Blunt’s “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011,” Senate Bill 1467, thus far has two co-sponsors, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), and it is an identical copy of a House bill that was introduced in March.

Five months before HHS ordered all Food and Drug Administration-approved forms of birth control to be offered to all insured women without a co-pay — a move that has become controversial, especially for anti-abortion rights advocates — Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb) introduced the “Respect for Rights of Conscience” bill, which anticipated HHS’s decision. One aspect in the Findings and Purposes section of both bills is:

PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] creates a new nationwide requirement for health plans to cover “essential health benefits” and “preventive services” (including a distinct set of “preventive services for women”), delegating to the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to provide a list of detailed services under each category, and imposes other new requirements with respect to the provision of health care services.

Fortenberry’s bill has 44 co-sponsors and hasn’t seen any congressional action since March 28, according to bill records documented by the Library of Congress.

This legislation is intended to amend the Affordable Care Act by adding a section titled “Respecting Rights of Conscience With Regard to Specific Items of Services,” which states that a health plan will not have failed to provide “the essential health benefits package” described in the health care law, if the reason to deny coverage of certain services is because one or more of the services “is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions” of either the sponsor, issuer or entity offering the health care plan. That also applies to individuals, in the case of individual coverage, whose “religious beliefs or moral convictions” are in conflict with any services covered under the health care law.

Under the proposed legislation, health care providers will not be required “to provide, participate in, or refer for a specific item or service contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The day before Blunt introduced the Senate version of this bill, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), put out a press release criticizing the “new HHS ‘preventive services’ mandate requiring private health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.” Declaring that the new ruling violates “conscience rights,” the USCCB called on Congress to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience” bill.

Despite the Institute of Medicine disputing claims that the FDA-approved contraceptive methods offered to be covered fully under the health care law cause abortions, statements such as USCCB’s have been perpetuated by influential policy groups such asAmericans United for Life and the Family Research Council.

This week on the FRC’s Washington Watch Daily Radio Commentary, FRC President Tony Perkins said:

Starting next August, fertility might as well be a disease–because that’s how the government will be treating it. This month, HHS ordered all health insurers to offer free birth control–regardless of anyone’s objections. Drugs like Ella and Plan B are part of the mandate, even though they can destroy a developing baby. Once the regulations go into effect, this “emergency contraception” will be considered basic medical care–and taxpayers who don’t agree will still have to pick up the tab.

Blunt’s bill has been read twice and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for review.

On the day Obama signed the health care bill into law — March 23, 2010 — Liberty University, represented by its partner institution Liberty Counsel, filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Timothy Geithner, secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department; Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services secretary; Hilda L. Solis; Labor Department secretary; and U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., for allegedly violating constitutional rights by implementing individual and employer mandates. After failing in district court, Liberty University has appealed (PDF) the case.

Listen to Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, argue before a three-judge panel.

Oral arguments for Liberty University, Inc. v. Timothy Geithner:

Also on March 23, 2010, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli sued Sebelius, challenging the health care act’s individual mandate. On Tuesday, Cuccinelli also appealed to the panel. Both Cuccinelli and Liberty hope their cases will reach the U.S. Supreme Court by year’s end.

Listen to oral arguments for Commonwealth of Virginia, Ex Rel. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II v. Kathleen Sebelius:

“Today we took Step Two in a three-step process,” said Cuccinelli in a news conference following the arguments. “As Judge Motz noted, the legal questions raised today are questions that will be answered in another court in another time.”

Cuccinelli offered an overview of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s case during the news conference:

Virginia has argued that the mandate that every person must buy government-approved health insurance violates the Constitution. Using the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to force people to buy a product goes beyond Congress’s power. This is why I have said all along that this is about liberty, not health care. The insurance mandate penalizes people for not engaging in commerce. In other words, you can get fined for doing nothing.

Virginia has also argued that the penalty the government wants to charge if you do not buy health insurance is not a tax. The government cannot start calling the penalty a tax to try to make it legal under Congress’s taxing authority. Congress and the president passed it as a penalty, not a tax; it works as a penalty, not as a tax.

[...]

If we cross this constitutional line with health care now – where the government can force us to buy a private product and say it is for our own good – then we will have given the government the power to force us to buy other private products, such as cars, gym memberships, or even asparagus. The government’s power to intrude on our lives for our own good will be virtually unlimited.

