Episode 106 Transcription

Welcome to episode 106 of Behind the Mission, a show that sparks conversation with trusted partners and educational experts.

My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans, and their families. You can find a show on all the podcast players or be going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.

Thanks again for joining us on Behind the Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partners and sponsors who also believe that education changes lives. Our sponsor this week is Comcast. Comcast creates incredible technology and entertainment that connects millions of people to the moments and experiences that matter most.You can find out more about how they support the military affiliated population by going to corporate.comcast.com/impact/military.

On today's episode, I'm featuring a conversation with Navy Veteran Jason Loughran, Assistant Commissioner of Community Services with the New York City Department of Veterans Services. Before joining DVS, Jason served in positions at the New York State Assembly and the US Department of Homeland Security before moving on to the state department. Jason deployed to the Hellman Province in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2010. You can find out more about Jason by checking out his bio on our show notes. So let's get into my conversation with him and come back afterwards to talk about some key points.

duane--_24_01-31-2023_171009: Jason, so glad to be able to have you as a guest on the show. I'm excited to hear about the work that you're doing in New York City. But before we get into that, I'd like to provide you an opportunity to share your background and professional journey from the Navy and to what you're doing today.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: Thanks, Duane. It's a pleasure to be here today. I wanna shout out to Tina Atherall for connecting me with you and introducing me to the podcast. I'm a big fan. I've listened to a couple episodes already or last week, and I really truly appreciate the work that you're doing and the folks that you've had on your show.

A little bit about myself. I'm a Navy Veteran. I was a part of a cargo handling battalion, NCHB 1, we deployed to Afghanistan and Antarctica. The Navy wasn't lying when, they said that they were gonna truly bring me around the world, everywhere from the ice to the sand. Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Deep Freeze were both very different.And, things that I'll never forget for the rest of my life and certainly shaped me into who I am today. As it relates to how I started my career, I was born and raised in New York and when I joined the Navy, my intention was to go to law school and I thought that I could use the GI Bill to make that happen.The Navy and life as always just had different plans for us. So I came back and went to St. John's University, then went on to go to Baru College to get my Master's in public administration. I thought my career was gonna be in national security. I did a lot of work with the Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of State.

And at some point,I found myself disconnected from what I believed to me is just the community, in community in general, but, never really thought that I was missing out in the Veteran community. Don't know about you Duane, but when I got out, I really had no interest in talking about Veterans or that military life.

I was really eager to just move on and I really struggled to get a sense of identity. Everybody recognized me as a military Veteran and I wanted to be more than that. So I pushed really hard to get away from it and try to develop this new character. If I had the chance to talk to myself, when I was younger coming out, I would've said to embrace that community more because I found myself isolating a lot.

But sooner or later I got things corrected. And I got more involved in civic engagement and I went to a political course called new politics and they had a couple of city council members there from New York City. One of those city council members was named Eric Ulrich. And he played a significant role in creating, the New York City Department of Veteran Services.

And he shared with me that it'd be a great place to make a difference in New York City and with my community. And, I went ahead and applied and since then I've been working with the New York City Department of Veterans Services for the last six years.

DUANEL: I appreciate that background and as you were talking, I remember, and it was actually Navy Vet that I was talking to, and this was an older Navy Veteran, who served sort of in the late seventies. And he said, you know, I did my three years and he was one of the, didn't even consider himself a Veteran right. But he said, I did my three years or four years or whatever. When I got off the boat, I dropped my seabag in the bay and I didn't want anything to do with the military. And like you, and there's a lot of that say, I do my time for whatever reason, I really want to distance myself from that, and then you have folks like me who I stay in the community. I've continued to work with Veterans, I've really very deliberately stayed connected in my post-military life. But that could be a challenge, like you were saying, for a lot of veterans to navigate. How much of my military identity do I retain in post-military life?

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: Yeah, it's extremely difficult and you know, honestly, had I not reacclimated into the community, I wouldn't have learned about a lot of resources that ended up being the difference between the man that was really struggling with self-isolation and mental health and substance abuse, versus the man I am today where I have the career I want. I'm a homeowner and I'm married and I have a child on the way. So, it was a long transition. It was, this year marks my, going on the 11th year that I've transitioned. And had it not been for the community to be these trusted peers to tell me, you know headstrong was a great organization to go check out.

