EDITORIAL: Local solutions better for homeless veterans

Three Cabinet secretaries visited Las Vegas this week and vowed to end veteran homelessness. We hope they take lessons from how Las Vegas has made progress tackling the problem and tell President Barack Obama that more expensive federal interventions will never get the job done.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez were in town Tuesday for the Mayors Challenge conference at World Market Center. They participated in a panel discussion on veteran homelessness, which is declining nationwide. And Las Vegas, long panned as a social services wasteland, is leading the way.

As reported by the Review-Journal’s Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said Southern Nevada has fewer than 700 homeless veterans, about one-third of the estimated 2,000 five years ago. Mr. McDonald said much of that progress has been made over the past year, with the veteran homeless population declining by almost half since 2014.

“You’re doing better than the national average, and I think that’s reflected in the cooperation,” he told reporters Tuesday.

“There are multiple mayors from multiple jurisdictions where boundaries don’t get in the way. You have the not-for-profits, the for-profits, you have veterans service organizations represented there. … The way that people are working collaboratively in this region is really a big deal. That’s why we’re here.”

A model project is Veterans Village, which opened in May 2012 in a converted motel on the Strip. With the help of volunteers and corporate partners, Veterans Village has provided more than 68,000 resident bed nights and placed nearly 690 veterans in full-time jobs. Veterans live at the property for an average of five months and pay rent.

The VA credits Opening Doors, a federal initiative, with helping to reduce veteran homelessness and put veterans to work. But local interventions, especially through charities, will always produce better results than the lumbering federal leviathan. Just look at the VA’s own inefficiencies in providing medical care and opening new facilities as proof. With the billions of dollars the VA squanders on hospital construction overruns, the agency could have built permanent housing for each of the country’s estimated 57,000 homeless veterans — but those homes would probably be defective and uninhabitable.

It takes local involvement and investment to solve any social problem. But Mr. Perez remains convinced that the numbers aren’t better because Washington isn’t spending enough. “Sequestration is a straight jacket that is choking our ability to help veterans,” he said. Would that be the same sequestration that led to one federal layoff, according to the Government Accountability Office? The same sequestration that led to the budget deficit reduction the Obama administration brags about?

The lesson for the Cabinet secretaries: To end veteran homelessness, emphasize local solutions, not federal ones.