A Promise Broken for Our Vets
New York City promised its veterans a simple online portal to get help with housing, health care, and jobs. Eight years later and after burning through $2 million, that promise is dead in the water. According to reporting from Gothamist, the system is so broken that veterans can’t even log in reliably. This isn’t just a tech glitch; it’s a betrayal of the people who served this city.
Comptroller Mark Levine’s office just dropped a review on the disaster, calling the system “marred by inconsistent and poor system delivery.” The portal, known as VetConnectNYC, was supposed to be the main way veterans request services. Instead, it’s been a mess of failed vendors and delays since it launched in 2018. As of May 2026, the city still hasn’t delivered the streamlined access it promised to its 122,700 veterans.
The $2 Million Black Hole
The facts here are ugly. In less than a decade, the city cycled through three different vendors to build this thing. Syracuse University ran it for a couple of years, then the city handed the keys to Unite USA. By June 2024, when the contract concluded, the city lacked any contingency strategy. Instead, veterans seeking help were told to fill out Microsoft Forms. “It was like going into a black hole,” said Joe Bello, a Navy veteran and former City Council veterans director. “Nobody knew where they were going.”
Finally, in September 2024, the Department of Veterans’ Services hired Combined Arms, a Houston-based nonprofit, to fix the mess. They were supposed to launch the new system by November 2024. They missed that deadline by eight months. Since the rollout, the system has been plagued by bugs. Veterans and staff get locked out even with correct passwords. Service requests go to the wrong people or vanish entirely. Automated reminders to follow up never get sent.
Levine’s review highlights that this is just one example of outdated municipal systems failing New Yorkers. The Department of Veterans’ Services is a small agency with only 36 employees and a $6.1 million annual budget. Yet, they’ve spent over $2 million on a portal that barely works. “New York City owes our veterans more than gratitude – we owe them a Government that works,” Levine said. He labels this the newest segment of a story involving systems dependent excessively on external entities lacking adequate supervision.
Why Common Sense Fails in City Hall
Here’s the truth: You can’t just throw money at a problem and expect it to get solved. The city spent millions, but there was zero accountability. They let vendors fail repeatedly without stepping in. When the first vendor left, they didn’t have a plan B. They just handed out Microsoft Forms like it was a substitute for a real government service. That’s not how you treat the people who defended this country.
We love our vets in this city. We cheer for them, we thank them, and we say all the right things at parades. But when it comes time to actually do the work, City Hall drops the ball. Levine is right to call this out. A system that is eight years old and still can’t let a veteran log in is a failure of leadership. It’s not just about bad software; it’s about a culture that doesn’t value results.
The city has a mandate to bring its systems into the 21st century.
