Answering the Call

JUNEAU - Clyde Didrikson of Juneau, Alaska calls it "a blessing." HUD calls it a Tribal Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing, or VASH, rental assistance voucher. Like a rose, by any name it's a partnership between HUD, the VA and housing authorities that changes people's lives in a good way.

First authorized by Congress some ten years ago, VASH rental vouchers are intended to help eligible veterans referred to housing authorities by the VA who are homeless or at risk of being homeless get a permanent, affordable place to home. A VASH program for Tribal housing authorities was launched in late 2015. To date, some 90,000 VASH vouchers have been awarded to authorities and 150,000 veterans who might have ended-up on the streets instead have had an affordable place to call their own. From 2010 to 2017, VASH vouchers play a crucial role in cutting the number of unsheltered homeless almost in half.

Some 300 veterans in Alaska hold VASH vouchers. Veterans like Clyde Didrickson who has just joined their ranks. Now 66, he and his wife Charlotte, reports Gregory Philson in The Juneau Empire, have been "searching for a home since Clyde came back from fighting in the Vietnam War in 1972." They've spent many a night in the woods.

Not anymore. Thanks to Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority caseworker Robin Murdock and a HUD VASH voucher, Friday the 13th of July was their lucky day, the day they moved off the streets into a place they could call home. As they walked through the door, Philson recalls, they "could not wipe the smiles off their faces."

Murdock is a transplanted New Yorker. But she doesn't fit the stereotype of being impatient, brash and pushy. To the contrary, she's laid back and just because she's helped the Didrickson's move-in and handed-over the keys doesn't mean she won't stay in touch. "Once they get settled in and if they don't really need a whole lot of services, I will meet them once a month to try to link them into the VA services," she explained.

HUD awarded the Tlingit-Haida Housing Authority 20 Tribal VASH vouchers . Thanks to extensive outreach across southeast Alaska, 19 of the vouchers already are being used by veterans. The 20th voucher is expected to be use in a matter of weeks. "If we could get more vouchers," said Gregory Norton of the Authority, "we would certainly be able to use them."

It's something HUD and the VA hear a lot from housing authorities and communities across the country. No wonder. As mentioned, HUD's VASH program has provided permanent, affordable housing to some 150,000 veterans. However, a HUD report (https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2017-AHAR-Part-1.pdf) last fall to Congress noted that an estimated that more than 15,000 veterans were living unsheltered on the streets of communities big, small and every size in between across the United States.

For all that's been accomplished, in other words, there's still work to do to, as HUD Secretary Carson has said, "make certain that those who have served our nation have a home they can call their own." Thanks to the resources Congress has provided and the resolve of partners like the Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority and individuals like Robin Murdock and Gregory Norton, there's little reason doubt that day will come.

Homeless veterans answered their nation's call. Now, their nation must answer theirs. They deserve nothing less.

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