Ruais: Manchester Has 'Effectively Ended' Veteran Homelessness

By NH Journal

Manchester has effectively ended veteran homelessness after more than 140 veterans secured permanent housing through a joint effort involving Harbor Care, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Mayor Jay Ruais’ administration.

“Over the years, our veterans have heard people say, ‘Welcome home.’ Now, I want to be able to tell them, ‘Welcome to your new home.’ Today, we can,” Ruais said.

Ruais was joined Thursday at Manchester’s Veterans Park by Harbor Care President and CEO Henry Och; VA Manchester Healthcare System Executive Director Kevin Forrest, FACHE; and Manchester Continuum of Care Chair Matthew McCall, who also represents The Home for Little Wanderers.

They announced that Manchester had met federal legacy benchmarks for effectively ending homelessness among the city’s veteran community.

“The success of this initiative demonstrates what’s possible when a community comes together around a shared purpose,” Och said. “This effort includes a deep level of collaboration between federal and municipal agencies, nonprofit organizations, landlords and developers, businesses, and community leaders. Manchester should be incredibly proud of this milestone.”

Harbor Care is a nonprofit housing and health care organization with a long history of assisting veterans in need. The Manchester Continuum of Care is a citywide collaborative focused on housing and homelessness.

Ruais pledged to effectively end veteran homelessness after launching the initiative in September 2024. At the time, 47 veterans were experiencing homelessness in the city.

Working with Harbor Care, the VA, the Continuum of Care and other community partners, the city developed a coordinated plan to connect those veterans with permanent housing. Every veteran in the original group has since secured housing, though one has died.

“More than 140 veterans have been housed, including every veteran from the original group,” Ruais said. “They fought for us. It is only right that we fight for them.”

Using current data and regular meetings among service providers, the initiative identifies veterans in need and tracks their progress toward housing. Community partners work with each veteran to find housing, provide services, and remove barriers that can delay placement.

The coalition also created a Sustainability Fund to cover expenses such as security deposits, application fees, emergency housing and identification documents.

“This milestone is worth celebrating because it shows what’s possible when a community comes together around a shared goal,” McCall said. “By creating a coordinated, targeted response for veterans, we helped make veteran homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring—and built a model that can help us address homelessness among other populations as well.”

Officials stressed that Thursday’s announcement does not mean a Manchester veteran will never again experience homelessness. It means the city has a system capable of quickly identifying veterans experiencing a housing crisis, connecting them with services and helping them secure permanent housing.

The Manchester Continuum of Care reviewed and certified that the system met legacy benchmarks established by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness for making veteran homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring. The announcement did not say whether federal agencies had separately confirmed the designation.

“When we launched this initiative, I said that just like in the military, we would not accomplish this mission alone,” Ruais said. “Harbor Care, the VA, the Manchester Continuum of Care, our landlords, veteran service organizations, outreach workers, and other community partners made this possible. Our work now is to maintain this system and ensure veterans who face homelessness are quickly connected with housing and support. Additionally, this is a roadmap for how we can tackle homelessness more broadly. We can take the lessons learned from this initiative and scale it to address the larger population. This is exactly what we have done with the elderly and infirmed, families and children, along with those suffering from substance use disorder or mental health issues.”

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.