AGENCY TESTIMONY
Challenges facing the veteran community in New York City
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This chapter discusses the major challenges faced by the veteran community in New York City, including low self-identification rates, limited VA marketing, and a declining veteran population.
- The veteran self-identification rate in NYC is only 24.1%, lower than the national average of 34.3%.
- The VA has a large budget but lacks dedicated marketing funds, leading to low awareness of available services.
- The veteran population is declining at a rate of 4.83% annually in NYC, faster than the national average.
James Hendon
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That being said, the VAB's work, all of our work, is nested within broader challenges that must be tackled if we are to make sure that New York City's veteran community continues to thrive.
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Chief among those needs is the need for self identification among veterans.
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According to the VA's f y 23 geographic distribution of VA expenditures report, the veteran's self id self identification rate nationwide is 34.3%.
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That proportion dips to 29.8% in New York State then to 24.1% in New York City.
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This compounds with another issue.
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The federal government does not aggressively market VA services.
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Case in point, the VA has a 3rd $369,300,000,000 f y 23 budget 25 budget.
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The VA's budget is the largest in the federal government, second only to the budget for the Department of Defense.
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However, many families are not aware of all offerings that are available to them.
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That and there is no dedicated line for marketing and or advertising in the VA's publicly available budget documents.
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Add to that, America has a declining veteran population overall.
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Older draft era veterans are passing away.
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Our military was significantly larger during the conscript era, which ended in 1973 compared to the all volunteer era that we operate in today.
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The annual rate of veteran population decline is 1.82% nationally, 3.19% in New York State, and 4.83% in New York City based on VA and census data.
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Compound the lack of self identification, limited marketing, and population decline issues, and you have a group of extremely complex, interwoven problems.
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The solution is to roll up our sleeves as a community, unite, and do the hard work needed to triage what is in front of us.