Darryl Vincent and Stephen Peck: Ending Veteran Homelessness

I was thrilled to have my two guests on this week’s post-Memorial Day episode of the Legal Lens Podcast, Darryl Vincent and Stephen Peck, two leaders of U.S. Vets, the largest veteran services non-profit organization dedicated to ending veteran homelessness and serving those who serve. Around this time of year, we try to do shows paying homage to and supporting the individuals who have made unbelievable sacrifices for our country through military service. We could never thank them enough, we could never honor them enough, and we can never applaud them enough. Vincent and Peck joined our show to highlight those who have served and who continue to serve.

For a more convenient way to digest this information and inform yourself of these critical issues, I strongly encourage you to listen to my short, engaging 34-minute discussion with Vincent and Peck on my podcast, which you can find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, and everywhere you get your podcasts. Here is a recap of our riveting discussion and the importance of community engagement and activism in solving veteran homelessness.

Darryl Vincent and Stephen Peck on Ending Veteran Homelessness with U.S. Vets

In this powerful conversation, Darryl and Stephen delved into the critical mission of ensuring no veteran is left behind, particularly when it comes to the pervasive issue of homelessness.

They offer profound insights into the challenges veterans face, the commitment of U.S. Vets to provide comprehensive support, and the progress being made in combating veteran homelessness. Here is a recap of our discussion, which spanned the lives and work of these dedicated advocates.

Who Is Darryl Vincent?

Darryl Vincent is a first-time guest and says he is honored to have been with U.S. Vets for over 22 years. Vincent’s passion for service started when he was young, as he proudly displayed a JROTC image of himself during our conversation.

His mother is a retired army veteran, and his father was also an officer in the army and did one tour. This experience instilled a deep passion and commitment to service for others, especially the homeless veteran population with which he is all too familiar.

Vincent said that this family tradition of service has continued as his sons took on that torch. His eldest graduated from West Point and is currently an Apache pilot stationed in Alabama.

His youngest son recently graduated from four years of JROTC and is currently at the University of Hawaii, where he will also serve in the Navy ROTC.

“It’s not just what we do,” summarized Vincent, “it’s who we are.”

When Vincent first joined the organization, he was working at one of the largest shelters in Ojai, California, and they were opening up a new program in Hawaii. The rest, as they say, is history.

“They were opening up a new program in Hawaii, which was U.S. Vets, and I got recruited,” said Vincent. “My first position was to basically lead the Hawaii site. I opened up the location in 2003, and they liked what I was doing, so I eventually opened up another location. They eventually promoted me to go around to the different sites across the nation to implement what we call the ‘Therapeutic Community,’ along with other systems and programs,” he said.

His tenure at U.S. Vets has been defined by climbing the ranks. Still, he remains humble and never misses an opportunity to give credit to the team that helped him, which I noted is the mark of a great leader – being able to recognize that it’s the people around you that allow you to be successful.

This selfless quality and ability to recognize that a team is greater than the sum of its parts can likely be traced back to his own time serving. In January of 2025, Vincent officially transitioned to being the President and CEO of the non-profit organization.

“Over the last 22 years, I rose from Executive Director to Vice President to where I’m sitting right now, but for the last 14 years, I’ve been the Chief Operating Officer working under [Stephen Peck], who was the President and CEO,” Vincent said. “I was lucky to get those positions only because I had people working for me who were much smarter than me and knew what to do. My job has been to lead them and let them get the work done so the veterans can get the work done as well. I’ve had a great time with this organization, and I’m glad it has allowed me to grow,” he added.

Who Is Stephen Peck?

Stephen Peck was incredibly gracious and beamed as he discussed passing the mantle to Vincent so he could continue this legacy and build on what he has accomplished with over 30 years of service.

“I’m feeling very grateful that we had a leader who was so capable to pass this on,” said Peck. “With us, this is not a job; this is something more than just a vocation. This is something that’s in our blood. We always say that we would be doing this whether we got paid or not. We’ve been doing this work since 1993, and we have learned over the years the ins and outs of how we can serve homeless veterans in the best way possible,” he said.

A key factor that drives Peck to serve those who have served us, similar to Vincent, is his past.

Peck was a Marine and served in Vietnam as a first lieutenant in the 1st Marine Division, receiving the Navy Commendation Medal. In short, Peck helps veterans because he is a veteran – he has a deep and profound understanding of the experience.