[...]

You heard about standing today. The federal government thinks it can tell the states to disregard their own laws – like it is doing with Arizona, but then also says the states do not have the same right to challenge federal laws in court. That is not how our system of government is set up. The founders set it up so the states were a check on potentially overreaching federal authority.

I have said all along that this lawsuit is not about health care. It is about liberty. At the same time, I understand that people want more affordable health care, and I sympathize with people who honestly cannot afford it. As a state senator, that was a problem I tried to address by trying to pass a law to allow our citizens to buy better or cheaper plans in other states. But as someone who has sworn to uphold the law, I cannot endorse taking away the rights of all so that government can provide health care to some.

When a ruling will be issued from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is unknown. All three judges were appointed by Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. The panels are chosen randomly.

Passive GPS tracking is a known — and, as smart phones begin to dominate the cellular market, much more common — feature of mobile technology. The issue with the Apple devices is that they don’t just dump the data after a certain amount of time, like Android phones do, and that they restore the internal tracking database across backups and even migrate it over to new devices when, for example, a user upgrades to a new iPhone.

Privacy advocates who have voiced similar discomfort with Google and Facebook’s information collection practices say that the information could conceivably be sold to the highest bidder to bolster targeted corporate advertising. But last week’s developments could have larger resonance and far more immediate impact in the ongoing push to allow law enforcement to use GPS tracking information as evidence in federal court.

There is no uniform federal policy on whether search warrants are required for police and other law enforcement officers to track suspects using GPS devices. In August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the entire West Coast, plus Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, Idaho and Nevada, ruled in agreement with a lower court that police can legally attach GPS monitoring devices to suspects’ cars without needing a warrant. The court claimed that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when one travels on public roads and that just following someone’s actions as they do so is fair game.

The very same month, however, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit fell on precisely the opposite side of the issue. It ruled that the FBI and D.C. police couldn’t use information from a tracking device as evidence in a drug conviction for a nightclub owner and suspected cocaine kingpin.

The Obama administration has now stepped in to fill in the gap that has arisen within the federal courts over the issue. Solicitor General Neal Katyal has submitted a petition to the Supreme Court asking it to review the D.C. Circuit Court’s decision. And the administration is proving to be no friend to privacy advocates: Katyal wants the Supreme Court to overturn the D.C. ruling and bring it in line with what was decided in California.

The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes reports:

The decisions come as judges increasingly are asked to unravel the connection between modern technology and constitutional protections of privacy and against unreasonable searches. GPS devices in cell phones and cars contain a wealth of information about a person’s movements, and a smartphone can provide law enforcement with vast amounts of information.

“This case is really going to confront the court with the problem of adopting the Fourth Amendment to a new information age,” said Daniel Prywes, a Washington lawyer who wrote a brief in the Jones case for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“I think it’s the seminal privacy case of the 21st century.”

It’s unknown if the Supreme Court will follow up on the administration’s request and hear the case. There are dueling precedents at play that cloud any theorizing over how the court would rule if it elects to take up the issue. In 1983, the Burger court ruled in United States vs. Knotts that the installation of a beeper-enabled tracking device on a vat of chemicals didn’t constitute a privacy violation, while a year later, the same court ruled in United States vs. Karo that installing such a tracking device on a can of ether became a privacy violation as soon as the can left public roads and ended up on private property (the conviction in that case was upheld anyway).

Both rulings, however, asserted the legality of the use of tracking devices to monitor evidence that could otherwise be obtained by simply watching suspects go about their business. If the Supreme Court interprets precedent along the lines desired by the Obama administration, it could very well pave the way to unimpeded, warrantless use of smart phones’ tracking information by law enforcement. The future of the government’s take on privacy rights in the information age hinges on what the Supreme Court does next, if it decides to take the case.

Ryan’s plan has come under intense scrutiny for using unrealistic projections of the next decade in America’s economy. Many found the notion of unemployment dropping to 2.8 percent in 10 years, as outlined in the Ryan plan, laughable; indeed, the think tank whose data he was using has since adjusted its projections. Plouffe, however, principally denounced the bill for the tax breaks he says it would give to the wealthiest Americans.

