Mayor Robert Garcia has made it his goal to sleep veterans in beds rather than on Long Beach’s hard concrete.
“No veteran of the American armed forces should ever be without a home,” Mayor Garcia said in a public address on April 29. “Every single veteran deserves a place to live.”
In response to President Barack Obama’s Mayors Challenge to end veteran homelessness in America, Mayor Robert Garcia plans to work with the Veteran’s Affairs hospital in Long Beach to provide housing vouchers and living arrangements for all veterans by the end of 2015.
“It’s definitely going to happen,” Deputy Chief of Staff to the mayor Daniel Brezenoff said. “[The city of Long Beach has] a good collaborative effort with the VA.”
The mayor visited Washington on Tuesday to meet with President Obama and hundreds of other mayors across the nation for the Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness, according to Garcia’s Twitter.
According to the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services, which collects data on the city’s homeless population, the number of homeless in Long Beach has declined from 309 in 2011 to 94 as of April, a rate of almost 70 percent.
The mayor’s office said in a press release that city has a budget of $6.4 million dollars available for the purpose of relocating the remaining 94 homeless veterans.
Benjamin Perez, a Vietnam War veteran, said that new housing units have recently been made available at Villages of Cabrillo in Long Beach.
“Where I stay at [Villages of Cabrillo], there are mostly older [veterans], but there are some young ones,” Perez said. “Most of the guys there are friendly.”
Villages of Cabrillo set aside 500 housing units specifically for veterans, according a press release from the mayor’s office.
Even if the city provides every Long Beach veteran with adequate housing and food, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are in danger of becoming homeless, Brezenoff said.
“It is part of the challenge,” Brezenoff said. “”There is definitely a significant number of vets from first and second Gulf War.”