Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019
Floor Speech
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Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, let me again express my appreciation.
As I indicated, there is a very solid and strong stand on this bill regarding providing for our homeless veterans. It is something that we contend with in our city of Houston, but we are grateful that the local officials are very concerned about it.
I want to make sure as we go to conference that our focus will continue to be on making sure that maybe in our lifetime we extinguish this concept of homeless veterans and homelessness among veterans by providing them with a pathway to opportunity and success.
So I ask my colleagues to support my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, let me close by acknowledging and thanking the chairman and ranking member again for their leadership on this bill and to remind my colleagues that there are a series of stories of veterans who really needed these services.
Katie, an SSVF caseworker at the Salvation Army Bismarck, received a call from a veteran named Cherie. Cherie was referred by the family assistance adviser at the military service center in Bismarck. According to Cherie, she didn't know the Salvation Army had the veterans program until she inquired for help.
Cherie approached them. She had suffered a head injury resulting in a 3-inch blood clot, skull fracture, severe concussion. In short, she suffered traumatic brain injury. While on unpaid medical leave via physician's orders, she was terminated from her employer.
This is the kind of devastating news that will be heard from veterans who will seek and receive this kind of help.
Mr. Chairman, I include in the Record articles explaining the plight of a veteran in Bismarck: How the Salvation Army Helped a Mother and Her Children Keep Their Home
On December 20, 2011, Katie, an SSVF Caseworker at the Salvation Army Bismarck Corps, received a call from a Veteran named Cherie. Cherie was referred by the Family Assistance Advisor at the Military Service Center in Bismarck, ND. According to Cherie, she ``didn't know the Salvation Army had the Veterans program until [she] required help.'' Cherie approached the SSVF program because on November 19th, she suffered a head injury resulting in a 3-inch blood clot, skull fracture and a severe concussion; in short, she suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). While on unpaid medical leave via physician's orders, she was terminated from her employer. A single mother of two, her biggest concern was maintaining her current residency.
On December 21st, when Cherie met with Katie, she was very emotional and had difficulty processing her thoughts. She was extremely overwhelmed with how to pay for her rent and utilities and provide for her children while unemployed. Katie provided emotional support as well as resources for a food box, an application for food stamps through the county, contact information for a Veterans employment team representative and lastly, information about a support group for women Veterans in the Bismarck community. In Cherie's own words, ``The SSVF assistance provided peace of mind and helped keep me on my feet, especially with having kids. Katie has been such a calming influence, good about following up and very supportive.''
Since Cherie has been involved with the Salvation Army, she has been able to focus on recovering from her TBI, has found temporary full-time employment for which permanent placement is promising, and is able to provide for her children and keep a roof over their heads. She's also spreading the word to fellow Veterans throughout the state about the SSVF program.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I ask my colleagues to support the program overall and my amendment.
Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to briefly explain Jackson Lee Amendment No. 34.
Before I begin, let me express my appreciation and thanks to good friends, Chairman Calvert and Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, for their hard and constructive work in shepherding this legislation to the floor.
Chairman Calvert and I have worked together constructively for many years and he has always distinguished himself as one of the more bipartisan members of the House.
And Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz has for years been one of the ablest Members of this body; I thank them both for their commitment to the important work of ensuring that our veterans receive the care and support they have earned from a grateful nation.
Jackson Lee Amendment No. 34 makes a modest but important improvement to the bill by increasing the amount of funding for the ``Supportive Services for Veterans' Families'' account by $2 million, offset by a reduction of $2.5 million to the $4 billion allocated to the VA's ``Information Technology Systems'' account.
Today, in our country, there are approximately 107,000 veterans (male and female) who are homeless on any given night.
Any perhaps twice as many (200,000) experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year.
The VA's ``Supportive Services for Veterans' Families'' Program helps veterans, and their families, who may have fallen on hard times or hit a rough patch in life and need a little help from the country they selflessly risked their life to defend.
Homeless veterans or veterans facing homelessness who have minor age children are in need of special programs that allow housing that welcomes children.
Jackson Lee Amendment No. 34 will enable this vital program to serve more veterans' families in need of help by provide a bit more funding for grants to private non-profit organizations and consumer cooperatives that provide supportive services to very low-income veteran families living in or transitioning to permanent housing.
The SSVF Program ensures that eligible veteran families receive the outreach, case management, and assistance in obtaining VA and other benefits.
These services may include health care, daily living, legal services, fiduciary and payee services, personal financial planning, child care, transportation, housing counseling.
The SSVF Program enables VA staff and local homeless service providers to work together to effectively address the unique challenges that make it difficult for some veterans and their families to remain stably housed.
Many homeless veterans, including in my own state of Texas, lack housing because they lost their job or could no longer afford rent; many suffer from an untreated mental illness that keeps them from working.
Every day the SSVF program makes a real difference in the lives of real people.
Veterans like the Air Force veteran who, hoping to utilize the skills he learned in the service, instead bounced from job to job after being discharged and found himself sleeping at night on the cold cement under a bridge in Chicago.
Through the Thresholds Veterans Project, funded through the SSVF, this hero received steady community service support and eventually was placed in his own studio apartment.
He now says, in his own words: I have a home. I enjoy bein' inside.''
Veterans like the one in Texas who because he lost his job at a manufacturing plant and was unable to pay the bills, was forced to seek shelter for himself and his family at a homeless shelter.
Fortunately, the homeless shelter was a SSVF grantee and was able to assist the veteran obtain employment and his family in securing affordable low-cost housing.
There are thousands of similar success stories made possible by the SSVF Program that I could share but all of them share a common theme: they involve veterans who served their country proudly, fell down on their luck, picked themselves back up, and found affordable and sustainable housing for their families because of the assistance and support made possible by the SSVF program.
Ensuring that veterans have a place of their own to call home is the very least we can do.
I urge my colleagues to support the Jackson Lee Amendment and commit ourselves to the hard but necessary work of ending veteran homelessness in America.
I urge my colleagues to support Jackson Lee Amendment No. 34.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time
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