Budget cuts not helping homeless vets.

JEWETT CITY, Conn. (WTNH) - The budget-cutting ax on Capitol Hill, could jeopardize a major effort to help homeless veterans in Connecticut.

The Republican-led house of Representatives passed a federal budget cutting, more than 60 billion dollars in spending.

For seven years the American Legion Post in Jewett City has been working to rehab a building into apartments for homeless veterans.

They've put together about a quarter of a million dollars from individuals, businesses, veteran's organizations and a bank loan to convert it to eighteen small modern apartments for homeless veterans, in an expanded building, that will reflect the historic architecture of the town center.

In the early morning hours this weekend, congressional budget cutting has placed the future of the project in doubt.

"If we don't get the vouchers we're up the creek," says Homeless Vet., William Czmyr of Jewett City American Legion.

"We've got a number of people making decisions now on some larger gifts of five or ten thousand dollars based on the fact that it's going to be financially viable, and it's not going to be without the vouchers," says Homeless Vet., Avery Tillinghast of American Legion Veterans Housing.

The vouchers are the 875 dollars a month per apartment from the federal Veterans Assisted Support Housing, known as VASH, that would be the cash flow to keep the place running after it's finished and help homeless veterans get back on their feet.

"The budget that passed at 5 o'clock in the morning Saturday, eliminated funding for this budget year for VASH entirely," says Rep. Joe Courtney/(D).

What the congressional budget cutters cut was 75 million dollars for the program nationally according to Courtney on the mistaken notion that there is some kind of backlog of unused vouchers around the country.

"It just shows, ya know, what you see on TV down in Washington, can really affect things right at home," says Courtney.

Courtney gave the bad news to the Legion leaders today, but said he hopes that reason will eventually prevail in Washington.

Courtney says this is the kind of short sighted budget cutting that the public doesn't really want.