Hope for Veterans Expands into Lackawanna, Lehigh, and Wyoming Counties to House Homeless Veteran Families
Program Prevents Homelessness and Rapidly Re-Houses Homeless Veteran Households
Easton, PA – Community Hope dba Hope for Veterans® has now expanded our Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program to help veteran households struggling with homelessness in Lackawanna, Lehigh and Wyoming Counties in PA. Through this expansion, Hope for Veterans will provide rapid re-housing and other essential services to veterans struggling with homelessness in seven (7) Eastern Pennsylvania counties and 13 New Jersey counties. The nonprofit organization, which is the largest organization in New Jersey serving homeless veterans, has been serving veterans in NJ since 2004 and expects to serve as many as one thousand homeless and at-risk veterans this year.
SSVF staff provide wrap-around services to quickly secure housing for homeless veterans and to help the family achieve housing stability for the longer term. The program also aids veterans facing eviction from rental housing and who are at imminent risk of losing their housing without any other means of support. Funding for the Hope for Veterans® SSVF Program has been made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The expanded SSVF Program now serves Pennsylvania homeless and at-risk veteran households in Bucks, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Monroe, Northampton, Pike and Wyoming Counties. In New Jersey, the program aids veterans and their families in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union and Warren Counties.
Housing Placement, Services and Financial Aid for Homeless Veterans and Their Families
Veterans enrolled in the SSVF Program are eligible for a range of financial assistance and supportive services to help them avoid eviction and to rapidly re-house them if they have become recently homeless. Financial assistance to the veteran and their family can include help with back rent or utility payments for families struggling to remain in their homes. For veteran families who have lost their housing, SSVF can provide financial aid with rental and utility security deposits and initial rental payments.
Hope for Veterans support services range from assistance with transportation; child care; employment services; linkage to medical care, behavioral healthcare and recovery services for veterans experiencing PTSD and other effects of combat; and other services to help the veterans and their family re-establish financial stability and self-sufficiency.
Community Hope CEO J. Michael Armstrong said his nonprofit expects to help as many as one thousand veteran families avert or overcome homelessness in the year ahead.
“This is a pro-active approach to helping our veterans and their families who have already sacrificed so much,” said Armstrong. “We are proud to be on the cutting edge of ensuring that those who honorably served our country do not fall into poverty, despair and homelessness.”
Armstrong reports that the veteran families his agency has served range from young soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan to war veterans in their nineties. He explained that these families have been threatened by homelessness for various reasons, including returning soldiers unable to find jobs with a live-able wage to support themselves and their families to combat veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress and other war injuries.
