National funding provided for Alaska Veterans

PALMER — Two Alaska agencies have received a total of $768,000 from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as part of the nationwide effort to end homelessness.

The department announced Monday that almost $300 million in grant funding will be awarded to more than 301 community agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In Alaska, Catholic Social Services received $536,641 to assist at-risk or homeless veterans in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley, while Fairbanks Rescue Mission Inc. was awarded the remaining $231,370.

According to the press release, the Alaska grants are estimated to serve 155 families as part of the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program. Through the program, as described on the website, private non-profits are awarded grants by Veterans Affairs to provide services such as health care, personal financial planning, transportation, child care, housing counseling and other legal and daily living services to very low-income veteran families. Time-limited payments to third parties are also granted if such payments help the family achieve sustainable housing.

“Our main focus is on case management,” said Catholic Social Services Executive Director Susan Bomalaski. “The case manager helps (the client) develop a plan to become housed and also connects them with VA benefits, which some people don’t even know about.”

Bomalaski has been involved with the supportive services program since it began in 2010 after President Barack Obama and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki announced the Federal government’s goal to end Veteran homelessness by 2015.

According to Bomalaski, Alaska has the highest number of veterans per capita of any state in the nation. Last year, Catholic Social Services served 166 veteran households — 355 people in all — but it’s still not enough, Bomalaski said.

“Our veterans have really been underserved,” she said. “A lot of people don’t think of themselves as veterans because they think that, to be a veteran, you have to be retired from the military, but you don’t.”

Catholic Social Services case manager Ashley Jeffers also said she would encourage people to call supportive services even if they are not sure they qualify for the program because the organization can often refer them to another, more appropriate program or group.

However, it often works the other way around, Jeffers said.

“A lot of people don’t know about us,” she said. “Usually they call the VA and they refer them to us.”

In part, this is most likely because the Valley did not have an outlet of their own until last year. Jeffers started working full-time at the new supportive services office in the Koslosky Center in Palmer this year as a result of both the VA grants and the increased need of homeless veterans in the Valley.

As an organization, Jeffers said they have been seeing more single males in their early 20s just getting out of the military and becoming homeless, recently. Although the program has a “pretty high success rate,” it’s “much harder” to find housing for veterans than homeless children and young adults, Jeffers said.

“Kids tug at your heartstrings a little bit more,” Jeffers said honestly, citing stereotypes and prejudices against the older homeless population as major barriers to veterans in need.

“I would say that the reason a lot of these people are in this situation is because, when they get released from the military, they might have PTSD or some other mental or physical disability, and the military is all they know,” Jeffers said. “They get discharged and they don’t know what to do, because they don’t have the knowledge for other jobs.”

Still, if veterans do contact supportive services, chances are they will be able to create their own sustainability.

“A lot of it is on them,” Jeffers said of case management in the program. “They want to be told what to do because that’s what they’re used to, but once you explain ‘you have to work at this,’ they set their own goals and they’re more willing to follow them.”

For more information about the grant, visit 1.usa.gov/1oyQuSM. To see if you qualify for local assistance programs, contact the Supportive Services for Veteran Families at 745-8811, or visit the Palmer office at 642 S. Alaska St. #206 in the Koslosky Center.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.