The Department of Veterans Affairs is taking steps to ensure safe and appropriate housing for women veterans, but does not have sufficient data about the population and its needs to plan effectively for increases in their numbers as service-members return from Iraq and Afghanistan, GAO has said.
The number of homeless women veterans more than doubled from 2006 to 2010, from 1,380 to 3,328, and while HUD collects data on homeless women and on homeless veterans, it does not collect detailed information on homeless women veterans.
Neither VA nor HUD collect data on the total number of homeless women veterans in the general population and they lack data on the characteristics and needs of these women on a national, state, and local level, according to GAO-12-182.
However, it noted that VA has launched an outreach campaign partly directed toward homeless women veterans and has committed to ending homelessness among all veterans by 2015, funding several hosing programs to that end.
