Military Spending vs. Affordable Housing and Veteran’s Affairs Spending

NCH Fact Sheet #23
Published by the National Coalition for the Homeless, June 2008

The President’s Budget request for FY09 suggests giving the Department of Defense a budget of $515.4 billion.  The Budget includes funding to increase the size of both the Army and the Marine Corps by sustaining permanent forces. Additionally, there is a request for $70 billion in supplemental appropriations in order to meet the needs of the military when fighting the Global War on Terror.

The amount that the government spends on the war compared to what it spends on affordable housing and taking care of its war veterans alarmingly show where the values of our nation lie.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a remarkably smaller budget request at $45 billion for FY 2009. Only $1.6 billion from the entire budget is devoted to “homeless assistance grants”. This represents no increase over last year’s allocation.

For the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the President has a budget of $91 billion for FY 2009.  The Department of Veterans Affairs also boasts that its homeless assistance programs constitute the largest integrated network of services in the United States. [1]  Strikingly, the Veterans’ Affairs budget only allocates $158 million dollars to support this network. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans says that of the 400,000 homeless veterans on the street any given night, the Department of Veterans Affairs reaches only about 25% of them.2

Resources: Please refer to footnotes for all citations.