Due to a lack of state funds in the current biennial budget, two Veterans Housing and Recovery Program sites in Wisconsin will have to close during the month of September.
The sites are run by the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs and help homeless or at-risk-of-becoming-homeless veterans find stable housing by giving them a place to live and other services to help them.
Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement that he had included $1.9 million for the program in his budget proposal, but that it was taken out by Republican lawmakers.
He said that Republicans had agreed to give the program no new money, which meant that the veterans’ living facilities in Chippewa Falls and Green Bay would have to close as soon as September 30.
“Our veterans shouldn’t have to worry about how they’ll pay for that roof over their heads.” “End of story,” Evers said. “The bottom line is that there will now be fewer options for homeless veterans as a result of the Legislature’s irresponsible decision to reject the investments that I proposed.”
What Evers says is that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau told the Joint Finance Committee during the budget process that “without additional funding, the Department [of Veterans Affairs] would not have sufficient resources to maintain the program’s three sites.”
For sure, WDVA said this was true after the budget was signed into law.
Even though Evers says that the sites were closed because of Republicans in Congress, Sen. Andre Jacque, R-New Franken, who is in charge of the Senate committee on Natural Resources, Veteran and Military Affairs, said that Democrats in Congress and Evers’s way of negotiating are to blame.
“I voted across party lines on the Senate floor […] to provide additional funding for VHRP and expand the Disabled Veterans and Surviving Spouse Property Tax Credit in the budget as I’ve previously authored as standalone legislation,” Jacque told The Center Square in a statement.
“I am greatly disappointed that the governor did not prioritize veterans assistance higher within his budget negotiations,” she said. “I was further disappointed that the Senate Democrats decided to vote for the budget in greater numbers than required for it to pass, which greatly reduced the leverage of legislators like myself to insist on its inclusion in the budget to earn our support for the document.”
The speaker, Jacque, is not a member of the Joint Finance Committee. He also did not mention the legislative Republicans who are on that committee and their votes against the funding or choice not to adopt alternative funding to the budget.
Evers says that the 23 homeless soldiers living at Chippewa Falls and the 17 living at the Green Bay facility will be given other places to live and will continue to get services.
No longer are applications being looked at for the Chippewa Falls and Green Bay sites.
