Last week, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., brought back his proposal to “improve and protect a joint U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program designed to help homeless veterans find permanent housing.”

Rubio’s office offered some of the details of the proposal which he has been pushing since 2018.

“The HUD-VASH program provides homeless veterans with a voucher to help them offset the cost of renting a home or apartment in the private market. Among other things, Rubio’s bill would help to protect the program from any potential future budget cuts by preventing the administration from using funds specifically designated for the program for anything other than helping to provide housing to homeless veterans,” Rubio’s office noted.

The bill would “prohibit the VA from moving HUD-VASH funds to a general purpose account; require the VA to hire one case manager for every 35 veterans. In some regions, case managers are assigned up to 70-100 veterans at once, making it nearly impossible to effectively manage them all; require the VA to expedite the hiring of new case managers…require case managers to be located within a reasonable distance from the veterans they are assigned to help.”

“Our nation’s veterans have given so much to our country, and we must continue to provide them with the quality care they were promised and deserve,” Rubio said on Thursday. “This legislation would protect and make much needed improvements to the HUD-VASH program to improve its ability to provide assistance to homeless veterans and their families.”

Rubio’s bill was sent to the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. So far, there are no co-sponsors and no companion measure over in the U.S. House.

Reach Kevin Derby at kevin.derby@floridadaily.com.