PRESS RELEASE

Bridges Outreach Celebrates Statewide Milestone in Reducing Veteran Homelessness, Calls for Continued Investment to Expand Success

New Jersey’s Bringing Veterans Home initiative demonstrates that homelessness can be solved through coordinated action, housing-focused strategies, and sustained public investment

SUMMIT, N.J., July 29, 2026 – Bridges Outreach, a leading nonprofit providing housing-focused outreach and long-term stability for people experiencing homelessness, is celebrating the remarkable success of the first year of New Jersey’s Bringing Veterans Home (BVH) initiative. The groundbreaking statewide effort has helped more than 2,500 veterans secure permanent housing since its inception in March 2025, despite a 43.5 percent increase in veterans experiencing homelessness during that same period. For the first time, more veterans in New Jersey are exiting homelessness into permanent housing each month than are experiencing homelessness for the first time.

As the inaugural BVH provider for New Jersey’s Metro Region, helping connect veterans to housing and supportive services throughout Essex and Union counties, Bridges is proud to join state leaders this Wednesday, July 29, in recognizing a model that has fundamentally changed how veterans experiencing homelessness are served across the state.

"The success of Bringing Veterans Home proves something we've believed for a long time: homelessness is solvable when we build systems that prioritize housing, coordination, and accountability," said Richard Uniacke, President of Bridges Outreach. "This initiative wasn't about managing homelessness more efficiently. It was about creating a system designed to end it for veterans. The results show what's possible when government, nonprofit organizations, and communities work together toward a shared goal."

The initiative was first launched through a partnership between the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA), New Jersey Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), and regional service providers in March 2025. Over the past 17 months, Bringing Veterans Home has demonstrated that homelessness is not an unsolvable problem, but one that can be significantly reduced through coordinated leadership, data-driven decision-making, and investment in permanent housing.

Unlike traditional approaches that often focus on emergency response, Bringing Veterans Home created a coordinated regional system centered on rapidly identifying veterans experiencing homelessness, connecting them to permanent housing, and removing barriers that historically delayed housing placements.

The results represent what advocates describe as a “proof of concept” for addressing homelessness more broadly across New Jersey.

Despite the initiative’s success, funding for the second year of BVH has been reduced rather than expanded to meet the growing need. Bridges had urged state leaders to increase the program’s investment beyond its initial $11 million allocation so regional providers could sustain and build upon the progress achieved during the first year. While Bridges' role as the BVH provider for the Metro Region will conclude at the end of its current grant term on July 31, the organization believes the program's first-year results demonstrate the value of continued investment in this proven model. 

“It would be a mistake to treat these results as evidence that the work is finished,” Uniacke said. “They are evidence that the collaborative model works and that greater investment can deliver even greater results. At a moment when homelessness is rising across New Jersey, we should be expanding proven solutions, not reducing the resources available to sustain them.”

While veteran homelessness is moving in the right direction, the broader homelessness crisis continues to worsen. According to New Jersey’s public Homelessness Dashboard, overall homelessness in the state increased 32 percent during the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, while unsheltered homelessness increased 61 percent.

As state leaders celebrate this milestone on Wednesday, Bridges hopes the accomplishment serves not as the finish line, but as a call to action to fully fund, sustain, and expand proven solutions that make homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring for all New Jerseyans.