Rounding the Corner

BOISE - On a cold winter's night in January 2018, volunteers associated with the Boise/Ada County, Idaho Continuum of Care bundled-up, hit the streets and conducted the annual point-in-time count of homeless in the Boise metro area.

About 1 of every 7 of the 753 people they counted identified themselves as veterans. Most said they had a roof, albeit temporary, over their heads in an emergency shelter or transitional housing. More than a dozen, though, were living on the streets.

"One homeless vet is too many," says Mayor David Bieter. (www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/
community/boise/article232981557.html) Veterans like Crystal Duncan who served as explosives specialist with the U.S. Air Force. Wearing its uniform, she told The Boise Weekly, "was akin to breathing." Returning to civilian life after a medical discharge, she "felt lost" and "spent more than 10 years off and on homeless."

Which is why on a Monday afternoon in July, 2019, she was pleased to join Mayor Bieter and others at the corner of Fargo and West State to break ground for Valor Pointe, a new housing development that will provide 26 homeless veterans a permanent and affordable place to call home.

It's expected to have cost $6 million to build, much of it financed by Low Income Housing Credits awarded by the Idaho Housing and Finance Association as well as $1,250,000 in HUD Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership and $250,000 in general funds from the City of Boise.

Additional funding was provided by the HOME Partnership Foundation, Micron, US Bank, The Julius C. Jeker Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Albertsons, the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, Boise Cascade, Together Treasure Valley and the Idaho Statesman

But Valor Pointe's bricks-and-mortar aren't its most important feature. What happens inside is. Once its doors open in the summer of 2020, the Boise/Ada County Housing Authority will provide residents with HUD Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing vouchers to insure that their rents remain affordable.

That's critical because it enables Valor Pointe to be "the second housing development in our city" - the other is New Path Housing - "that utilizes the Housing First model," the Mayor explained, (www.kivitv.com/news/city-of-boise-breaks-ground-on-affordable-housing-complex-for-veterans) "providing community members with a secure and stable place to live, along with essential services needed to help them get back on their feet."

At the core of the low-threshold Housing First model is the notion that the single most-effective way to end homelessness is to get the homeless off the streets and into stable housing. That, in turn, will provide a foundation upon which to deliver supportive services of the sort to be available at Valor Pointe - health care counseling, substance abuse disorder treatment and case management by Boise's V.A. center - to address some of the reasons they became homeless. That'll save them trouble and taxpayers money.

At New Path Community, the first Housing First complex in Boise the approach is providing "a new solution to Idaho homelessness," Boise State Public Radio. (http://ftp.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/boise-s-housing-first-provides-new-solution-idaho-homelessness#stream/0) At Valor Pointe, said IHFA's Gerald Hunter at the groundbreaking, it's expected to "help heal and restore the lives of many veterans experiencing homelessness."

It's "a great step" said Mayor Bieter. But not the last. The goal, after all, isn't just to "keep" homelessness "from getting overwhelming," but to "eliminate it," he added, "a big goal" that's not "around the corner." It's all, he said, about "keeping this momentum."

As Boise moves forward may it continue to enjoy a strong, steady wind at its back.

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