in the verbiage of the Triple H bonds, there's stipulation in that paperwork that you will have local hires, you will have women hire, you will have transitional hires, transitional means military, people of a different sexual orientation, people that have had drug convictions, people that have had arrests, and we don't discriminate. In our organization, we need women in the construction industry, we need women. Women have top priority along with military. We need people in construction and there are livable wages. So if there's anybody in the audience that is interested, please reach out to me. I can get you connected, whether it's in the iron work or electrical or being a mason or a carpenter, it's all the building trades that support these projects for affordable housing. So please, if anybody has any questions, please, by all means, reach out to me. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment? Okay. Come on down. Mr. Stabile.

Good afternoon. My name is Jeff Stabile with Santa Clarita Veteran Services Collaborative. And I just want to reiterate that one of the best programs that has come along for LA in the county is VPAN. We partnered with them about two years ago, and they help tremendously in our collaborative and work with people. So it's a phenomenal program. We also provide resources and referrals. So I've got a lawyer that you can talk to. And again, just supporting VPAN, phenomenal organization. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I just want to thank everyone again for being here today, for being a part of this, for the veterans in the room. I want to thank you for your service and for those doing work in this space to ensure that we're supporting veterans. I thank you as well. I know that it's not a one size fits all solution. So bringing all of these different programs, all of this different support, housing services, that these are all together collectively going to be the things that help us get to the solutions that we need in our community to make sure that veterans really have the support that they need, that we end veteran homelessness once and for all, and that veterans have the ability not only to survive, but to thrive in our communities. So I want to thank everyone for being here, for being a part of this hearing. And I want to thank my chief consultant, Christian Birkin, who did a lot of work to pull this together and is a resource also for folks to connect up with. He's a veteran himself and an expert in this work. And so I want to make sure that you know that our Committee is here for you and as a resource and support, and our office is always here for you as well. And I know all of my colleagues on the Committee would express the same. And so just want to conclude the hearing of the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee for the Assembly, and we'll go onward to continue to do this work. Thank you.