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On Ryan’s plan, Plouffe told David Gregory of NBC’s Meet the Press:

It may pass the house. It’s not going to become law. And I don’t think the American people are going to sign up for something that puts most of the burden on the middle class, people trying to go to college, on senior citizens, while not just asking nothing of the wealthy—giving them at least a $200,000 tax cut. That’s a choice you’re making.

[...]

I think the president’s goal, and he’s been clear about this, is to protect the middle class as we move forward here. So people like him, as he’ll say, who’ve been very fortunate in life, have the ability to pay a little bit more. Now, under the Republican congressional plan, people over $250,000 get over a trillion dollars in tax relief. So this is the important thing: you’re making a choice. You’re asking seniors and the middle class to pay more. You wouldn’t be having to do that if you weren’t giving the very, very wealthiest in the country enormous tax relief.

Plouffe said that the president has been clear about his desire to eventually increase taxes on the country’s top earners. By contrast, Plouffe said later on the show, Ryan’s plan would give the average millionaire a “$200,000 tax cut while asking more of the middle class.” Plouffe also said the Ryan budget would end up costing the average senior an additional $6,000 in health care, though he did not make it clear if this was an annual or lifetime estimation.

That last point — the Ryan budget’s impact on health care for seniors — is something Obama is expected to address in his speech on Wednesday. The most radical aspect of Ryan’s plan is arguably its complete overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid: it would replace Medicare with a voucher system and hand power over Medicaid to state governments with the help of federal grants.

Like Ryan’s unemployment stats, the numbers he used in developing the Medicare plan have been called into question. A National Trust financial analysis found that Ryan used general projected inflation rates rather than the inflation rate of health care costs alone in his voucher proposal. If his plan were implemented, the analysis claims, the rapid rise of health care costs would quickly leave seniors behind and unable to pay for health care using their vouchers.

Obama has largely avoided involvement in the debate over just what to do with entitlements like Medicaid and Medicare, which have become increasingly expensive over the years. It’s not yet known how he will propose cutting costs without the massive and controversial overhauls such as Ryan has advocated.

His new position as head of Joining Forces was announced via email by Michelle Obama over the weekend and will be officially unveiled by the first lady and Jill Biden on Tuesday.

Joining Forces’ mission statement, according to the New York Times, is:

to encourage companies, schools, philanthropic and religious groups and local communities to recognize the unusual stress that is endured by families of active-duty personnel, reservists and veterans, and to strive to meet their needs.

It’s not yet clear exactly what form that encouragement will take or if the program will simply be a more symbolic attempt to honor soldiers and bridge the civilian-military gap.

Both Michelle Obama and Jill Biden have been active in seeking networks of support for military families during two American wars that have both lasted nearly a decade.

McChrystal will not be commanding any troops in his new capacity as co-chair of Joining Forces, and he remains retired from the U.S. Army. Joining Forces will partner with the nonpartisan think tank the Center for a New American Security, which has published studies in the past focusing on stress among military servicemembers.

There’s Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, an anti-abortion rights group based in Los Angeles that considers every child born after Jan. 22, 1973 — when abortion became legal — to be a “survivor of the abortion holocaust.” Texas-based Life Dynamics has likened Planned Parenthood clinics to “death camps.” Most controversially, in 2005, Pope John Paul II was criticized for comparing the Holocaust to abortion in his book Memory and Identity, in which he said abortion and the massacre on Jews and other groups during World War II are both the result of governments clashing with divine law.

Pushing the Holocaust metaphor, a youth-led anti-abortion group, Students for Life of America, has created an award for students who educate and speak out against abortion called the “Sophie and Hans Scholl Award,” which refers to a German brother and sister who organized against the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. Both students were executed. In 2005, their story was dramatized into the film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

On Thursday SFLA is honoring a student with that award at the group’s annual spring banquet in Arlington, Va. An SFLA press release for the banquet includes Sophie Scholl’s final words:

“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

“Today, there are students just like Sophie and Hans across the country that continue to speak out against injustice on their campus,” states the release.

Mary Powers, spokesperson for the Students for Life of America, said the award recipient’s name won’t be released until ceremony but that “she” is a university student, and like Sophie and Hans Scholl, has demonstrated bravery in getting the word out to students about abortion.

