Our History

The Need

In the early 1990’s, the West LA VA Med­ical Cen­ter polled their inpa­tients and dis­cov­ered that 25% of these vet­er­ans had no place to exit to when they were dis­charged – in other words, they were being dis­charged to homelessness.

In 1992, Ninth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals Judge Harry Pregerson, a Marine vet­eran from World War II, formed “The Gen­e­sis Com­mit­tee” to address this lack of hous­ing for home­less vet­er­ans in Los Ange­les County. This group became the first Board of Direc­tors for U.S.VETS.

The Founders

This orig­i­nal group included Col. Joseph Smith, the cur­rent Direc­tor of Mil­i­tary and Vet­er­ans Affairs for the County of Los Ange­les; Mau­rice Kane, the past Direc­tor of the Car­pen­ters Edu­ca­tional and Train­ing Insti­tute, Robert Jor­dan the for­mer South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Regional Direc­tor for the DAV (Dis­abled Amer­i­can Vet­er­ans), Allan Jack­son of TRW Aero­space, and David Far­rar the found­ing part­ner of the law firm Brand, Far­rar, Dzi­ubla, Freilich & Kolstead.

An Hon­orary Board was also formed com­prised of for­mer Pres­i­dents Jimmy Carter and Ger­ald Ford, actors Gre­gory Peck, Jimmy Stew­art, Sid­ney Poitier, Jack Lem­mon, Den­nis Franz, and direc­tor Oliver Stone.

California Beginnings

U.S.VETS inau­gural site was West­side Res­i­dence Hall in Ingle­wood, Calif., which opened in 1993. Five vet­er­ans were brought into this facil­ity in May of that year and the site has since grown to house 450 vet­er­ans. This was fol­lowed in 2000 by Vil­lages at Cabrillo, a 26-acre base clo­sure project in Long Beach, California, the largest tran­si­tional hous­ing facil­ity for home­less vet­er­ans in the coun­try, which presently houses over 550 home­less veterans.

National Presence

Over the next 18 years, more sites opened in Hous­ton in 1997, in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Ariz., and Hon­olulu in 2001; and in Prescott, Arizona, Wash­ing­ton D.C., and at the March Air Reserve Base in River­side, California in 2003.

U.S.VETS loca­tions have served more than 20,000 home­less vet­er­ans over the past 18 years, pro­vid­ing them with hous­ing, employ­ment, coun­sel­ing and sup­port ser­vices to help them build their skills and regain their inde­pen­dence. Sixty-four per­cent have made suc­cess­ful tran­si­tions into per­ma­nent hous­ing and achieve­ment of self-sufficiency. The orga­ni­za­tion also oper­ates the highly suc­cess­ful Vet­er­ans in Progress work reen­try pro­grams at each site, which con­sis­tently aver­age 80% employ­ment and 65% suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion to long-term or per­ma­nent hous­ing. More than 1,000 vet­er­ans each year gain full-time employ­ment through these programs. Spe­cial needs pro­grams, tai­lored to indi­vid­ual needs, pro­vide ser­vices to female vet­er­ans, non-custodial fathers, the chron­i­cally men­tally ill, and Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. All these pro­grams are col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts with local area providers, VA Med­ical Cen­ters, and local gov­ern­ment agen­cies; and are funded to pro­vide long-term tran­si­tional hous­ing, res­i­den­tial employ­ment ser­vices, case man­age­ment, sub­stance abuse treat­ment, and out­reach to home­less veterans.