WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will post a caseworker in Central Oregon full time until the agency finds homes for 25 homeless veterans.

The agency made the announcement last week after being lashed with criticism by Oregon’s congressional delegation and local housing officials over a six-month delay in releasing housing aid for local vets.

The agency had 25 housing vouchers earmarked for Central Oregon vets beginning in July, but for months it said it had to hire a caseworker to provide counseling and interview potential voucher recipients before the vouchers could be released. Now, a spokesman said, the agency has used existing staff to issue 10 of the vouchers. It hopes to issue nine more on Tuesday.

That’s a good step, but it has taken too long to get to this point, said U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, who met last week with top VA officials about the delay. “They’re trying to do what they should have done in the beginning is my sense,” Walden said.

Although VA officials continued to deny there was in fact a delay in issuing vouchers in Bend, Portland VA spokesman Mike McAleer said the agency understand the concerns raised by Walden and other Oregon lawmakers about the need to quickly house homeless vets.

“We definitely appreciate Congressional attention to this issue,” McAleer said. “We share their concerns, and we absolutely understand the urgency of the homeless veterans in Bend.”

Urban areas first

In interviews last week, McAleer and top VA officials in Washington, D.C., laid out the agency’s process for hiring caseworkers and issuing vouchers to vets.

Vincent Kane, director of the VA National Center on Homelessness, which oversees the voucher program, said the agency first issued vouchers in urban areas close to medical centers because that’s where more homeless veterans live.

“The vouchers have been targeted to the urban communities in the earlier phases of the program,” Kane said. “Homelessness is more represented in the more urban areas.”

Housing vouchers require recipients to pay about 30 percent of their income toward housing costs and pay the rest of the costs for approved apartments. People without income are eligible for all housing costs, including utilities, to be paid by the vouchers.

The VA targeted vouchers in rural and farther-flung areas afterward, in part because “it’s much harder to define the need … rural homelessness has often been defined as the sort of invisible homelessness,” Kane said.

According to the VA, the vouchers are currently paying for housing for 21,078 vets. That’s 70 percent of the 30,050 vouchers available. That tracks almost exactly with the agency’s hiring of caseworkers. The VA reported that it hired 842 of the 1,235 employees needed to operate the program (about 68 percent).

Despite those numbers, though, Bend isn’t the only community in Oregon where housing vouchers have been delayed. Walden’s office passed on e-mail messages from housing authority officials in Hillsboro, Salem and Longview — all of whom said they have yet to see the new caseworkers they were promised. The Longview and Salem officials — who couldn’t be reached Friday afternoon — said they haven’t been able to issue any vouchers as a result.

Adolph “Val” Valfre Jr., executive director of the Washington County Housing Authority, said in an interview that existing VA staff allowed the housing authority to issue 17 vouchers. But he was also told the new caseworker has yet to be hired.

“I can appreciate why things are going slow, but we’re all being impacted by the lack of hiring,” Valfre said. “They’re really extended, the (existing) case managers.”

Starting in mid-December, however, after local housing officials complained of the delay to The Bulletin, the agency gradually began sending caseworkers to Central Oregon, first a few days at a time, now five days a week.

It’s clear, Walden said, that media and congressional attention prompted the change in attitude.

“Until it got into the press and into our hands, not much was happening,” Walden said. “It really took this spotlight that — combined — we were able to put on the problem to get them to act, and it shouldn’t take that.”

Hiring process

While six months seems like a long time to outsiders, that’s normal at the VA, McAleer said. In this case, the agency advertised the positions on Aug. 16 for two weeks and received about 400 applications for 10 caseworker positions in Oregon. After a cursory weeding-out process by human resources, those applications went to Portland Medical Center officials, who had 90 days to review applications and choose the top candidates. Then a panel of VA staff had 30 days to interview those candidates. They made a job offer by mid-December, but the top candidate ultimately declined to take the job.

Once the agency does make a tentative job offer, the candidate will have to pass the agency’s credentialing process, called VetPro.

The agency has worked to speed up the credentialing process, said Brian McVeigh, a human resources officer for the Veterans Health Administration. The average delay between an initial employment offer and final hiring, due in part to credentialing, has fallen from 59 days in 2009 to 35 days in 2010, McVeigh said. The agency hopes to cut that number to 30 days this year.

Credentialing consists mostly of verifying degrees, certifications and other basic requirements, McVeigh said.

Marilyn Park, legislative representative for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents many VA staffers, said the VetPro process is “very problematic” and can take months to navigate.

“The way that they credential and evaluate the skills of any health care person, it takes a very long time,” Park said. “It may be too long when you have a bunch of veterans waiting for care.”

It has taken too long, Walden said, especially when Bend vet Delbert Dungan — the first person to sign up for a VA voucher — suffered serious injuries while waiting for housing. Dungan survived second-degree burns on his head and hands on Christmas Day when a propane lamp ignited in his tent outside of Bend.

Now, at least, the agency is focused on speeding up the process, Walden said.

“The good news for me is it has reached the (VA) secretary’s level,” Walden said. “We’ve gotten their attention.”