I again approached Ms. Vitale at the Mayor’s Breakfast on Veteran’s Day telling her the godawful conditions and the lack of resources. She requested that I reach out to her by email which I did on November 17th. In that email, I reminded her of the 'Be the Story' series, and to follow-up to the BAVR Library story, “it is 7:24 and I still did not get approved for internet access (using my hotspot) and the library was not opened this evening and the signs announcing the hours have been taken down within the last hour.” She replied that, “I think your suggestion about increased access to the library is something that could get done relatively easily. I will gently make this suggestion to my contacts at ICL to see if this is something they can work on.”
NYC Dept. of Veteran Services Won’t Show Up
NYC Dept. of Veteran Services Won’t Show Up
Timothy Pena
December 4, 2022
In April 2016, I had just been released from spending 70 days in the psych ward of the county jail and found myself homeless. I was referred to now-Catholic Charities MANA House, a veteran’s transitional program in Phoenix and was accepted into the Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program as a resident and provided a stipend of $300/mo. as the Front Desk ‘Ninja’. The GPD Program is to provide the veteran experiencing homelessness, ‘housing and services with the goal of helping homeless Veterans achieve residential stability, increase their skill levels and/or income, and obtain greater self-determination.’
My tenure of 16 months at the front desk included hundreds of referrals for resources from getting a bus pass to applying for a VA Disability claim. At that time, the Veterans Affairs GPD Program paid about $43/day/veteran to house, feed, and provide services and resources towards the goal of a successful exit from MANA where we boasted about an 89% successful exit percentage. As with Arizona and the local Dept. of Veteran Services (AZDVS) takes the lead in assuring compliance to the program by agencies that provide these critical services and resources to veterans experiencing homelessness, mental health issues, and drug/alcohol addictions which is the NYC Department of Veterans Services (NYC DVS) except veterans at Borden Ave are receiving none of that. At all.
Shortly after realizing no one had started my claim for HUD/VASH voucher, I visited the offices of NYC Department of Veterans Services (NYCDVS) and spoke with Chou, one of four housing specialists, who told me the department was overwhelmed and understaffed with about 550 veterans in the NYC area needing housing. Looking back, the time she spent describing how understaffed they were, was about the time necessary to have completed the paperwork for my voucher. That was in September; it’s now December.
At a public meeting hosted by NYC DVS in October, I spoke directly to Director of Public Policy Bianca Vitale about the conditions here and she acknowledged the complaints, remarking, “what I’m hearing from the veterans is not what I’m hearing from Borden Ave.” She was referring to the Institute for Community Living (ICL) which is contracted to provide those services and resources to get veterans out of the shelters and into stable permanent housing.
The VA Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program funds non-VA, community-based organizations to provide transitional housing and support services to veterans experiencing homelessness. As one of the veterans directly affected by the lack of the access to those support services, ‘gently suggesting’ access to those resources doesn’t cut it. According to Chou at NYC DVS, they are attending to approximately 550 veterans supposedly in the GPD program at an annual cost of about $12.6 Million at rate of $63.12/day/veteran.
I attended a job fair hosted by Black Veterans for Social Justice at the Goodwill Career Center in Brooklyn last month. I have a laptop, so I am pretty good with the keyboard and scored well on the data entry portion of an assessment test. I also walked out of there with three job opportunities. Another veteran with the group didn’t fare so well. He obviously struggled even though he told me afterwards, that if had been able to practice on a computer before taking a test on a computer, he would have done much better. Goodwill specializes in these sort of employment opportunities, so no one should have done so poorly to have been passed up for a job placement.
This past Wednesday, I once again reached out to Ms. Vitale with the message, “It was disturbing to me and others to see social media posts that falsely depicted the conditions here as anything more than that of a chaotic and dangerous prison where those suffering severe psychosis are sharing space with veterans who are supposed to be receiving services through the VA Grant and Per Diem Program, yet are being denied access to resources, proper diet, and sleep.”
I have yet to hear back from Ms. Vitale, but I did hear from Borden Ave Veteran Kevin Buggle (HUD/VASH Program Making the Homeless Veterans Suffer, 11/27/2022), who has told me he needs to reapply for a HUD/VASH voucher after no one informed him his VA Award Letter had expired which requires updating every 90 days. I knew that from my days at MANA House. The case managers at Borden Ave know that because it’s their job to know that. Yet, no one bothered to tell the veteran who is required to meet with his case manager every two weeks as per the Grant and Per Diem Program guidelines. His application has been cancelled however, because of this and he is now being forced to reapply to the HUD/VASH program. After waiting with no answers for months, he finally received one, but it was not the news he needs to hear. Instead, Kevin is back to square one and looking at another 2-4 months on top of the nearly five months he has already been at Borden Ave.
Timothy Pena initially traveled to NYC at the invitation of RIP Medical Debt founder and U.S. Navy Veteran Jerry Ashton to collaborate for his project, Veterans Mission Possible. Soon after arriving, Tim decided he would rather be homeless in NYC than commit suicide in Phoenix and spent five months in a shelter before obtaining his HUD/VASH voucher for supportive housing while detailing his journey from homeless to homeness with a series of articles called, 'Be the Story'. He has testified before the NYS Department of Veterans Affairs, is a member of the NYC Veterans Task Force and Military Veterans in Journalism, while founding The Forgotten Veteran non-profit. Email: Timothy Pena