The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Since 2009, “we’ve cut homelessness (among veterans) by a third.”
— Barack Obama on July 21 in an online interview with “The Daily Show,”
Ever since Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized the war record of Vietnam veteran Sen. John McCain on July 20, the treatment of veterans has been a major point of political discussion.
President Barack Obama got into the fray in his July 21 interview with Jon Stewart on the Comedy Central program “The Daily Show” during an unaired, exclusively online portion of the interview.
Stewart questioned Obama on the state of veteran health care. Obama defended the government agency, claim- ing the Department of Veterans Affairs is structurally better than when he entered office, though it remains underfunded and its employees overworked.
Later, he further defended his record when it comes to serving veterans. “Let’s take something like homelessness among vet- erans. So we’ve cut that by a third,” Obama said.
That one-third number struck us. Does the president have the facts to back it up?
One independent agency dedicated to fighting homelessness thinks so. On the “Veterans” page of the National Alliance to End Homelessness’
website, it reads: “In 2009, the Obama Administration committed to ending veteran homelessness in the U.S. by the end of 2015. Since 2010, there has been a 33 percent decrease in the number of homeless veterans.”
Nan Roman, CEO and president of the alliance, said the 33 percent decrease is backed by the yearly “point in time,” called PIT, count of homeless veterans.
Every year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development releases a detailed report about the state of homelessness in the United States to Congress, called the Annual Homeless Assessment Report. The 2014 report shows 49,933 homeless veterans according to the point in time count, a 32.57 percent decrease from the 2009 count of 74,050.
The 2015 numbers are not yet available.
National “point in time” counts were first conducted in 2009, during the peak of the recession, so it is possible that the decline in homelessness among veterans has been symptomatic of the larger national economic recovery. But the count has been largely consistent since then.
Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies homelessness, said the PIT count is conducted around the same time every year by individual cities. The number is supposed to reflect the total number of homeless people, “sheltered” and “unsheltered,” on a given night in a given city.
The “sheltered” count is easy. When homeless people stay in temporary, government-sponsored housing, they have to register with city officials. It’s the “unsheltered” population, the people living on the street, who pose a counting challenge.
According to Culhane, not every city counts the same way. Some literally count by hand the number of homeless people living on the street. Some estimate based on how likely it is to find a homeless person in a given area of a city.
Despite some inevitable discrepancies, Roman said the PIT numbers are consistent.
The PIT count also isn’t the only statistic for counting the homeless veteran population.
Brian Sullivan, a HUD spokesman, pointed us to both the PIT number and the one-year estimate of sheltered veterans, a different metric. That number uses an entire year’s worth of data.
The one-year estimate of sheltered veterans shows there were just 6.5 percent fewer homeless veterans from 2009 to 2013.
But Roman and Culhane say the PIT number is preferred over the one-year estimate because the PIT takes into account both sheltered and unsheltered veterans.
Culhane said the biggest drop in the homeless veteran population has been among the unsheltered, so ignoring that slice of the population would be counterintuitive.
The only reason to be skeptical of the Annual Homeless Assessment Report numbers, Roman said, would be because they are pretty much the only numbers available.
“It’s the administration reporting on the administration’s data, and we don’t have any verification of it,” Roman said.
Culhane, who helps with the count as the director of research for the VA’s National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans, said there were multiple reasons to believe the numbers.
For one, he said, individual communities conduct the counts.
For another, Obama and Congress together have thrown a lot of money at this problem in recent years.
“In 2009, the federal budget for veteran homelessness was $400 million, and that paid for a transitional housing program that was basically a fancy shelter,” he said. “Now the budget is $1.5 billion.”
Our ruling: Obama said, “Let’s take something like homelessness among veterans. So we’ve cut that by a third.” According to the most recent, best available data, he’s right. During his tenure, homelessness among veterans has decreased 32.57 percent. That number, however, is based on estimates that have an element of uncertainty. Funding to end homelessness among veterans has received bipartisan support in Congress. Still, Obama’s point is largely accurate, and we rate his statement Mostly True.