Then I don't know if I would've gotten that help. And it's really a shame, things work out the way they're supposed to, and I wouldn't change anything for the world, but I would recommend that everybody, take a second to think about how they can be involved in the American Legion Post, a VFW post, VVA, anything, anything really makes a huge difference.

duane--_24_01-31-2023_171009: No, I, and I appreciate that, and I've heard that from a lot of the clients that I used to work with is they wanna keep the military at arm's length because of the bad things. But like you said, it's also the good things right. All the resources and the benefits and really that camaraderie, everything is kept at a distance and then they don't reengage. At least for post 9/11 veterans. They're not waiting decades like the previous generations did. like the gentleman that I was talking about, he was about to retire and wasn't engaged in any veteran organizations. And so I think that's really good to hear that  it's never too late and sooner rather than later.But you talk about the New York City Department of Veteran Services, and the work that you're doing there. It sounds like a big job when you think about New York City, but folks don't realize that there's over 200,000 current and former service members, among the five boroughs as well as their families and that's in a city of a population of 8.4 million. That's a whole lot of veterans in a really large population.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: It certainly is. And to give you some more background, Duane, on the New York City Department of Veterans Services. We used to be the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs. We were known as MOVA and it was approximately, three, maybe four employees.Probably a budget around 400, $500,000.

And, really it took that council member that I referenced and excellent advocates like Kristen Rouse and, Joe Bellow and Coco Klain and many others who went up to City Hall steps and said, no, this needs to be a full department. As a member of that department now, there's certainly a lot that many people who worked at the Department of Veteran Services can say, we could have done this differently, or maybe we should have done that differently. But I think that's the whole purpose of growing and we hope that, our effort to be transparent with the Veteran community, gives our community in New York City, a sense of trust in the work that we do, and that we're always looking in the mirror and self-reflecting.

As I said, we were only created in 2016 by those advocates and that city council member and Mayor de Blasio, to say we are a full-fledged department. Your budget should be bigger than this today, I think we flowed around five and a half million, 6 million. and the mayor and our advocates trusted us with this increased budget to do what's right with this money to serve our veterans and their families in New York City.

And I think Duane, you would probably agree with me here, but I don't think New York City is ever considered as a military friendly city for folks transitioning out. I don't believe it's one of the cities that come to mind where a transitioning service member goes. Yeah, you know, I think that they're, you know, top three, top five , maybe even top 10. And since 2016, you know, I really hope that, the country sees the work that we're doing and starts considering us as one of the top military friendly cities in the nation because we're investing the money and the time and the resources and, we're constantly trying to push the envelope to do things that other cities and states are not doing. And we're really proud of that. 

duane--_24_01-31-2023_171009: I think that's a really good point. You know, when people think about, and not just small military towns, 29 Palms, or Fayetteville, North Carolina, if you're Army, or Grand Lakes or something, right? But really, if you think about large cities like San Diego or Pensacola or Norfolk, Virginia, or even Colorado Springs, Colorado, but those military centric cities with large military installations, but also places that people tend to retire there and leave the military and stay close to that. I imagine a lot of veterans who are in New York City are going back home to New York City, or maybe they're pursuing other pursuits that are maybe not related to their military service in New York City, but I think you're right.

I mean, having, you know, the 210, 220,000 service members and Veterans plus their families, that's a significant number of people.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: It certainly is, and to that point, I think that a lot come to New York City because of what I think makes the fabric of the city the diversity. And in that diversity, I'm not just talking about demographics, but really the arts community, finance industry, we arepushing tech. Trying to recruit more startups and tech industries to New York City. We are, I think unique in that New York City is always amongst the first or second city discussed in economic development or any progress for the country. And I think that when it comes to veteran services, it's our job to really keep that population on the top of mind to whatever the city of New York is pioneering as a city, and we are looking at a lot of different things to capitalize on the environment that is the city of New York and what makes the city of New York, the city of New York, and it's the melting pot of the world. We've developed a program through a partnership with, the New York City Housing Authority nacha, the US Department of of Housing and Urban Development and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, in 2017 is actually as soon as I started the agency, I worked on this project right away, and it was called, at the time Dash Continuum what that meant and why is it so significant to New York City and to everyone listening across the country is that this program set aside a subset of Section eight subsid that were HUD VASH subsidies. And if you're anyone who's not familiar with HUD vash, it's a section eight rental subsidy, specifically created for the Veteran population. And, essentially it comes with a section eight rental subsidy so that you can seek out permanent housing, but it's also includes supportive case management by the Department of Veterans. Now, why this program is unique is because this 15%, that was set aside for this program was for folks that were discharged from the military under anything other than dishonorable, characterization. Why is that important? Actually, when we were making a big effort to end veteran homelessness, we found that 50% of our homeless veterans in New York City are not eligible for VHA services. And you know, as we know, and I can get into this later, our, our colleague Coco Colan, who works for the Veteran Advocacy Project, and our friends at the New York Legal Assistance Group, we also just wrote the first contract in the City of New York to provide funding to legal services groups to support discharge upgrades. And so we have two fantastic organizations called the Veteran Advocacy Project and New York Legal Assistance Group that are working diligently with tax levy dollars to ensure that people with military sexual trauma, don't ask, don't tell backgrounds, P T S D related discharge characterizations that left them without connection to services that they deserve from their military service, helping them get that discharge upgraded.

And so going back to HUD VASH Continuum, this subset of subsidies were for those folks in New York. And we've been able to house hundreds of homeless veterans because of this program. And, to date, now the VA has, as they're reconsidering their services and eligibility criteria, and they're opening up their services to more folks with a variety of discharge characterization. So we like to believe if there's one role that we can play in the agency, it's definitely pioneering new innovative programs and ideas to show that this is worth it. And then after the concept is proven know, tell the rest of the country, go forth, do this in your own backyard cuz it's really gonna make a difference. And, we don't wanna leave any veteran behind. And that's another unique part of serving in New York City Department of Veteran Services is that our definition of veteran is very broad. We don't turn anyone away.

duane--_24_01-31-2023_171009: I appreciate that. And going back to the old New York City jokes, maybe if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, right? If you can figure it out in New York City. But I think that it's really interesting though, programs that you're talking about, but also those programs might not have been for you to be able to establish if you weren't your own independent department, like the Department of Public Safety or the Department of Public Health.

If you were a special assistant to the mayor's office with a staff of three or four, that's what's unique about the New York City Department of Veteran Services is that like you're saying, it is an actual department that isn't necessarily, maybe at the whim of another administration, whether or not they bring that program on.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: That's absolutely true. And as I know that Duane. You're a big advocate. I think the love hate relationship I have with our department is that the politics are significantly closer to our office. And I think in a community like veterans, it's a good thing because, sometimes it feels like the federal government is a little bit too far away from the folks on the ground, and we hear it all the time.

Cuz these veterans who are having trouble waiting for their appeal board for their claim or waiting for an appointment. We're an extension of the VA. Regardless of whether we are the New York City Mayor's Department, we're a government agency that serve veterans. We may as well all be employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs for the federal government because something that we're trying to practice here is own the process.

And in DVS, we're trying to own the process, whether it belongs to us or not. And I think that's gonna go a long way. But going back to my original point here, the politics are a lot closer. I have to go home and I may live down the block from the veteran that came in to get help from us that day.

The city council member that had a hearing on veteran services today we just had a hearing on student veterans in New York City, there's on average, about 12,000 student veterans in New York City. And those 12 or so thousand, student veterans that, go to school in New York City bring in over $600 million of economic federal dollars into our economy.That makes a big difference. But today we had a hearing on student veterans. So that city council member that was in that hearing is the city council member for the district that I live in. So everything is so much closer, we dropped the ball and it's my face there's gonna be on that, hearing in front of people who are holding me accountable. And I think, in government, it's a good thing to feel accountable. And I think,if I can tell folks around the nation, to create their own department of veteran Services, I'd highly recommend it because that accountability will make a big difference in the lives of veterans and, their prosperity within that district. So, I certainly would, would push it. 

duane--_24_01-31-2023_171009: Yeah, no, I think it's a great concept and it's one of these things that, that people think of as well, why isn't there,I thought there would be, right. But that's not really the way that these are set up, especially at the community level. Now, your role at the New York City Department of Veterans Services, is as assistant commissioner for community affairs. And as we talked about, the connectivity and being of service to your community is huge for a lot of service members, once they leave the military. How does your part of the department support veterans in New York?

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: Yeah, Duane. As I said, we've always been looking in the mirror about who we are, and so when we were first created, we were very much, looked at as more of agency being connectors to the array of resources in the New York City area. But as we've evolved and matured as an agency, and listened to the veteran community and our advocates, we've learned that, veterans had a real appetite for us provide tangible services. They didn't want us to just hand them off to somebody else. And it's, we don't wanna stop handing 'em off to other organizations because quite frankly, we can't do everything. So we still need to facilitate those connections to care, but we have taken a step to try to be more service delivery focused.

And where we've evolved is that the core function of the community affairs unit where it originally was conceptualized, was a care coordination center. So over the last couple years, our primary function was coordinating care and we were doing that through software that, our network of providers would join and we would engage with sending referrals back and forth to one another and ensuring that each of those referrals had a positive resolution.

Secondary to that, we had our housing and support services team. That team is dedicated to our homeless veteran population. I think in 20 17, 20 16, our homeless population was about 4,300 or so. Today the last, federal point in time count for New York City was 482 homeless veterans. Yeah, I mean, it's still 482 too many.

But, were proud of that coordinated effort that we made with the Department of Homeless Services, Nicha, housing and Preservation Development in New York City and many of our nonprofit partners, ssvf in New York City, have been a critical resource to us. But that number has also dropped. back then we had about seven or eight SSVs, today we have four. So you know, like anything else,with that number being so low, we're still fighting for it. But when you're in New York City, there are a competing interests and when you've been that successful, sometimes that particular interest doesn't rise to the top of issues that the mayor has to balance, in the city.

He is very supportive. This administration has provided us a lot of support in terms of helping us, coordinate more efficient and work products. And, as I said before, we pride ourselves on that effectiveness in getting things done. We're gonna still push it forward. And then lastly, our most recent leg of my community affairs unit is benefits and claims. We actually never have done this before, we didn't know Covid was happening, but right before covid, we launched a team to start doing disability claims. People in the community often say to me, you know, I don't know why you guys started doing that.

I can go get my disability claim done anywhere. That may be true, I think in parts of the country, maybe a governmental office doing disability claims is not a top priority for the veterans community. But in New York City, rising costs of living has really hurt our veteran service organizations.

I think in most communities, I hope, I hope most communities there is a local V F W, there is a local American Legion. There is opportunities to engage with, veterans of different eras. In New York City, A lot of those posts have closed down. economically. It's been very difficult for them to stay afloat.

We have developed programs to provide grants especially during, and post covid to those veteran service organizations for, which we're very proud of. They're very happy with the work that we've done to keep them in the game and, evolving in terms of where New York City is today. But with things like the PACT Act happening, and I suspect that there's gonna be more legislation like the PACT Act in our lifetime.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: I certainly hope so. There is gonna be a greater need for people who are gonna be experts in this. And I gotta tell you,you are not gonna be as successful filing your claim without somebody who is an expert in doing it. I promise you that, and I think it's the government's responsibility to have somebody consistently be learning because it is changing, it's evolving every day. The VA is changing policies and it's learning things about service era veterans and these health conditions and we have to stay on top of it. Somebody has to stay on top of it, and I hope the veteran who is trying to go to school and become an engineer or work in computer science, doesn't have to make time to become an expert in doing a claim. There should be somebody that does that. So that's where my argument is in that we really have to be doing this. It's not going anywhere. And I hope that it's not going anywhere. I hope we get more benefits and more presumptives because we deserve 'em and we need people that are gonna do that work. So in just a short matter of time that we have been doing it, we bring in half a million dollars, annual in monthly compensation and a quarter million in retro pay so far. On top of the GI Bill benefits, you talk about this federal, non-taxable disability compensation on top of the education benefits and the healthcare that we're providing access to because of the disability claims, disability percentages, it really makes a huge difference in New York City. These are folks that would've otherwise had to rely on the city's programming and city of government services. When we speak to city council about this, their eyes glow because, we are one of the biggest contributors to the federal taxation.

So anytime we're bringing federal tax dollars back in and moving one person from City Social Services to federal social services, that's a good thing for our community and our economy.

DUANE: And it's a good thing as you're talking about for the veterans that live in New York City, because it is all interconnected. And not only does ensuring that a veteran who, rightfully earned their disability benefits, gives them income, but going back to our previous conversation, if that veteran has a other than honorable discharge, now they are eligible despite their discharge status for Veteran Healthcare Services and for HUD vash.

And just you, it doesn't matter what door we get them into but it sounds like you really have a great program, that is it just designed to talk about making lives better for veterans in New York City, but actively doing so.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: Yeah, you're right. And it's really well-rounded, I should say. We try to create doors for anybody that's walked into our office for help. And where those doors come from is really for us to triage and and that's the work that we're doing now. In fact, actually speaking of our triage process, many years of doing that care coordination work, we found that our mental health referrals were pretty low.

And working with the Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health, shout out to Jason Hansman, good friend of mine, army Veteran too. We were able to come up with incorporating health screeners into our process. And, I think to most people like yourselves, health screeners probably are not the most innovative tool but for us in our workflow, our mental health referrals, went up threefold because of that. So the hypothesis of the number of mental health referrals were not accurately displaying the need for mental health services from veterans was true. So how do we uncover those mental health support? There's this constant reflection and dialogue around what is the best way to coordinate care. And what is the most efficient way to do it while maintaining a relationship, whether it's digital or in person with the community that we're serving. And that's where we are today. We're thinking about that quite a bit. We're conducting a lot of different work to try to understand what is the best experience for our customers and how do we create that. And that's where we are today. And I'm hoping that maybe next time I'm on this podcast I'll tell you how, how it's doing. 

DUANE: But it's not only is it really encouraging to hear, but again, just the concept of the idea of veterans in New York City. And again, some people may be saying, ah, 200,000 in a city of 8.4 million, but think about how complex it is in a big city like that. So I really, both from the innovative concept of the Department of Veteran Services being its own independent autonomous agency, as well as the work that you're doing, really encouraged, to hear about it. So, if folks wanted to learn more about the New York City Department of Veterans Services, or your work, in the community, how can they do?

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: Yeah, certainly follow our Commissioner James Hendon on all of our social media accounts and the New York City Department of Veterans Services social media accounts. I believe our commissioner has a Twitter account. Our social media accounts at NYC Veterans. It's really quick and easy to remember. If you need assistance, whether you live in New York City or not, you can go to nyc.gov/vet. That again is nyc.gov/vetconnect. and we've got a variety of other resources on that website I didn't even get to talking about. 

duane--_24_01-31-2023_171009: It's really encouraging. Jason, this has been great. and I'll definitely make sure all those links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

jason-loughran_1_01-31-2023_191009: Thank you, Duane. Appreciate you having me.

Again, we would like to thank this week's sponsor PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners, as well as custom training options for organizations.You find out more about what they do at www.psycharmor.org.

As always, I enjoy having great conversations with guests, and my conversation with Jason actually went on longer than this. We were talking for about 20 minutes before we started the quote unquote official interview and talked again for a half an hour afterwards. Not only is Jason a veteran who's passionate about what he does, he's also someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about how he and his team can improve the lives of those he's dedicated to. I think the New York City Department of Veterans Services is a great example of a team that's doing their best to solve problems and reduce gaps in service in their community. Granted, it's a community of over 8 million people, but that's what makes it an opportunity to do some innovative things.

What I most appreciated about our conversation was how he pointed out that as a member of the New York City Department of Veterans Services, the work is inherently local. Think about it. In your community, you probably have the ability to engage in your local government pretty easily. You know, you're elected officials, you've met them or at least had the opportunity to the people making the decisions that most directly impact your day-to-day life are also in your community. And that brings a measure of importance to their work and also a measure of account. What's going on in the nation's capital makes the news. But the decision about what's gonna be done with the proposed realignment of an intersection a mile away from my house is what's gonna make an impact on my life.

So by elevating the work of supporting veterans in New York City, from a member of a mayor's staff with the meager budget, again, I know that in many municipalities and locations, a budget of 500 K a year isn't peanuts. But think about this. The New York City Department of Sanitations budget in 2022 was 1.9 billion with a B, but moving veteran support services from a staff to an official departmental agency with a commensurate staff and budget indicates dedication to the lives of those who served and those who care for them. So even though you may not live in one of the largest cities in the world, maybe you appreciate the approach that they're taking to support their citizens who served.And maybe this could give you some ideas of how to support veterans in your state or community. So hopefully you appreciated my conversation with Jason. If you did, we would appreciate hearing from you. So if you do have some feedback, let us know.Drop a review on your podcast Player a Choice, or send us an email info@psycharmor.org. We're always glad to hear from listeners both feedback on the show and suggestion for future guests. 

For this week's PsychArmor Resource of the week, I'd like to share the PsychArmor course Collaborative Table Who To Invite And How To Engage. An important aspect and support of and care for service members, veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors involves collaboration between individuals and organizations at the community level, it is a collective responsibility that no single organization can bear alone. You can find a link to the resource in our show notes.