The SFLA banquet — timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed March 23, 2010 — is featuring testimony from Dominique Monlezun, national coordinator for Medical Students for Life of America, which recently conducted its first tour, visiting 21 college campuses across the country. The group is most vocal over “conscience” protections for medical professionals with regard to abortion, which the president updated last month, narrowing the regulations put in place by former President George W. Bush.

Also speaking at the SFLA banquet are David Bereit, national coordinator of 40 Days for Life, who leads tours around the country to protest against abortion and Planned Parenthood, and Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who this year has co-sponsored the following anti-abortion rights bills:

• HR 3: No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act
• HR 217: Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act
• HR 358: Protect Life Act
• HR 361: Abortion Non-Discrimination Act of 2011
• HR 374: Life at Conception Act

To see more legislation Harris has sponsored during this session, go here.

Seniors and people with disabilities who receive health care through Medicare* might have an additional service covered in the near future: testing for sexually transmitted diseases such syphilis, gonorrhea and hepatitis B, according to a Reuters report. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is due to decide on the measure within the next nine to 12 months.

Government-funded health insurance already covers HIV testing, but now CMS is looking into paying for additional STD exams, in an effort to promote preventative care and reduce the amount spent on costly treatments for people who do become infected.

CMS spokesperson Don McLeod said that under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare has to cover what other private insurers cover if the government deems these procedures appropriate and necessary. Cost of the increased coverage is never factored into CMS’ determination, he said.

“Somebody else has to worry about how to pay for it.”

The tests up for consideration -– chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis B and syphilis -– target people considered to be high risk for these diseases: women, pregnant women and people with disabilities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates:

• Approximately 1.2 million chlamydial infections were reported in 2008, though the disease is frequently under-reported because many people don’t know they have chlamydia and do not seek testing. In women, untreated infections can increase the risk of HIV, cause pelvic inflammatory disease, and lead to infertility or pregnancies outside the uterus.
• More than 700,000 Americans contract new gonorrheal infections each year, but only about half of these infections are reported to the CDC. A pregnant women with gonorrhea can give birth to a baby who is blind or has a life-threatening blood infection.
• In 2007, there were an estimated 43,000 new hepatitis B virus infections in the U.S., and an estimated 800,000 to 1.4 million Americans have chronic hepatitis B.
• More than 36,000 cases of syphilis were reported in 2006. Reported cases of congenital syphilis in newborns increased from 339 in 2005 to 349 in 2006. Pregnant women with syphilis are at greater risk at giving birth to stillborns. Rates have increased in men every year between 2000 and 2006 from 2.6 to 5.7 percent. In 2006, 64 percent of reported syphilis cases were among men who have sex with men.

According to Reuters, since 2009 CMS has had the power to add coverage for preventive services; currently Medicare covers pap smears and pelvic exams and tests for colorectal cancer and diabetes.

Furthering preventative care, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it will allocate $100 million to states that offer incentives to Medicaid beneficiaries who adopt healthy habits, as part of the Affordable Care Act. For instance, a state could establish a set of goals -– such as quitting smoking or losing weight -– and people who meet those goals could be offered direct cash incentives, gift cards, reduced Medicaid program fees or even services not normally available through Medicaid.

“With the right incentives, we believe that people can change their behaviors and stop smoking or lose weight,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick, in a press release. “Not only can preventive programs help to improve individuals’ health, by keeping people healthy we can also lower the nation’s overall health care costs.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is now inviting proposals from states to compete for grant awards for this legislatively mandated Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Program. The program will target behaviors that cause some of the most critical chronic conditions Americans face: smoking (kills 430,000 people a year, according to HHS), obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. States’ notices of intent are due April 4; applications are due May 2.

Seniors and people with disabilities who receive health care through Medicare* might have an additional service covered in the near future: testing for sexually transmitted diseases such syphilis, gonorrhea and hepatitis B, according to a Reuters report. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is due to decide on the measure within the next nine to 12 months.

*Earlier we stated that additional STD coverage could be extended to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, but only Medicare beneficiaries would be affected.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced the 13 states that will be collectively receiving $45 million in grants for implementing the Money Follows the Person demonstration program this year. Recipients are: Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia. An additional $621 million is committed to these states through 2016. These are the newest states to join this program, established by the Obama administration in 2005; currently 29 other states and the District of Columbia participate.

