Veterans Affairs in San Diego said it's well on its way to meeting its goals to find permanent homes for more than 800 local homeless veterans.
On Thursday, VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher announced the department's goal to house more than 41,000 veterans this fiscal year, ending in September.
"We’ve made progress in recent years in tackling this problem, but there’s still a long way to go — and that’s why we’re setting these aggressive goals," Bradsher said in a news release.
Included in that 41,000 are more than 800 in San Diego.
Jonathan Flood, who supervises the Housing and Urban Development voucher program (HUD-VASH) at VA San Diego, said he's optimistic they'll meet that local goal.
"We were at 95% last year of the goal and we certainly hope to repeat that," Flood said.
The HUD-VASH program helps veterans obtain housing vouchers and connects them with rental units. Flood said there are plenty of vouchers available for eligible veterans — the challenge is finding landlords to rent to them.
"We need landlords to want to work with us, to want to work with our program," Flood said. So that right now is really our greatest need. We know, once we have the housing, we can lease the veteran in that unit."
Nationwide, the VA said more than 21,000 veterans found housing last year via the HUD-VASH program.
From October through January, the VA said more than 300 veterans in San Diego who were experiencing homelessness have found housing.
More information on the VA's housing programs is available on its website.
