After two years in the Air Force and decades on Skid Row, Steve Allen was spending his senior years living in his car. John Sullivan, who joined the Army after seeing the film “Patton,” slept on his son’s couch. Home for Babs Ludikhuize, an Air Force veteran recovering from domestic violence, was in psychiatric care.
Now all three have comfortable apartments with subsidized rents, and they embody what many analysts call the greatest success in homelessness policy — the decline in homeless veterans.
Since 2008, Congress, with bipartisan support, has spent billions on rental aid for unhoused veterans and cut their numbers by more than half, as overall homelessness has grown. Celebrated by experts and managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the achievement has gained oddly little public notice in a country in need of broader solutions.
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