Sen. Richard Blumenthal
With Veterans Day falling next week and winter approaching, Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s measure to help house homeless veterans got a boost from neighbor Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“These are people who have put their lives on the line in service to the nation,’’ Schumer said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. “To think of them sleeping on the streets in the cold of winter breaks one’s heart.’’
Schumer called on the Senate to approve the Veteran Housing Stability Act of 2015, introduced in July by Blumenthal. He is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
The bill would provide outreach and incentives to landlords to rent to veterans and establish a VA National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans that would research root causes and better track the effectiveness of VA programs set up to address it.
Blumenthal’s co-sponsors included Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
Back in July, Blumenthal said that “49,000 veterans are homeless in America today, one in ten of the homeless _ a searing failure in the greatest, strongest nation in the world’s history.
“It reflects a failure to keep faith that this legislation will help correct,’’ he said. “We cannot allow another veteran to slip through the cracks.’’