However, the true impetus of his journey can be traced back to 1993.

“I started this work back in 1993 as an outreach worker with the West LA VA,” Peck explained. “Really, that experience with those hundreds of veterans I saw during that time informs everything we do. Every policy that we make and all the advocacy we do in D.C. is informed by the veterans we see on a daily basis. Since I turned the reins over to Darryl, I’m now on the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) board of directors to continue the policy work that is so important to us to make sure that veterans are getting the best service that they can,” he explained.

Peck calls NCHV a passion project for both him and Vincent, and Vincent would go on to explain that this organization plays a pivotal role in reaching politicians and decision-makers to secure funding and create policies that support veterans experiencing homelessness.

What Is U.S. Vets, and What Services Do They Provide?

U.S. Vets has many residential locations serving homeless veterans in California and just opened a location in Ventura. They also have locations in the Inland Empire, West L.A., Las Vegas, Washington D.C., Houston, Prescott, Phoenix, and two in Hawaii, which Vincent started.

Inglewood is the oldest site of this program, with over 700 veterans on those campuses who are either experiencing homelessness or living independently with the help of these programs. They also have a location in Long Beach, which Peck started, that also has over 700 veterans on its campuses.

“Steve and I always talk about the different sites we started and have a friendly competition between who’s doing better between Hawaii and Long Beach,” joked Vincent. “But we’re proud of all of them. We opened up our first prevention hub in Washington, D.C., but we’re across the nation. In the places we’re not located, we partner with people to help each other out, and in the future, we hope to have a presence in places that make sense. We don’t feel that we have to compete with people. If they’re doing it better, let them do it, and let us help. We want to collaborate, not compete,” he said.

Though, if Vincent had his way, they would have a presence in virtually every residential area. Vincent shared insight into the history of the organization, the services it provides, and its mission.

“U.S. Vets is the largest non-profit serving veterans experiencing homelessness in the nation,” Vincent said with pride. “At any given time, we could have the capacity of having over 5,000 veterans under our care every night when we go to bed through various programs. We have many programs. If you’re a veteran experiencing homelessness and don’t have a place to live, you’re a veteran who’s living in your home and doesn’t want to lose your home, or you’re a veteran who’s suffering from mental health, substance abuse, our job is to bring you back with our services and reunite you with the camaraderie you felt in the military,” he explained.

Ultimately, this leads to the mission of the organization – serving as a bastion of hope and a rallying cry to truly solve this issue.

“We want to be the ones to show and say that this is a thing that we all play a role in, and we can literally end homelessness, not manage it, if we’re partnering and using our expertise,” said Vincent. “U.S. Vets is at the forefront of that charge by not only being the largest, but we feel we have some great systems involved that we can meet a veteran wherever they are and ensure that we are empowering them to get back on the road to recovery, whatever that may be, or assisting them to ensure they stay on the road that they’re on to have a successful life that every individual seeks and deserves,” he said.

We also discussed exciting news – U.S. Vets is expanding its focus to include prevention, which is in partnership with a recent partnership established with Mayor Karen Bass of the City of Los Angeles.

Is There Help for Homeless Veterans in the United States?

According to Vincent, what makes this organization unique is the background of those who are helping the veterans, which helps them provide more robust support that has come a long way since the inception of this non-profit organization.

“One of the things that’s unique [about U.S. Vets] is that, besides serving, we both are social workers,” said Vincent. “We went back to school to get our Master’s in Social Work, and it just became a perfect marriage of being able to serve those who have served because the only difference between us and the veterans we’re serving is the resources and support we had coming out of the military. That’s the main difference, so we want to make sure that U.S. Vets is very comprehensive and has a holistic approach. Most importantly, we want to make sure we work with our partners with the VA and other non-profits we work with,” he elaborated.

Vincent and Peck have noted how the programs for homeless veterans have evolved over the years, and they have played a key role in helping that growth and development, saying that over time, they have learned that the government plays a part in funding, but they don’t play the sole role.

