Bringing Veterans Home Digital Infrastructure

Overview

Bringing Veterans Home is a partnership between the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and the Department of Veterans Affairs to end veteran homelessness. The initiative coordinates six regional hubs across the state, and in July 2026, New Jersey announced it had reached “Functional Zero”, housing veterans within 30 days of identification, with more veterans entering permanent housing each month than becoming homeless.

In my role at DCA, I designed and oversee the data infrastructure that enables this coordination, including the statewide by-name list system, electronic referral workflows, and reporting dashboards that help regional teams track progress and identify veterans in need.

The Initiative

New Jersey’s approach to veteran homelessness prevention operates through interconnected entry points and housing programs:

Entry Points

• Coordinated Entry and VA/DVA referrals
• Community partner referrals
• Self-referral through the public portal
• Street outreach teams

Housing Programs

• Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF)
• Rapid Re-Housing (RRH)
• HUD-VASH vouchers
• State Rental Assistance Program (SRAP)

Six regional hubs across New Jersey work collaboratively, sharing data through a unified system to ensure no veteran falls through the cracks when moving between counties or service providers.

Data Infrastructure

By-Name List System

The statewide by-name list pulls data from continuums of care across New Jersey, validates it against a shared schema, and tracks each veteran’s housing progress from identification through placement. It also feeds the reporting products that internal and external stakeholders use to measure the initiative’s performance.

Electronic Referral System

We built the electronic referral form on Simpligov. The form walks users through an intake flow that adapts based on the veteran’s circumstances, then routes the referral to the right regional hub and generates the documentation case managers need. It plugs into the workflows regional coordinators were already using, so adoption wasn’t a lift.

Public Website

My web development team at DCA designed and built the public site at bvh.dca.nj.gov. Veterans can check eligibility and self-refer. Service providers can submit referrals for someone they’re working with. And the site maps out which regional hub covers which part of the state, so people know where to go. It closes the loop between the public-facing intake and the backend case management systems.

Dashboards

Real-time dashboards pull from the by-name list to track progress toward Functional Zero, flag where resources are most needed, and give regional teams a way to benchmark against each other. This is the same data infrastructure the state used to measure and sustain the Functional Zero milestone announced in July 2026 (see below).

How It Works in Practice

The Office of Homelessness Prevention within DCA coordinates with the Department of Veterans Affairs and regional service providers. I designed these systems around the people who actually use them — case managers, housing navigators, outreach teams. If a tool adds paperwork without helping someone get housed faster, it’s not worth building.

Public Transparency Through the New Jersey Report Card

In April 2026, Bringing Veterans Home was featured on the New Jersey Report Card, a public transparency site that gives New Jerseyans visibility into how state-funded programs are performing. The initiative was one of two programs featured at the site’s launch, alongside the Child Care Assistance Program.

My team at the Department of Community Affairs compiled and validated the program data that appears on the Report Card page, working in collaboration with the New Jersey Innovation Authority, which produced the site with the State Treasurer’s office and the Office of the Chief Innovation Officer.

Lasting Impact

Reaching Functional Zero

On July 29, 2026, Governor Sherrill announced at the Trenton War Memorial that New Jersey had reached Functional Zero for veteran homelessness statewide, the first time the state has hit this benchmark. Functional Zero doesn’t mean no veteran will ever become homeless again; it means the system is capable of making homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring, with more veterans entering permanent housing each month than becoming homeless. News12 New Jersey and WRNJ Radio covered the announcement.

The milestone also drew national trade coverage. Route Fifty, which reports on state and local government, published a piece on how New Jersey got there in August 2026, focused on the referral infrastructure, the shared operations platform the six regional hubs work from, and the response-time measures behind the by-name list.

That claim is only as credible as the data behind it. The by-name list and dashboards my team built are what the state used to measure sustained performance, housing placements against new homelessness cases, rather than relying on a single point-in-time count. Community Solutions, the national nonprofit behind the “Built for Zero” movement, validated the approach externally; CEO Rosanne Haggerty said New Jersey is “showing what’s possible when state leaders, local providers, and veteran organizations treat veteran homelessness as a solvable challenge.”

Governor Sherrill’s FY 2027 Budget allocates $11 million for the initiative, with an explicit goal of ending veteran homelessness in New Jersey. In her budget address, Governor Sherrill stated: “As a veteran, I know what those who served have sacrificed for this nation. The least we owe them is a safe place to live.”

Permanent Codification is advancing through the legislature. S-1838, sponsored by Senators Troy Singleton and Angela McKnight, would establish the initiative in state statute. The bill passed the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee unanimously (4-0) in February 2026 and was engrossed by the full Senate on June 30, 2026; it is now pending before the Assembly Military and Veterans’ Affairs Committee. If enacted, it would codify:

• The six regional hub structure across New Jersey
• Data-driven identification of areas with greatest need
• Standardized referral processes for service organizations
• Eligibility classifications for determining available support

If passed, this legislative recognition would ensure the digital infrastructure and coordination systems built for this initiative continue serving New Jersey’s veterans regardless of future administrations.

About the Program

Bringing Veterans Home is administered jointly by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and the New Jersey Department of Veterans Affairs. For information about accessing services or making referrals, visit the Bringing Veterans Home website.