A tech firm donated half a million dollars in Montgomery County, Maryland, to help homeless vets get off the streets.
TISTA Science and Technology Corp is an information technologies professional group which serves the government, the armed forces, and the healthcare community. Its founder Ahmedur Ali is a navy veteran who was disabled in the service, and now prioritizes his fellow veterans in his company’s hiring and philanthropic practices.
In the United States in January 2022, a single-night count of unhoused veterans showed over 33,000 veterans sleeping in shelters and on the street. While that is less than half what the same count found in 2010, it still represents only a small portion of the unhoused veteran population. Homelessness doesn’t only reveal itself in men and women sleeping under cardboard on park benches. Working poor who sleep in their car are homeless. People who surf from couch to couch among their friends and family are homeless. The recently evicted staying in a hotel until their money runs out are homeless. These don’t show up in counts, but still need the same aid.
On Tuesday, Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless (MCCH) announced that the tech firm TISTA has donated $500,000. The money is intended for the charity’s veteran services, helping former service members recover from homelessness and addition, connecting them to permanent housing and treatment services.
MCCH has done hard work with their veteran population. In 2016 with their help, Montgomery County became one of only four counties in the nation to reduce veteran homelessness to near-zero with their emergency shelter programs.
MCCH still has much work to do to maintain that near-zero. They serve men and women older than 55 with severe mental illness, which includes much of the unhoused veteran population. The donation allows them to continue and expand their services to support veterans at risk of homelessness as well as those already on the streets.
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