We salute and honor American veterans of all wars.

On this Veterans Day and recognize the critical gaps in their care, the Murphy administration today launched a new program to help place more than 1000 homeless veterans in New Jersey in stable housing.

The Bringing Veterans Home Initiative is being billed as the first time veterans service organizations are formally partnering with the state to combat the problem, using roughly $30 million in state and federal money to conduct outreach, provide vouchers and other services with the goal of ending veteran homelessness in the next two years.

Well, meanwhile, a Rutgers program committed to saving veterans lives just got a boost thanks to a $1 million grant.

The 24 seven peer support network called That's for Warriors, raises awareness about and reduces the rate of veterans suicide.

Counselors at the National Call Center tell Raven Santana the funding will help them reach countless more vets and in turn save more lives.

The culture sometimes so often in the military, you don't ask for help.

You're the helper.

You're the one out there serving and helping.

And we've got to we got to get past that.

General Mark Graham knows firsthand about that stigma.

The retired Army major general and executive director of the Vets for Warriors program at the Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care National Call Center has made it his mission to promote mental health and suicide prevention awareness to veterans and their families by email, chat and phone.

And he started the outreach to honor the memory of his two sons.

Personally lost two sons.

We have three children.

We have a daughter.

She's the youngest, but our son, Kevin, died by suicide.

He was studying to be an army doctor.

The University of Kentucky was a senior ROTC cadet struggling with depression, and we were stationed in Korea.

Didn't realize how serious it was.

We knew.

We knew he was sad.

We didn't know you could die from being too sad.

It was in 2000, three, seven months later.

Our oldest son, Kevin's older brother, Jeffrey, was an Army lieutenant on a foot patrol outside Fallujah and stopped his platoon when he saw something irregular on a bridge.

And as he walked up to check on that to evaluate it, the IED was detonated by cell phone and he was killed in Iraq.

The nonprofit has been around almost 13 years and has had over 900,000 contacts since they started.

The one of a kind peer support network is available 24 hours, seven days a week where a trained veteran will answer the call live within 30 seconds.

And that network is set to expand thanks to a $1 million grant through Face the Fight, a collaboration of organizations committed to reducing veteran suicide.

General Graham says Vets for Warriors receives and makes about 100,000 calls a year.

And he says that additional funding from that grant will help increase staff to help support more veterans in need.

So we average at least one new person an hour that call us looking for help.

And the funding from Face the Fight Coalition is huge.

In this country.

Veterans included roughly one in five individuals that's 20% are going to experience a mental health disorder or an addiction disorder within their lifetime.

So you think about your own family, you think about your neighbors, your friends, you think about veterans that you know, one in five.

This is indeed an epidemic, and it's one that we really are privileged to be a part of the service to.

And we look forward to continuing to be that solution.

Dr. Frank, A.C. is the president and CEO of Rutgers Behavioral Health Care National Call Center.

He says, unfortunately, he has seen a correlation between mental health calls and homelessness among veterans, which is why a hotline for veterans by veterans is a game changer.

So we are thrilled to be part of a national network providing 24 over seven phone support to veterans across the country.

So individual call with a variety of different needs.

Sometimes it's a referral.

Other times they find themselves confused or anxious or upset or depressed.

Other times it can be more severe.

Some individuals who call are thinking about whether or not continuing to live is really something that they want to do.

Retired Army veteran Ray Torres is one of those nearly 100 peer support specialists that offer around the clock support to veterans and their families who are fighting invisible wounds of war off the battlefield.

Their call will be answered by a veteran, and many would like to speak with certain people of of a certain uniform, whether it's a marine Navy veteran, Air Force, and if that's what you feel comfortable with.

We'll try to accommodate you because we're here to help you no matter what.

In the next 4 to 5 months, he says, Vets for Warriors will be rolling out a new mobile app to make sure they're available multiple ways for anyone who needs support.

He reminds everyone to honor veterans every day, not just on Veterans Day.

And to think a veteran.

The next time you see one.

Friendly Spotlight News.

I'm Raven Santana.