Yolanda Caldwell’s house is yellow, three bedrooms, on a quiet street near a golf course in San Bernardino County. Caldwell, 55, is a disabled Army National Guard veteran who lost her first house during the pandemic and then moved her two sons between rentals and hotels until her savings were gone. Nonprofit groups backed by The Home Depot Foundation paid six months of her rent while she rebuilt her credit. Then she went house hunting. “When I walked into this house, I just fell out. I thanked God,” she told USA TODAY. “This is all I wanted, a place for my boys to be safe and call home.”
Caldwell’s route from hotel rooms to a front door of her own is the model the foundation is now funding at a larger scale. The Home Depot Foundation, based in Atlanta, announced this week that it will raise its total commitment to veteran causes to $1 billion by 2032. The pledge builds on more than $650 million invested since 2011 and more than 70,000 veteran homes and facilities improved in that span. The foundation has already passed $1 billion in charitable giving across all of its work.
The count the pledge answers
About 32,500 veterans were homeless on a single night last year, roughly 5 percent of the nation’s homeless population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The foundation counts nearly 33,000 on any given night and more than 2.75 million veterans living in inadequate housing. Veteran homelessness has fallen by more than half over 15 years, and Community Solutions, which works with about 170 communities, sees early signs of an 8.2 percent drop since 2025. That would be the largest one-year decline in a decade.
Erin Izen, the foundation’s executive director, argues that the remaining cases turn on services, not shelter alone. Her husband and her son are both retired Marines. “If you just put a person in a house, for many, they’ll end up homeless again because they can’t maintain that. Wraparound services are critical,” she said. “We believe every veteran deserves a safe place to call home. Our $1 billion commitment supports the partnerships and solutions needed to help more veterans move from uncertainty to long-term stability.”
Rent guarantees, master leases, and a house on the National Mall
The newest grants test specific mechanisms. The LOVE Fund, run with Open Doors Atlanta, removes the upfront barriers that keep veterans out of rentals, covering security deposits and application fees and guaranteeing rent to landlords who accept tenants they might otherwise turn away. The U.S.VETS Master Lease Program leases units directly from property owners. “Master leasing is an innovative solution that helps veterans overcome one of the biggest obstacles to housing stability: access to affordable homes in highly competitive rental markets,” said Darryl Vincent, president and chief executive of U.S.VETS. Other grants repair transitional housing with Operation Homefront, fund permanent supportive housing with Community Solutions, and pay for modular home builds for senior veterans through Purple Heart Homes. A partnership with Meals on Wheels uses meal deliveries to spot older veterans whose homes need repairs that would let them stay put.
The announcement week had a set piece. On the National Mall in Washington, Team Depot volunteers and Purple Heart Homes built a fully accessible modular home for James “Jim” Taylor, a Marine Corps veteran who had experienced homelessness, in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday. The house was then trucked to Virginia, where it will be dedicated later this year. The build sits inside the foundation’s Celebration of Service, which will run hundreds of volunteer projects in all 50 states and three territories this fall. The foundation announced the expanded pledge at a Washington summit it convened with the National Housing Conference, where housing, health care, and finance leaders compared what is working. Rosanne Haggerty of Community Solutions credited the recent progress to collaboration across federal programs, state leaders, and local providers. The foundation’s release is at PR Newswire, and Caldwell’s story is told in full by USA TODAY.
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