Hennepin County announces ‘effective end’ to veteran homelessness

Navy veteran Alyssa Koeppen felt some added satisfaction on Tuesday as she listened to Hennepin County officials announce the county had “effectively ended” homelessness among veterans.

Koeppen, 54, became homeless and had to sleep on friends’ couches on-and-off after 13 years living abroad in the military and returning to Minnesota. But then in September, Koeppen secured rental housing through a Hennepin County program. She said that in recent months she’s noticed a reduction in the number of veterans she meets on the street who are homeless.

“We’re getting housed, and that matters,” Koeppen said.

She joined dozens of others at the celebratory event Tuesday morning in the Hennepin County Government Center where county officials declared they had made major progress with finding housing for veterans.

That assertion does not mean there will be no future veterans who become homeless. Plus, the overall rate of people experiencing homelessness in the county and state has increased to their highest levels, according to this year’s Point-in-Time Count.

But for any veterans who become homeless, the county says that period will be rare, brief and nonrecurring. The county is also helping veterans overcome homelessness at a faster rate than those who are becoming homeless, officials said.

Hennepin County had 69 veterans experiencing homelessness at the end of September, a nearly 60% decrease from August 2023, according to data provided by the county. Five of those 69 homeless veterans remain unsheltered, the county said. Neil Doyle, director of the Hennepin County Veteran Service Office, said he’s proud of the achievement, but also recognized there is much work to be done.

“Today’s announcement doesn’t by any means mark an end to this critical work,” he said to the crowd on Tuesday. “We are only pausing for a moment to acknowledge this key milestone.”

The recognition was certified by several departments and agencies in the federal government. It followed an eight-months review process, County Commissioner Angela Conley said. While it was a multigroup effort, the social workers who connected with homeless veterans played a key role, Conley said.

“Most importantly, it’s the boots on the ground, it’s our social workers, who are also veterans, who are on the ground, going into the ditches and into the encampments and finding our veterans and getting them housed,” Conley said.

A variety of elected local, county and federal officials addressed the crowd and praised the work by Hennepin County, including Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. In her comments, Flanagan thanked the county departments and said the progress is “showcasing the best of Minnesota.”

“This is what we do when we work together across silos and say we’ve got one goal, and that is to ensure that our warriors are treated with respect and have a place to lay down their heads every night,” Flannagan said.

While the number of homeless veterans decreased in Hennepin County, nearly 9,200 people overall were found to be homeless statewide during the Point-in-Time survey, up more than 9% from 2023. More people were found to be homeless this year in Hennepin County and the overall state than any other time since the Point-in-Time survey was first conducted in 2005, the county said on its website. The overall increase was largely due to a spike in families who entered shelters, according to the county’s website.

These annual counts for people experiencing homelessness are carried out nationwide on one night in January. Because it is conducted in the middle of winter, the “snapshot” can fail to capture the seasonal change in different populations of people experiencing homelessness.

Matt Traynor, interim executive director for the nonprofit group Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, said in a phone call that he’s encouraged by Hennepin County “effectively ending” veteran homelessness. But he cautioned that data only tells part of the story, and things are more dire for the state’s overall homeless population than it may appear.

“To be honest, the story we hear is that things are just as rough as they’ve always been, if not even more so,” Traynor said.

Hennepin County, which is Minnesota’s most populous, joins a growing list of counties that have declared an “effective end” to veteran homelessness. St. Louis County did so in 2022, and 13 counties in central Minnesota declared the milestone in 2021 in a joint declaration.