I was wrong about those tiny house veteran villages

I used to think the tiny house villages for homeless vets were just a feel good story that didn't really work long term. But then I read a report from the VA out of Denver that tracked 120 vets who lived in one for 18 months. Something like 85% of them moved into permanent housing after, and their ER visits dropped by half. I found the numbers in a HUD research brief someone linked on the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans site. That honestly surprised me because I figured most would just cycle back to the streets. Now I'm wondering if my local VFW chapter should push for something similar here in Tucson. Has anyone actually visited one of these places and seen how they run day to day?

3 comments

3 Comments

anderson.piper1mo ago

Hold on, I gotta push back on this. Those numbers are probably cherry picked and the 85% success rate is meaningless if they don't track where those vets end up a few years later.

the_lisa1mo ago

Oh man, I actually read a study from the RAND Corporation a few months ago that tracked veterans from a similar program over five years and the numbers dropped way off after the first year. Something like 60% of them were back in unstable housing within 24 months, mainly because the support just stopped. It's not that the initial help is bad, but I totally see @anderson.piper's point about cherry picking. Without long term tracking, you're basically just looking at a snapshot that might not tell the whole story about how people are actually doing down the road.

ellis.faith1mo ago

Yeah, the part about support stopping hits something that's actually a bigger problem than most people realize. @the_lisa, I've seen this with a friend who went through a similar program and what killed him wasn't the housing falling through, it was losing the caseworker who helped him navigate all the little stuff like getting his ID replaced and signing up for healthcare. Once that person was gone, he couldn't keep up with the paperwork and slipped through the cracks. Those programs measure success by a roof over your head, not by whether you still have someone to call when the system screws up your food stamps.