‘Circling the drain.’ How one Georgia veteran fought off homelessness.

As a master carpenter, form-setter, concrete finisher, block mason, and bricklayer, Thomas Hilado, now in his early 60s, feels stable and confident.

“You name it, I can build you a house,” says Mr. Hilado, a former 82nd Airborne Division heavy drop rigging specialist.

But just a few months ago, Mr. Hilado was about to lose his own home.

In a poignant example of how small steps often lead to big leaps even on chronic nationwide problems, local efforts around the country are addressing the scourge of homelessness among people like Mr. Hilado, by combining Veterans Affairs outreach with local resources and the perseverance of veterans themselves.

For Mr. Hilado, that local help came just in the nick of time.

His rent had nearly doubled overnight on his rented duplex in a gritty corner of Athens, Georgia. His fingers were so gnarled from a life of hard labor that he could no longer hold the tools to build a replacement, even if he had the resources. Worse, he had sold off all his tools and a prized golf club set to subsidize his modest railroad pension from a career driving spikes as a trackman.

After rent and bills, he says he had $4 to feed himself for the month – and nothing left to sell.

“I was circling the drain,” he says. “I was ready to give up.”

“Repair what’s broken.”

In 2023, the total number of homeless American veterans was 35,574 – an increase of 7.4% over the year before. Another 1.4 million other veterans across the country, like Mr. Hilado, are considered at risk of homelessness or living in unsafe surroundings. “Homeless” can mean the former soldier is squatting or couch surfing. “Unsheltered” means that person lives in a tent or on a park bench.

After California, Georgia has the highest percentage of homeless veterans who are entirely unsheltered: 404 out of 701, according to research by the nonprofit group Mission Roll Call.

To be sure, the number of homeless veterans dropped by more than half between 2010 and 2020, but an uptick in recent years has sparked new funding and efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs, including a One Team approach inspired mainly by successes in New Orleans.

Starting in 2014, under Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the city reduced its number of homeless veterans to “functional zero” by requiring any veteran living on the street or in abandoned housing to be placed in permanent housing within 30 days unless they actively refused to go.

Today, the VA “One Team” program, a strategy of activating local resources that brings together housing, employment, and outreach workers for each former service member, has also proven effective at coordinating support for veterans, especially those living outside or under bridges.

Last year, the VA district that covers the Central Savannah River Valley helped 172 veterans find or stay in homes – almost three times the goal. Two of those former soldiers lost their homes during the year, but their caseworkers were able to find them new housing. The region currently has just about 25 veterans either completely homeless or at severe risk of becoming homeless.

“What we have seen is a housing crisis, a rent increase, and people barely making ends meet now struggling even more,” says Sabrina Faircloth, a VA caseworker. “Sometimes veterans are afraid to advocate for themselves with a landlord, afraid that they’ll return to homelessness. So we help them truly rebuild their lives and learn how to talk to folks and, if needed, repair relationships that are broken.”

As he reflects on Veterans Day this year, Mr. Hilado says that his path to a secure home is hardly a simple one of government bureaucracy swooping in to help. In fact, before finding out about a VA housing program, he fought on several fronts, even petitioning the mayor of Athens to fight the rent hike – with no success.

But a case manager approached him recently while he was getting medical treatment from the VA. Not long after that, he moved to a brand-new unit nearby. Thanks to a federal housing subsidy set aside for veterans, Mr. Hilado now pays just over $400 a month in rent, which, after bills, leaves him over $500 a month for food and sundries.

“I can handle that,” he says.

Why some soldiers go unhoused

Like many homeless veterans, Mr. Hilado has known rough patches. He describes how, at 11, he was taken from his dad’s home after his father, a prize-winning boxer, pummeled him so hard that the police were called.

After years in foster care, he joined the Army, spending his tour starting in 1978 largely at Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

“Cold War, baby,” he says of the era.

Given his own struggles back then and beyond, Mr. Hilado understands why veteran homelessness remains a stubborn problem in the U.S. A slightly larger percentage of veterans are homeless than of the general population.

“Some of those guys want to be homeless,’’ says Mr. Hilado. “They don’t want to be productive members of society.’’

“For some, it’s mental; for some, it’s PTSD,’’ he says. “And it’s hard for those kinds of people to trust anybody, because nobody has been helping them for years. So when someone all of a sudden says, ‘We’re going to help you,’ they say, ‘Leave me alone.’”

“But,” he says, “I got desperate.”

As he heads into Veterans Day, Mr. Hilado says he has felt the last year’s stress fade as he enjoys a brand-new apartment unit. His financial problems are finally in the rearview mirror.

“If you help yourselves and reach out to the right people, you’ll get the help,” he says. “But you’ve got to put some groundwork in yourself. It’s not going to magically appear with a Santa Claus present floating down to your house.”