Some great news from San Bernardino County, there has now been at least 1,000 military veterans that have been placed in permanent housing. The 1,000th veteran was a 52-year-old Marine Corps veteran named Quintin Sherard. In San Bernardino, there is an estimated 646 homeless people, and Sherard was one of them. Sherard is a former homeowner, businessman, and entrepreneur who became homeless in 2015 and had been working on and off as a truck driver in the San Bernardino area. He was able to get off the streets in June thanks to a San Bernardino County coalition called United States Veterans Initiative (U.S.VETS), a nonprofit that serves military veterans and their families and that has housed about one homeless veteran a day the past three years.
The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors vowed in 2015 to end veteran homelessness and, within three months, the county found housing for over 400 veterans. According to U.S.VETS case manager Jenn Maxwell, homeless people have difficulty deciding whether to find steady work first or permanent housing. The county and its partners have continued to identify new homeless veterans and have continued to try and find them housing. Now that Sherard has permanent housing, he can definitely get a new start in life. Hopefully, other counties can have the same success as San Bernardino County and California is able to get closer to ending veteran homelessness
