More than 32,000 veterans experienced homelessness in 2024. More than just a shocking veteran homelessness statistic, each of those numbers represents a person who served our country and now needs homeless support for veterans to address housing, healthcare, employment, and the trauma that comes with these situations.
The right tools and strategies can help you make all the difference as a veteran social worker.
What Really Happens When Veterans Become Homeless?
The road from military service to homelessness isn’t what most people imagine. It’s not always the stereotypical image of a combat veteran struggling with PTSD on the streets. Veterans can become homeless for all kinds of reasons, most of which start way before they even leave the military and continue long after they return to civilian life.
The transition from military to civilian life creates many challenges that can cause veterans to join the homeless population, including:
- PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and substance abuse: These invisible wounds and psychiatric symptoms put up barriers to staying employed and maintaining stable relationships. Almost half of all homeless adult veterans have been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder, which is roughly double the rate of housed veterans. Staying housed is incredibly difficult when you can’t hold a job due to flashbacks or can’t manage your finances due to a brain injury.
- Service discharge status and benefits gap: Veterans with other-than-honorable discharges represent 4% of those in transitional housing programs and experience worse housing outcomes compared to veterans with honorable discharge status. Even a single mistake or mental health crisis during their service time can cut someone off from the benefits they’ll desperately need years later.
- Inadequate or temporary housing solutions: Veterans might cycle through short-term programs that house them for a few months but don’t provide enough support for long-term stability. When these programs end, many veterans find themselves back where they started because the underlying issues never got addressed.
- Isolation and a lack of trust in institutions: Military culture emphasizes self-reliance and solving problems independently. Asking for assistance can feel like admitting to failure, especially when veterans have had negative experiences with bureaucratic systems that promise to help but don’t deliver.
The good news is that targeted interventions work when they address these interconnected challenges. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) permanently housed more than 43,000 veterans experiencing homelessness in 2024, proving that the right support can break the cycle.
However, success requires more than just providing a roof over someone’s head. Veterans need coordinated support that connects them with appropriate benefits and helps them rebuild the social connections that their military service disrupted.
Why It’s Still So Hard for Veterans to Get Housing Support
Veterans face a maze of disconnected systems that don’t talk to one another and sometimes refuse to talk to them. Almost half of all veterans have no connection to the VA or any veteran service organization, which means they don’t even know what kind of help exists. And those who do try to connect usually have to wait for a long time and struggle to get what they need.
Even when there are programs that can help, strict eligibility requirements keep out some of the most vulnerable homeless subgroups that need it the most. Some programs accept only honorable discharges, while others require periods of sobriety. A criminal record or poor rental history can also be an issue.
These barriers hit hardest for veterans who are already struggling with disabilities. About 31% of all veterans have a service-connected disability, and that rate shoots up to almost half for Gulf War-era veterans. These disabilities make it difficult for them to work full-time or secure a stable housing situation.
The problem gets worse when you consider how few caseworkers are available to help. Veterans bounce between the VA for inpatient care and housing authorities for permanent placement. Each agency has different intake processes and timelines that never seem to align.
For veterans who need long-term housing stability with ongoing support, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program combines permanent housing vouchers with wraparound services and dedicated management. This gives veterans in need a solid combination of immediate housing stability and ongoing support for the other issues they face.
Strategies That Are Making a Real Difference for Homeless Veterans
Some communities have cracked the code on how to support homeless veterans. They’ve moved away from requiring veterans to jump through hoops and instead focus on what really works. These evidence-based approaches recognize that veterans need different types of support at different times.
The strategies that generate the best outcomes for homeless veterans are:
- Housing First as a stabilizing foundation: Veterans immediately get permanent housing without having to first prove that they’re so-called housing-ready. It’s unrealistically difficult to address mental health or employment issues when you’re sleeping in your car or on the streets.
- Dedicated mental health and substance abuse treatment: Generic counseling often misses the mark for veterans who’ve dealt with military trauma. Specialized programs like assertive community treatment services understand military culture and service-related injuries for better results.
