We applaud Gov. Terry McAuliffe in his call to end the homelessness of our country’s veterans who sleep on Virginia’s streets.

For the past three years, our organization has joined with other agencies to assist veterans with obtaining permanent housing.

To many, the simple solution is to assist these veterans with obtaining the kind of permanent employment where they could earn a wage that would afford them the ability to contract for their own permanent housing.

Yet the reality for these men and women is more complex. Most of the funds available for veterans’ housing goes to those who were honorably separated from the military, while the vast majority of homeless veterans carry the stigma of less than honorable discharges.

That’s right, one can serve in the military for most of their adult life, endure horrible combat, incur a serious injury in the line of duty and yet violate a military rule and be discharged with less than honor, and therefore be denied VA services.

Many homeless veterans have responded to the trauma of combat by self-medicating with street drugs, developing serious addictions, and thereby needing some comprehensive mental health services. Then, invariably, their addictive behaviors cause them to end up in the criminal justice system.

And so, while gainful employment would solve the housing problem for most of these homeless veterans, we are faced with the challenge of thousands of men and women who have served our country in the military, but who have extraordinary barriers to getting and keeping a job.

So what’s the solution? We know some things will help. The Virginia General Assembly should expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care and Prevention Act, which would provide the badly needed mental health services for thousands of these veterans. State lawmakers also should end the requirement of re-entry vets to come up with large down payments for court fines and fees in order to have DMV issue them an operator’s license. Driving is one of the best jobs that will lead to permanent housing.

We also should continue to support agencies that provide temporary shelter and some mental health services for vets, such as the Salvation Army, CARITAS, Homeward, Freedom House, The Daily Planet, River City Comprehensive Counseling Services and others.

And we should support emerging agencies that have a particular niche to get vets into employment. Our nonprofit has a unique approach to this issue by recruiting, training, counseling and supervising these vets, and then contracting with individuals and businesses to provide such things as janitorial, maintenance, painting, groundskeeping, canvassing and catering services.

DAVID L. HOOVER

Richmond The writer is president and CEO of the Veterans Initiative Association