“Our country recognized in the Americans with Disabilities Act that everyone who can live at home or community-based setting should be allowed to do so,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in press statement. “The Affordable Care Act provides states critical new dollars toward achieving that goal.”

All states will have access to a pool of $3.7 billion if they follow HHS rules to provide long-term services through the Community First Choice Option program. The goal of this program is to encourage states to make community living a “first choice” for Medicaid beneficiaries who need long-term care, rather than just placing people in the first available institution. Starting in October, states that comply with the rules (PDF) will get a 6 percent increase in federal matching funds through 2014. (To qualify for the matching increase, states must develop “person-centered plans” that outline how services will be provided to maintain the independence of each individual. Additionally, states must develop a council to implement these plans that must comprise people with disabilities, elderly individuals, and their representatives.) The idea of both programs is to help people with physical and/or mental disabilities live more independently, but with services and support.

Obama’s ambitious Money Follows the Person program (MFP) has thus far served fewer than originally anticipated. The 29 original states were given their grants in 2007, and many began their programs a year later with a combined goal of moving out approximately 38,000 residents by 2013. But by 2010, less than 5,800 residents had been moved nationally, according to Kaiser Health News. The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured has been evaluating the program since it was implemented. The commission found that as of 2010, about a dozen states moved fewer than 60 people; Louisiana only moved 10. And Texas had the most success, moving 2,029 out of nursing homes and other facilities.

But according to the HHS, to date MFP has helped 12,000 individuals move out of institutions and back into their communities. The grants issued Tuesday are expected to help another 13,000 people.

The program was supposed to expire in 2011, but through the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it was extended through 2016. The act also loosened some of the program’s eligibility rules that were making it harder to transition people. MFP grants are distributed to states by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which has to approve each state’s plan.

Some of the details:

• Minnesota received the most: $13.4 million for the first year and $187.4 million through 2016.
• Florida received $4.2 million and $35.7 million through 2016.
• Colorado  was awarded $2 million; $22.2 million through 2016.
• New Mexico was at the bottom of the 13-state stack,  getting $595,839 for the first year and $23.7 million through 2016.

In January 2010, McClatchy Newspapers petitioned the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for a copy of an internal memo that evidently detailed the DOJ’s legal defense for obtaining the telephone records of American citizens and residents. McClatchy learned of the memo from a heavily redacted inspector general report on abuses of power that the FBI committed while seeking telephone records.

Now, a year on, the FBI and DOJ have declined to release the memo, even though it is a document that should be available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. However, McClatchy reports the OLC’s cover letter to McClatchy newspapers does cite a section in a 1978 wiretapping law that the office contends gives the government legal authority to collect telephone records from telecommunications firms.

While McClatchy does not get more specific, that can only be the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which outlines procedures for gathering intelligence on communications between foreign governments and their contacts within the U.S. In 2001, the PATRIOT Act expanded the law to apply to those with connections not just to other governments, but to any foreign group seen as hostile toward the U.S., and a further revision to the law in 2008 (PDF) expanded the government’s legal authority to performance surveillance without a warrant. Although the original law actually prohibits telecom companies from handing over phone records, the 2008 revisions also give those very companies immunity from lawsuits should they do so — meaning that if the FBI leans on, say, AT&T to disclose customer records, there is no incentive for it not to do so.

Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney and expert on electronic surveillance and national security laws for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells McClatchy the OLC’s defense could easily be expanded to include emails as well, as long as they are sent to international addresses. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice still refuses to release the original memo that McClatchy requested over a year ago.

This first-ever report of its kind indicates that homeless veterans are present to some extent in each state, and provides in-depth demographic information on homeless veterans and how those individuals compare to others in the population who are homeless. The bottom line, according the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Veterans Affairs, is that nearly 76,000 veterans were homeless on a given night in 2009 while roughly 136,000 veterans spent at least one night in a shelter during that year.

Last June, President Barack Obama announced the nation’s first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness, including a focus on homeless veterans.  The report, Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, hopes to put the country on a path to end veterans’ and chronic homelessness by 2015; and to ending homelessness among children, family and youth by 2020.

“Providing assistance in mental health, substance abuse treatment, education and employment goes hand-in-hand with preventive steps and permanent supportive housing.  We continue to work towards our goal of finding every Veteran safe housing and access to needed services,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki.

