Lincoln earns national recognition for work with homeless veterans

The city of Lincoln has been recognized for its work in helping to end homelessness for area veterans.

Lincoln became nationally recognized for achieving a “functional zero” designation, which means the city has the ability to house any veteran who identifies as homeless.

Jana Langhorst started working at the Lincoln VA 8 years ago.

She says in that time, the city has raised its commitment to giving aid to homeless vets.

“When I started I think we only had about 25 vouchers here in Lincoln for homeless veterans and since that time we have grown to 162, which has had a huge impact on our ability to effectively end homelessness for veterans here in Lincoln,” said Langhorst.

Lincoln is the 62nd community in the country to achieve this benchmark.

Nebraska’s Center on Children, Families and the Law helps the VA by working to attain federal, state and local grants to fund veteran services.

“We have a community and support system in place that will quickly identify any veteran that becomes homeless in our community, we have a system in place that can then assess and identify the most appropriate housing solution for their particular situation,” said program director Jeff Chambers.

Nearly a year ago, the Victory Park Residence Home became the first in Lincoln to offer a voucher program for homeless veterans.

“A lot of our veterans who are living here at Victory find it really convenient because it is so close to the medical outpatient clinic here at the VA so they can come up for their medical and mental health appointments or other services that they are seeking,” said Langhorst.

The apartment complex helps to subsidize the rent for veterans who live on fixed incomes.

In 2013, 7% of the homeless population in Lincoln was veterans.

That has since been reduced to 3%.