ABSTRACT
According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 442,723 Americans were homeless in 2014. Homeless Veterans are very different from non-Veterans because they have access to a range of additional benefits through the US Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) system. Homelessness began to be regarded as a social problem in the 1980s and coincided with cuts to social services and welfare, deinstitutionalization, increasing problems with housing affordability and the failure of community mental health facilities. The service-rich model, which is essential to housing first, has been adapted to provide health services to homeless Veterans. This chapter explains five cases to show the different pre-military, military, and post-military factors which can influence risk for homelessness and how VA services are constructed to intervene. Military service puts enormous strains on military families, with National Guard families particularly at risk because they are not located on a military base and have less access to military supportive services.
