JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is investing over $83 million to tackle Veteran homelessness across Florida\u2014 and one of the largest portions is going to a Jacksonville-based nonprofit.<\/p>\n
Changing Homelessness, which serves more than 1,200 Veteran households every month, has received a $15.6 million grant from the VA to expand its services throughout the region.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <\/b><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAnd these are families that were either homeless and we rapidly rehousing, which means we get them back into a home of their own,\u201d said Dawn Gilman, CEO of Changing Homelessness.<\/p>\n The funds will support the organization\u2019s Supportive Services for Veteran Families program, helping provide critical resources such as housing assistance, counseling, transportation, legal aid, and childcare\u2014especially for Veterans transitioning out of homelessness.<\/p>\n While homelessness overall in Northeast Florida is on the decline, Veteran homelessness has seen a slight uptick, according to the latest 2025 Point-in-Time report.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did see a slight uptick in that, but again we\u2019re moving it back down,\u201d said Gilman.<\/p>\n The report also highlights an 8% decrease in the number of people staying in shelters and a 49% drop in unsheltered homelessness.<\/p>\n \u201cThat showed a pretty significant decrease in folks experiencing especially unsheltered or street homelessness,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n Gilman attributes much of that success to proactive, on-the-ground outreach in both urban and rural areas.<\/p>\n \u201cOur strategy is to ensure that we have coverage even in our really rural areas, going out on a regular basis at noon and likely locations to see who\u2019s out there to make sure we don\u2019t miss anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n With this new federal funding, Changing Homelessness is expanding its efforts across 64 counties in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia, including Duval, Clay, St. Johns, Nassau, and Baker counties in Florida.<\/p>\n The organization has already reached a major milestone.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we have just broken through the number where we are continuously serving at least 1200 households every month, and we anticipate it will stay at that or increase for the rest of this year,\u201d Gilman said.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is investing over $83 million to tackle Veteran homelessness…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":251969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[7320,5229,7323,3188,723,7324,7265,7310,7327,7325,7326,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,11457,133280,7322,7321],"class_list":{"0":"post-251968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-cbs47","11":"tag-fl","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-fox30","14":"tag-homelessness","15":"tag-jacksonville","16":"tag-jacksonville-fl","17":"tag-northeast-florida","18":"tag-southeast-georgia","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-veteran","26":"tag-veteran-affairs","27":"tag-wfox","28":"tag-wjax"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115261294875616032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}