Kathryn Monet, executive director of the non-profit National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, said Cawthorn’s “zero dollar” claim is “absolutely false”. Tom Porter, executive vice president for government affairs for the defense organization of the Veterans of America in Iraq and Afghanistan, said “it just isn’t true”. Porter added that the American Rescue Plan has an “enormous amount of money for veterans” and that it is important that the authorities “be accurate” about government spending, as the veterans are listening.
Cawthorn’s office said it could not speak openly about the tweet because it came from the congressman’s Twitter account, not from his official congressional account. But a source close to Cawthorn, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the tweet was in fact a claim that $ 0 of this particular ICE contract for home migrants goes to homeless veterans – not, in other words, a claim that the government is spending zero dollars on homeless veterans period.
But Cawthorn did not make that clear at all. If he wanted to say that zero dollars of an immigration contract unrelated to homeless veterans goes to homeless veterans, he could have said it explicitly – although it made the tweet sound quite bizarre. The words Cawthorn actually tweeted left the impression that he was talking about general government spending on homeless veterans.
Spending in the Billions
The annual assessment of the homeless by the federal government found that 37,252 veterans were living homeless in a single night in January 2020. This represents a nearly 50% decline from 2009 numbers, but a slight increase in 2019 numbers.
The VA’s basic budget for fiscal year 2021 allocates about $ 1.9 billion for veteran homeless people. (Here are some details about what VA does for homeless veterans.) VA said in its 2021 fiscal budget plan that it intended to spend another $ 313 million on veteran suicide prevention programs.
The VA planned to spend $ 10.2 billion in fiscal year 2021 on mental health services. Although it is not specifically an expense for anti-suicide measures, it is very likely that some of them will help prevent suicides.
Federal spending on homeless veterans is not limited to VA. For example, the Department of Labor runs the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, which provides more than $ 50 million a year for an initiative that aims to help homeless veterans get and keep jobs.
In addition to these budget allocations, which were approved by former President Donald Trump in 2020, pandemic relief bills signed by Trump in 2020 and Biden in 2021 provided millions in extra funds to address homelessness among veterans. Cawthorn, who took office in January 2021, joined his Republican colleagues in voting against Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion American bailout plan.
The American Rescue Plan includes $ 14.5 billion for veterans’ health care, broadly defined. Hayes, the VA spokesman, said that “part” of that money – he said he could not yet provide a specific dollar amount – “will finance the expansion of temporary housing, smartphones and other health care and support services for veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. “Hayes said that” these expanded services helped some 37,000 veterans under the CARES Act, “the relief bill that Trump enacted in March 2020.
The American Rescue Plan includes a $ 386 million program to pay for retraining and housing support for up to 17,250 veterans who became unemployed because of the pandemic. Porter, of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans group, called the housing allowance “generous” and “significant”.
The American Rescue Plan also includes broader provisions that can help veterans, among others, who are dealing with housing challenges – such as more than $ 21 billion for rent assistance, $ 10 billion for mortgage assistance, $ 5 billion in emergency housing vouchers and nearly $ 5 billion to assist homeless people. And there is $ 4 billion for the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders and substance abuse.
Cawthorn was right to say that the Biden administration is putting some migrants in hotel rooms, although it is important to note that migrants were also sometimes placed in hotel rooms with Trump. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement to CNN on Saturday that the $ 86.9 million contract with a Texas-based organization, Endeavors, would provide 1,239 beds – in addition to health assessments, Covid-19 testing and processing services – for families of migrants crossing the border with Mexico. Reuters reported that these migrants would be “initially” housed “in seven different branded hotels”; ICE and Endeavors would not provide further details to CNN.
