Roy Krieger has been living in his camper van for 20 years. He’s a veteran who served in the navy in the 1960’s. Now he's in his 80’s and it’s time to settle down!
"I've been beset with medical problems, and this whole thing has turned around on me that I'm not as healthy as I thought or I wanted," Krieger told KCLU. "So I am under medical care, and it looks like I better settle down in a place in Ventura. And so here I am.
He’s one of a number of Veterans here at the Stand Out Clinic, being held for the first time to connect veterans face to face with local services.
"I didn't know all social services were available. And this is just, just wonderful," he said.
"What it means for me is there's a potential that I'll have veteran assisted housing. I'm just about ready to shut down my camper and go gracefully to an assisted housing provided by the VA services. I'm pretty grateful for that," said Krieger.
Alicia Morales-McKinney is with the Ventura County Executive Office and one of the organizers. She says this clinic has the aim of reducing homelessness for Veterans in the county.
"We're here collectively to end veteran homelessness. And the purpose of our Stand Out clinic is to really get some of our veterans here to help with documentation, get them connected to shelter and transitional housing immediately, and also placed and matched with some of our permanent housing that's available today," she said.
"Last year's homeless count, we had around 69 unsheltered veterans. We're hoping for a decrease this year, and through collective efforts with many of our developers, we've had housing built specifically for veterans. Since last year, we've been working collectively to get our vets ready for placement, get their documents ready also for moving. We're hopeful that we could end veteran homelessness by 2025 this year," she said.
Morales-McKinney says that their focus is on making sure there’s enough affordable housing in the county for vets and tackling the issue before people become unhoused.
"Our mission is to prevent and end homelessness throughout our community, including our veterans. And so as we continue to build housing for our veterans, we're also keeping a keen eye on what can we do to prevent veterans from becoming homeless. And so a lot of that is around the cost of living. And what can we do to support with that, ensuring they're connected to our VSO for VA disability benefits or even working on increasing their disability benefits to help kind of countermeasure what the costs of living here. And so prevention is really something that are supportive services of veterans families help support with," she said.
And for vets like Roy – it’s a big step towards having a permanent place to call home.