RELATED: Photos from the Jericho Anniversary 25th Anniversary Gala

Celebrating its 25th anniversary was icing on the cake at the Jericho Project gala Thursday at Capitale. The provider of housing and support services for the homeless — with a record of sending 96% of its clients into stable housing at an annual cost of $12,000, nearly half that of a prisoner's cell — launched a campaign to fund two new residences for 130 homeless and low-income veterans.

"We want to provide an atmosphere of community and dignity our veterans deserve," the executive director of Jericho Project, Victoria Lyon, said.

The number of young veterans returning from combat with mental health problems is on the rise. "We're facing a tsunami," a Florida State University professor who studies the trauma of veterans, Charles Figley, an honoree, said.

Three of the event's honorees were veterans, including the director of the Center for Urban Education Policy at the City University of New York, Roscoe Brown Jr., who was an Army Air Force Captain in World War II; Senator Robert Dole, and Merrill Lynch's vice chairman, public markets, Paul Critchlow.

In 1945, Mr. Dole paid for an operation on a severe wound inflicted by enemy fire with $1,700 raised by his hometown. "Jericho is about second chances, like the one I had returning from World War II," Mr. Dole said.

Mr. Critchlow said his welcome home after being wounded in Vietnam wasn't especially warm. At parties, people moved away. Old girlfriends wouldn't come to the phone. In graduate school at Columbia, he had to walk through student protests of the war to get to class. "Recapturing one's life requires fortitude; it's like combat," Mr. