HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — The City of Huntington is working with healthcare organizations, mental health professionals, and groups across the board in an effort to eliminate veteran homelessness.
Huntington Mayor Patrick Farrell announced the official launch of the city’s newest pilot program “Mission Zero,” which will connect homeless veterans with on-the-spot care and provide them with food and other essential resources.
Farrell said on MetroNews Midday recently that since day one of his administration he has talked about the need to address and eliminate homelessness in the city, and this particular program focuses on that effort by honing in on one significant portion of the homeless population.
“We can get started to identify some of the problems that we’re having, the cracks in the system that are there and try to put together a new system that can help house people, and we want to house everybody, but what we want to do is start with veterans,” Farrell said.
He said that if they can solve the homelessness issue among veterans, they can in-turn, resolve it for the broader community.
Recently, Farrell said the city partnered with the VA on a surge event and assisted them in identifying homeless encampments along the banks of the Ohio River in Huntington.
He said that once those encampments were identified, they passed that information along to outreach service teams to bring them access to more services. Farrell said it brought together Veterans Affairs Administration social workers, healthcare providers, mental health professionals, the Huntington Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team, and substance abuse counselors all with the same goal of helping homeless vets.
Farrell said talking about everyone coming together for this program is the easy part, but actually putting it into action and executing it is where more of the challenge arises, because while all of these groups are working in various capacities to address the problem on their own, merging their resources takes a bigger effort.
“They are doing fantastic work, the hard part is when you say, hey, can you break through this silo and help share some of your resources for this goal that we all have together,” he said. “And, it is all very positive, because when we break through that and we can actually make a real impact, it makes a difference.”
Farrell said their mission is to connect unsheltered veterans with services on the spot, and during the July 29th surge, around 40 vets were able to complete real-time intakes, access behavioral and physical health care, a housing referral, and receive essential items like hygiene and wound care kits as well as warm meals.
Farrell said the ultimate goal through Mission Zero is to bring the veteran homeless population down to zero.
He said through this pilot program, their mission is to ensure that every veteran experiencing homelessness can be identified and housed within 30 days.
Later this summer, Farrell said they also want to work with landlords and provide educational events for them to learn about the complexities of veteran homelessness, re-align existing federal grants to focus on vulnerable vets, work with partners to utilize available housing vouchers, and create a shared by-name list for case management.
Farrell said that during the surge, he got a chance to sit down and talk with individuals in the encampments.
He said most unhoused people have very similar stories to tell.
“Whenever I have conversations with people who are experiencing homelessness, the stories generally run about the same, they had some success in life and then fell on hard times,” he said. “They’re now in a position where they don’t want to be on the streets, they would like to get off, and they know they either need help with addiction or they need some mental health services, or they need some help finding housing.”
However, Farrell said he’s aware some veterans choose to live off the grid and refuse help, and while you can’t force them to get the help they need, you can ensure them that the help is there if they do decide to take it.
“What you try to do is build trust with them, you want to show them that you have a resource that you think can help, but if someone refuses, then, you know, that’s all we can do,” Farrell said.
Beyond helping veterans through this program, the city is also working to create the Hub in an old city building where they will provide a network of resources under one roof to help the homeless population in a low-barrier type shelter setting.
Valley Health is the leading partner on the project and they are bringing together a coalition of people to provide food, mental health access, housing assistance and other wraparound services.
Farrell said the Hub is not just a social services initiative but a public safety one.
“What we want to do is we want to make sure Huntington is safe for everybody and that includes the people that live on the streets and that includes the people who live in our community, and so we believe by really addressing homelessness in a comprehensive way and we can get these people off the streets, we’re going to make it safer for them, we’re going to make it safer for people to live and work here, and we’re going to make the community better,” Farrell said.
Farrell said some real progress is currently taking place at the Hub, which is under renovation right now, and they keep adding on different agencies to be a part of it.