MINNEAPOLIS — Hennepin County officials announced that veteran homelessness has "effectively ended" inside the county. That designation comes from the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, HUD, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"There's no greater mission than being able to change somebody's life for the better," Neil Doyle, Director of Hennepin County Veterans Services, said.
That designation does not mean that there are no unhoused veterans in Hennepin County, though. Officials shared Tuesday morning that there are currently 69 veterans experiencing homelessness inside the county.
That's down from last August when the county saw 167 unhoused veterans. It's a downward trend that has continued for years.
In January 2010, the county had roughly 644 unhoused veterans. In January 2016, that fell to 276, according to the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs.
"Everyone deserves a place to call home," Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said. "Especially the men and women who have sacrificed everything for us and our country."
Navy veteran Alyssa Koeppen benefitted from county services herself. Previously bouncing around, Koeppen now has a consistent place to call home.
"There are things that I want to do, volunteer-wise, that now I can do because I have a place to go back to," she said. "It just means everything."
County officials emphasized that this designation does not mean that their work is over.
"I want to reinforce that functional zero does not mean that no veteran is experiencing homelessness or that no veteran will experience homelessness in the future," Brad Lindsay, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, said. "It does mean that a community has driven that number down towards zero and is keeping it below the community's capacity to ensure positive exits from homelessness."
Doyle says work will continue to ensure that this acknowledgment is maintained – and possibly expanded.
"Now that we've built a system that makes homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurrent, we plan on staffing those systems to the same levels, if not higher, moving forward," he said.
For more information on Hennepin County veterans services, click here.