Although veterans are disproportionately represented in all age groups of those homeless, they are the overwhelming majority of homeless individuals age 62 and above. And almost a quarter of poor Hispanic veterans living alone — a key risk factor for all veterans, according to the report — used shelter services as some during 2009. Similarly, about 24 percent of African American veterans with incomes below the poverty line were homeless at some point in 2009, as were 35 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native veterans.

But even outside of ethnic boundaries, there is significant risk for veterans, even those in young age groups, to become homeless. The report found that veterans between the age of 18 and 30 are almost twice as likely to be homeless than non-veterans — and the risk increases if the veteran is poor. But it also important to note that young veterans not in poverty remain three times more likely to be homeless than young non-veterans living in poverty.

Although every state in the union has homeless veterans, the report found that more than half of all homeless veterans in America are concentrated in four states: California (26 percent), Florida (9 percent), New York (8 percent) and Texas (7 percent). These four states have a similar combined share of all sheltered homeless people (45 percent), but only 28 percent of the total veteran population nationwide.

The report estimates that Iowa has less than one percent (.4 percent) of the total number of homeless veterans in the nation. But, of the people in Iowa who are homeless, 8 percent are veterans, which is only slightly lower than the average for all Midwestern states. The report places Iowa on a list of 14 states with an under-representation of veterans in their homeless population when compared to the state’s overall population share.

Perhaps most interesting for Iowa and other predominantly rural states is the fact that 32 percent of homeless veterans were accessing services outside of urban centers. Those veterans who seek services in rural or suburban areas have characteristics that are markedly different from veterans seeking urban services. For instance, a considerable majority of the rural/suburban aide seekers were white, carried a higher incidence of disability and migrated into the rural area.

Other key findings in the report released today are:

• More than 3,000 cities and counties reported 75,609 homeless veterans on a single night in January of 2009; 57 percent were staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program while the remaining 43 percent were without shelter.  Veterans represent approximately 12 percent of all homeless persons counted nationwide during the 2009 ‘point-in-time snapshot.’
• During a 12-month period in 2009, an estimated 136,000 veterans—or about 1 in every 168 veterans— spent at least one night in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.  The vast majority of sheltered homeless veterans (96 percent) experienced homelessness alone while a much smaller share (4 percent) was part of a family.  Sheltered homeless veterans are most often individual white men between the ages of 31 and 50 and living with a disability.
• Veterans are 50 percent more likely to become homeless compared to all Americans and the risk is even greater among veterans living in poverty and poor minority veterans.  HUD and VA examined the likelihood of becoming homeless among American veterans with particular demographic characteristics and found that during 2009, twice as many poor Hispanic veterans used a shelter compared with poor non-Hispanic veterans.  African American veterans in poverty had similar rates of homelessness.
• Most veterans who used emergency shelter stayed for only brief periods.  One-third stayed in shelter for less than one week; 61 percent used a shelter for less than one month; and 84percent stayed for less than three months. The report also concluded that veterans remained in shelters longer than did non-veterans.  In 2009, the median length of stay for veterans who were alone was 21 days in an emergency shelter and 117 days in transitional housing.  By contrast, non-veteran individuals stayed in an emergency shelter for 17 days and 106 days in transitional housing.
• Nearly half of homeless veterans were located in California, Texas, New York and Florida while only 28 percent of all veterans were located in those same four States.
• Sheltered homeless veterans are far more likely to be alone rather than part of a family household; 96 percent of veterans are individuals compared to 66 percent in the overall homeless population.

HUD and VA are currently working together to administer a joint program specifically targeted to homeless veterans.  Through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program, HUD provides rental assistance for homeless veterans while VA offers case management and clinical services.  Since 2008, a total investment of $225 million is working to provide housing and supportive service for approximately 30,000 veterans who would otherwise be homeless.

In addition, last month HUD awarded $1.4 billion to keep nearly 7,000 local homeless assistance programs operating in the coming year.  The Department also allocated $1.5 billion through its new Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing (HPRP) Program. Made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, HPRP is intended to prevent persons from falling into homelessness or to rapidly re-house them if they do.  To date, more than 850,000 persons, including more than 15,000 veterans, have been assisted through HPRP.

Veteran Homelessness: A Supplemental Report to the 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress –