VA houses largest number of homeless Veterans in seven years

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it permanently housed 51,936 homeless Veterans across the country in fiscal year 2025. That number is 4,011 more Veterans than VA housed last year under the prior administration. It’s also VA’s best performance since it began tracking the number of individual Veterans permanently housed instead of the total number of permanent housing placements, ensuring a more accurate count of the number of Veterans helped. The Biden Administration began using this new methodology in 2022, and when applied retroactively to 2019, the numbers look like this: FY Permanent Housing Placements Unique Veterans Housed FY 2025 53,839 51,936 FY 2024 51,124 47,925 FY 2023 48,059 46,051 FY 2022 41,208 39,868 FY 2021 39,637 38,401 FY 2020 45,397 44,048 FY 2019 49,462 48,133 “This is life-changing and in many cases life-saving work,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “We are proud of the progress VA is making to get Veterans off the streets and are redoubling our efforts to continue this momentum moving forward.” In May 2025, VA took bold action to reduce Veteran homelessness by launching its Getting Veterans Off the Street initiative, in which every VA health care system across the country hosted dedicated outreach surge events to locate unsheltered Veterans and offer them immediate access to housing programs, health care, behavioral health services, and VA benefits. Getting Veterans Off the Street helped move 25,065 unsheltered Veterans to interim (emergency and transition) or permanent housing. These efforts complement President Trump’s May executive order to establish a National Center for Warrior Independence for Homeless Veterans on the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center campus. The National Center for Warrior Independence for Homeless Veterans aims to provide housing and support for up to 6,000 homeless Veterans from across the nation by 2028. Every day, VA staff and community partners across the country help Veterans find permanent housing — such as apartments or houses to rent or own — often with subsidies to help make the housing more affordable. In some cases, VA teams and partners help Veterans end their homelessness by reuniting them with family and friends. Visit VA.gov/homeless to learn about housing initiatives and other programs supporting homeless Veterans. If you are a Veteran who is experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, call the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at 877-4AID-VET (877-424-3838) or visit VA.gov/homeless.