On Sept. 1, Congressman Sam Farr (D-Calif.) announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) awarded millions of dollars to Central Coast organizations to provide housing assistance services to low-income veteran families to prevent homelessness.
Here is the announcement, from Farr’s office:
This federal funding is provided through the VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program. SSVF funding supports outreach, case management and other flexible assistance to prevent Veteran homelessness or rapidly re-house Veterans who become homeless.
“No one should ever experience homelessness and certainly not Veterans and their families,” said Rep. Farr. “Organizations such as the Veterans Transition Center of Monterey County have been able to enroll and house hundreds of Veterans over the last two years because of SSVF funding. I’m proud to support the SSVF program and I’m very pleased to see this funding headed to the Central Coast to uplift our Veterans and their families.”
Housing Resource Center of Monterey County received $509,434 to serve Veterans in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties. The Veterans Transition Center of Monterey County is a sub-grantee of the Housing Resource Center of Monterey County.
“SSVF support has been a phenomenal tool to enable us to find and house deserving Veterans – we’re able to take them directly from the street or shelters into transitional housing programs like ours and provide immediate assistance. Just recently, a disabled Veteran with a family of eight relocated to California looking for a close-knit community with a track record of helping Veterans. They were living in their car, but we were able to secure SSVF funding and put them in a 4-bedroom house within a week of their arrival. How great is that?” said Terry Bare, executive director for the Veterans Transition Center of Monterey County.
Homeless Services Center received $470,091 to serve Veterans in Santa Cruz County.
Goodwill Industries of Santa Clara County received $427,894 to serve Veterans in San Benito, Santa Clara and Alameda Counties.
Vietnam Veterans of California, Inc. received $4,040,000 to serve Veterans in Monterey County, Santa Cruz County, San Benito County and other counties.
“This is outstanding news for the Central Coast, but there’s still more work to do. We know there are more Veterans who need our support. While I’m retiring from Congress at the end of the year, I’ll continue advocating for the VA, cities, towns, local elected officials, landlords, housing authorities, organizations and others to develop innovative solutions to serve our Veterans and their families. We must maintain our urgency and help those Veterans who served and sacrificed for all of us. It’s our turn to help them,” added Rep. Farr.
Following the closure of Fort Ord in 1994, Rep. Farr began working with federal government officials, Veterans and active duty military groups, community residents, and California government officials to build a Veterans cemetery and a joint VA-Department of Defense state of the art health clinic. The health clinic will serve active duty service members and their families and Veterans under one roof. After years of dedicated work, Rep. Farr secured millions in federal funding to build the Veterans cemetery and the health clinic, which is scheduled to have a preview event in October prior to a full opening in 2017.
Farr’s district includes all of Monterey and San Benito counties, and a southern portion of Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties.