St. Louis Makes Goal: No Homeless Veterans by Veterans Day

Although Veterans Day isn’t for nine more months, it doesn’t seem like much once you hear about St. Louis’ ambitious goal. In the next nine months, St. Louis area leaders will be working on making sure every veteran in the area has a stable place to live. Using the “Built for Zero” model approach and plans on getting the estimated 300 homeless veterans a home by Veterans Day.

Homes for the Homeless

St. Louis Area Regional Commission on Homelessness announced on February 18th that it planned to place every veteran in a home by Veterans Day, in November.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has estimated that there are 300 homeless veterans in the St. Louis area. This St. Louis project will be covering the city of St. Louis along with the counties: Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, St. Charles, St. Louis and Warren in Missouri and Madison and St. Clair in Illinois.

Here’s the Plan

St. Louis leaders have plans to use the “Built for Zero” model which will be coordinated by the nonprofit Community Solutions. The Built for Zero model provides a list of veterans who are homeless and matches them to compatible housing resources. This program also keeps track of goals for the veterans and progress is updated every month to keep the user motivated.

Although it has been reported that the St. Louis area has the housing, financing, and programming needed to make this happen, they never made an effort because of the lack of coordination. This time a 25 member committee will be supervising the entire operation and making sure things go as planned.

The exact price for this project is yet to be determined but St. Louis County Director of Human Services, Yusef Scoggin, mentioned that it would cost “a few million dollars.” ^[1]

St. Louis will be the 74th community in the United States to use the Built for Zero model; which has so far shown to be successful in other cities.