“Well, we’re a non-profit, so we have different contracts with the government,” said Vincent. “When we started, we were just a building, and Steve knows this story better than I do because he was around during that time. We started by just being able to bring veterans in and literally just give them a place to sleep. But you soon learn that sleeping is not really enough. You need services, and back then, there weren’t all these veteran homelessness programs. There wasn’t any funding, and it wasn’t being funded as a department. The VA now has a department dedicated to veterans experiencing homelessness, but back then, that wasn’t around. These things are all built on the shoulders of the founders of NCHV, which Steve is a part of, that we go to every year for a conference. Yes, we contract with the government, but most importantly, we contract and partner with the community,” he said.

How Many Veterans End Up Homeless?

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, “Only 7% of the general population can claim veteran status, but nearly 13% of the homeless adult population are veterans.” According to Vincent, there are approximately 40,000 veterans experiencing homelessness. Keep reading for more insight into how far we have come and how far we have to go in the next section!

How Many Homeless Veterans Are There, and What Has Changed Over the Years?

Vincent offered some hopeful veteran homelessness statistics, saying that in the last 20+ years, we have seen a substantial drop in homelessness. He has seen about an 84% drop. Still, this begs the question: How many homeless people are veterans? Vincent shared his keen and seasoned insight.

“For veterans experiencing homelessness, we’re at a very critical time to end this,” said Vincent as he expanded on the issue of how many veterans are homeless and where we are as a nation in solving it. “Over the last 10 or 12 years, a focus was put on it. With so much energy and funding and different programs, we saw the number decrease dramatically. We’re somewhere around the 40,000, under 40,000 range. When I first started the organization in 2003, it was over 250,000,” he said.

Vincent attributes this dramatic decrease to everything about how they focus their efforts, collaborate, and put more veteran homelessness assistance programs in place, such as creating housing. He says it’s not just about services or housing – it’s about services attached to housing – that’s key to understanding how to help homeless veterans in a meaningful, long-lasting way.

“I feel the current situation is two things,” explained Vincent. “I call it a critical time because we have a chance to actually turn the corner and say, We’ve done this. And I call it a hopeful time because we know that we can literally end homelessness amongst veterans and then be the model of how to solve veteran homelessness, as well as how to end it on the civilian side. It takes a lot of effort, focus, and energy, especially when you start getting to lower numbers. You have to think about what actually works, what do you do, and then what do you do to make sure the numbers don’t increase by doing more prevention. So, the state at this time is critical and hopeful, and we’re right on the forefront to make sure we solve this problem,” he said.

In response to this positive homeless veterans in the United States news and the hope and promise Vincent exuded as he passionately discussed this issue, I then asked Peck what he sees as the continuum of continuing to bring these numbers down.

“We have programs that can give [veterans] temporary assistance until they stabilize themselves,” said Peck. “Let’s reach out to veterans who aren’t homeless yet and provide them the services that are going to stabilize them, whether it’s mental health, substance abuse treatment, or employment. So you really have to be continually learning new things and talking to other people who share this burden with you,” he said.

Vincent added to this, saying, “We’re lucky enough that, in the state of California, we have funding right now to work with aging veterans. That funding needs to be something that translates to the federal level. California’s doing it, and we want other states to do it as well. When we reflect on the years that pass, we’ll be judged by what we do for those who need us the most – not just ourselves and our families. When we all can take our good and turn it into a chance for others, we become leaders in the community and leaders in the nation. There’s nothing we cannot solve,” he said.

What Have Been the Greatest Milestones in Solving Veteran Homelessness?

Peck was able to offer some excellent insights as someone who had been part of this movement and what he sees as being pivotal to lowering veteran homelessness rates.

“Because of the original founders who originally brought attention to the homeless veteran issue, there have been numerous policies established over the years that continue to add layers of service to the homeless veteran situation,” explained Peck as he detailed how far we have come. “When we started in 93, there were a number of mental health beds and substance abuse treatment beds at the West Los Angeles VA, but once they completed that treatment, there was no veteran project for them to go to in the communities. So they would go back to their communities, start using again, and come back through to the VA six months later. It was just this revolving door,” Peck said.

U.S. Vets, Peck said, was created specifically to address this issue.

“Our original site in Inglewood was started to house those veterans coming out of those programs,” said Peck. “We took them directly, and our original transitional housing program was called the VIP (Veterans in Progress) to help them strengthen their sobriety and make sure they stayed on a mental health regimen if they were on it, and help them find a job. We were helping 80% of them find jobs, and then they could stay with us until they gathered their first and last month’s rent, and then they had to go back out into the community. We knew that we had something by providing housing, mental health services, sobriety support, and employment services – really, just putting all those things together. We really help veterans reenter society as productive citizens,” he said.

