Apr. 26, 2012 - The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans has announced that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have been selected as recipients of the 2012 Jerald Washington Memorial Founders' Award, the highest honor bestowed by the nation's homeless veteran assistance community.President Obama is the first person to receive the award more than once. He was honored in 2009 as the first president in U.S. history to make ending veteran homelessness a priority of his administration. Within months of that event, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki announced the "Five-Year Plan to End Veteran Homelessness," an ambitious initiative to ensure veterans in crisis will never again be left to fend for themselves on the streets.
By June 2010, every member of the president's cabinet had signed onto "Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness," the nation's first comprehensive blueprint for multi-agency cooperation to end all homelessness in America. That historic document incorporated Secretary Shinseki's Five-Year Plan, which calls for increased access to housing, health care, income supports and homelessness prevention assistance for veterans and their families.
"Since the announcement of the Five-Year Plan, President Obama has consistently demonstrated his commitment to ending veteran homelessness in his budget requests to Congress," said Patrick Ryan, Chairman of the NCHV Board of Directors. "His budget submission for FY 2013 brings the nation to within reach of that goal. Secretary Shinseki and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan have dramatically improved the systems in place to help veterans in crisis; and the steady decrease in the number of homeless veterans since 2009 is a testament to the president's leadership." read more>>>
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