Read on Twitter
Hey, so a cool thing happened. We've ended veteran homelessness in the suburban metro! 
So now, a thread on what that means, what it doesn't mean, and what to take away from it. I'm gonna keep using "we" here because I chair the group that tries to coordinate and direct the homelessness response in the suburbs. (1/x)
Which isn't to say I'm taking credit in any way, there are so many great providers that did the on the ground work to make this happen, especially @MACVorg. I was the figurehead and I have Twitter followers so you get to listen to me blather. (2/x)
Anyway, what does this mean? It means that every veteran we've identified experiencing homelessness in Scott, Carver, Anoka, Washington, or Dakota Counties has either been housed or has a housing plan and is in process of finding housing. We call it "functional zero" (3/x)
I'm addition, it means that the US Interagency Council on Homelessness is satisfied that we have a plan to prevent veteran homelessness in the future, both through identifying at-risk households and getting them assistance before they lose their housing and... (4/x)
By identifying and rapidly housing any veteran households who do enter homelessness. When I talk about ending homelessness, this is what I mean. It's rare, brief, and non-reoccurring. (5/x)
So why is this important? Vets are a relatively small percentage of the overall population, housed or not. You don't need me to tell you there's a lot of work still to be done. (6/x)
But what it shows is that given the resources and the will, we can do this for any population. And by extension, we CAN end homelessness. Full stop. (7/x)
When eggheads in the op-eds sigh that homelessness is sad, but it's just a fact of life, this is proof of concept that they're dead wrong. We decided a couple years ago that this was our goal, and we made it happen, even in a historic housing shortage, and now a pandemic (8/x)
We're now targeting chronic homelessness. (There's a technical definition, but basically households that are homeless for a year or more). This population doesn't have the extra resources that vets have, but we're seeing the numbers of chronic households dropping steadily (9/x)
So the takeaway is this. We can end homelessness. The causes of homelessness seem complex, but at the end of the day they boil down to people not having a home. https://streets.mn/2020/02/10/what-causes-homelessness/ So that means you end it by giving people homes. (10/x)
So we need to end the housing shortage. Stop letting Neighborhood Character take priority over our neighbors having a place to live. We need affordable missing middle housing to be legal to build. We need to build more affordable and public housing. (11/x)
And we need vouchers to be easily available for anyone who qualifies. The first part is a local thing, and we need our city to use land use rules for more than segregation and exclusion. But much of the rest will take state and federal action. (12/x)
Biden's housing plan calls for fully funding section 8, let's make sure it happens. Ilhan has a plan to massively increase funding for public housing, let's help her get that passed. (13/x)
And don't let anyone tell you we can't end homelessness. Or that some people are just lazy, or want to be homeless. We can end homelessness, we've shown that we can do it, and we will do it. Fin. (14/14)