- Veteran peer navigation and outreach: Fellow veterans can succeed where traditional social workers struggle. Having a peer who’s made it out and understands military culture can be tremendously helpful.
- Job readiness, retraining, and benefits assistance: Many veterans face employment barriers and need help translating their military skills into civilian job qualifications. Veterans currently have a lower unemployment rate than civilians, at 3.0% compared to 4.2%, but homeless veterans usually lack the references or stable addresses they need to access these opportunities.
Why True Stability for Veterans Goes Beyond Housing Alone
Housing someone may alleviate the immediate crisis, but it doesn’t address why they became homeless in the first place. Many veterans need time to rebuild their lives after years of instability and isolation.
The path to stability stretches longer than most programs acknowledge. You can’t rush how you process trauma, especially when you’ve spent years avoiding painful memories. Civilian workplaces run with completely different rules from the military, so finding and keeping a job is more of an ongoing challenge. Rebuilding families and repairing relationships takes time after periods of untreated mental illness or addiction, and fixing these bonds doesn’t happen overnight.
Long-term success depends on whether or not someone has the right people in their corner. As a social worker, you can help veterans access mental health services that understand military culture and peer mentors who have experienced similar struggles.
When all of the pieces come together, you’ll see that real stability is more than just keeping an apartment. Veterans who thrive eventually run their own lives with confidence and rebuild meaningful relationships.
The Social Worker’s Role in Supporting Homeless Veterans
As a social worker, you’re the person who finally listens when a veteran has bounced between six different agencies in two months. Sometimes you’re sitting in a McDonald’s at 7 a.m. because that’s the only place they feel safe meeting someone new. Veterans who’ve already learned not to trust civilian systems will slowly open up only after you show them that you understand what they’re going through.
Trauma shows up in different ways. You might work with someone who can’t sleep indoors because it reminds them of being trapped during combat. Another veteran might show treatment nonadherence because asking for help feels like admitting to failure. Part of your job is to recognize these social behaviors as normal reactions to abnormal experiences rather than signs of being difficult.
The system fails veterans everywhere. Only nine of the country’s 18,000 law-enforcement agencies use data-based tools to verify a veteran’s status, so many people end up in jail instead of getting connected with the right veterans support groups. You can make a difference by catching these gaps and fighting to get veterans into the right services.
Best Practices for Case Management With Homeless Veterans
Veterans notice when you follow through on what you promise. They’ve dealt with too many people who say they’ll call back but never do, or who make commitments they can’t keep. Building trust takes time, and you’ll have to take many small actions to prove that your homeless case management system works.
Some of the best strategies for veteran caseworkers are:
- Keeping centralized records and making coordinated referrals: Nobody should have to explain their worst experiences five different times to five different people. When information flows smoothly between providers, veterans spend less time repeating themselves and more time getting help.
- Using strength-based, veteran-centered planning: Military service develops leadership skills and provides technical training that many employers overlook. You can help veterans translate these assets into civilian opportunities.
- Monitoring progress and housing retention: Small problems become big ones when someone’s barely hanging on. Community surveys show that 64% of veterans organizations see clients with homeless shelter needs, but only 21% can address them.
- Reducing the administrative burden whenever possible: Paperwork that takes you two hours to complete represents two hours you can’t spend helping people. When you consider the 110,000-plus HUD-VASH vouchers out there, you need access to tools that can maximize your efficiency.
Casebook: Supporting Veterans Starts With the Right Tools
The veterans you work with deserve better. Casebook gives you real-time visibility into someone’s housing status and service history so you can see the complete picture right away. Custom workflows designed for veteran-specific services can help you coordinate with housing authorities, the VA, legal aid organizations, and anyone else involved.
Instead of spending hours on paperwork, you get streamlined documentation, freeing up your time so you can support your clients. Book a demo to see how Casebook can change the way you handle your clients’ cases.