Employee Spotlight
August 12, 2024
Blossom Kapper
HCHV Outreach Coordinator/Supervisor
Bay Pines VA
This year, we’re spotlighting VA’s Housing First approach through a series of interviews with VA employees and taking a look at how they’re working to end Veteran homelessness through this approach. Learn more about Housing First.
Q: What does Housing First mean to you on a day-to-day basis?
A: I’ve been with VA for 12 years, where I’ve been able to implement a lot of Housing First principles while supervising an outreach team.
We’re fortunate in the Bay Pines catchment that we don’t have a huge unsheltered Veteran population. The Veterans we serve are touched by many programs and have sometimes been discharged negatively from other programs.
I often find myself advocating to give a Veteran another chance. Maybe he’s now entered treatment, or he’s now motivated. Sometimes it’s not even the second time or the third time. It’s the ninth or tenth time, and I’m saying, “Let’s give this Veteran a chance.”
Q: What do people get wrong about Housing First?
A: When we were first kicking off the low-demand model and the Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program, someone said to me, “We can lower demands without lowering expectations.” I find myself using that quote all the time because it’s so true.
I think one of the ideas we need to educate people about is that we don’t have to ignore the harms that often come with high-risk behavior. We can still have the expectation of attending treatment or achieving sobriety, but we do need to give them a chance and provide wraparound services while we focus on harm reduction. Again, we’re not just ignoring those harms. We can have boundaries along with that support.
I also let providers know that we’re here to provide wraparound support for them. We’re not going to put Veterans in housing and leave them. We will continue to case manage.
Q: There’s a misperception that implementing Housing First is easy. What are certain challenges that resonate with you?
A: In weekly referral calls and quarterly GPD and HCHV meetings with our providers, we’ll highlight a program that’s doing Housing First well. It takes us back to social work 101 to validate those challenges and share other experiences that have worked well, whether that’s a Veteran example or highlighting a program.
Recently, I asked one of our providers to share and he opened by saying, “I’m not going to sit here and say it’s easy. It is one of the most challenging things.”
It was nice for the other providers to hear from someone who is doing it well. He was able to share a couple of success stories without naming names. These are Veterans who were on their tenth chance, and they successfully left the GPD program to enter into permanent housing with mental health care while being stabilized on medication.
Q: What is your “why” for this work?
A: It’s the belief in the Housing First principle that housing is a right.
It also brings me tons of gratitude, especially in this role when I’m working from a macro perspective, to advocate for a difficult Veteran to be given a chance. I love to see their success, whether I’m in the background or face-to-face with the Veteran. I want them to know that they have a person who is really pushing for them. I don’t know that you get that gratitude in other worlds.