Peck believes that their ability to look ahead and continue developing services has been an important part of their ongoing success.

“We’ve been lucky enough to have the foresight to continue to evolve our services as the demographics,” said Peck. “Back in 93, 70% of the veterans that we saw were Vietnam veterans. Most of them had substance abuse issues and needed a job. Today, now that we’ve reduced the population so dramatically, the veterans that we see have more acute issues. There’s more mental illness, and fewer of them are going back to work. So many of the veterans that we see today are disabled, and it is our job then to stabilize them, and we do that in a couple of different ways. One, there’s an enormous number of section eight beds for veterans called VASH, for VA Supported Housing. Each year, Congress authorizes more of those beds, so we’re able to house more veterans who are disabled and cannot return to work on a permanent basis. And, as Darryl mentioned, we are doing more homeless prevention. We reach out to veterans who are experiencing problems and who aren’t homeless yet and provide them the services that are going to stabilize them, whether it’s mental health, substance abuse, and treatment employment,” he elaborated.

A recent milestone that both Vincent and Peck eagerly discussed is the “Dole Act,” named after Senator Elizabeth Dole, which elevates and expands the services for homeless veterans – especially for those who are living in high-cost-of-living areas.

“This act has various different improved services for veterans when it comes to in-home care, transportation, and many other things,” explained Vincent. “But the big one that we’ve been really focused on is the Grant and Per Diem Program, which has historically been the entryway for veterans experiencing homelessness coming into a transitional program, wrapping services around them, and moving on. This act is increasing funding so that if you’re in a high-cost area, such as Los Angeles or Hawaii, you could be able to get more assistance. It’s been signed now, and we’re just waiting to get it appropriated with the money attached to it. So, it’s our job to keep knocking on doors and speaking,” he said proudly.

What Causes Veteran Homelessness?

When it comes to addressing the causes of his issue in order to outline a clear path to understanding how to prevent veteran homelessness, Vincent sees it as surprisingly simple.

“Everyone knows that if you serve this country, you should not be sleeping on the same streets that you were asked to defend. A lot of homelessness is caused by poverty and a lack of affordable housing,” explained Vincent when considering the causes of veteran homelessness. “We need to focus on those two things and know that everything else exacerbates it, and it brings people together. So we always get good support. It’s just about how you work through the system to make sure you get those things done. You have to be persistent. You have to be intentional. You have to be deliberate. You have to be passionate. And you have to do all those things together, and then you try to get to the end as they go through the legislative process,” he said.

However, Vincent also noted that age and senior care are key contributors.

“Enhancing services for aging veterans is very important,” Vincent said when considering how to help veteran homelessness. “We’re lucky enough that in the state of California, we have funding right now to work with aging veterans because, as veterans get older, there’s more care that’s needed, and sometimes there are no other family members to do that, where some of us are lucky to have that. So how do you make sure those services are given so they can live in their homes and get that care? That funding needs to be something that translates to the federal level, though we see states like California already doing it,” he said.

Want to Learn More About Ending Veteran Homelessness and U.S. Vets and Gain More Insights from Darryl Vincent and Stephen Peck? Download and Subscribe to My Podcast Today!

“One thing we always hold onto is hope,” mused Vincent, “and we feel that when you lead with hope, everyone can follow.

The insights shared by Darryl Vincent and Stephen Peck in this episode truly underscore the critical work being done by U.S. Vets in their pursuit of ending veteran homelessness. Hearing directly from these dedicated leaders, who embody the spirit of service and are making profound strides in supporting those who have sacrificed so much for our country, is an invaluable experience. I strongly encourage you to download and listen to my full Legal Lens podcast episode. This conversation offers a powerful, accessible, and hopeful exploration of an issue that demands our collective attention. It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help shed light on these vital efforts and inform you of how we, as a community, can continue to champion our nation’s heroes. And I would like to thank every man and woman who has served, is serving, or will serve for their services – from the bottom of my heart.

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This communication is not legal advice. It is educational only. For legal advice, consult with an experienced employment law attorney in your state or city.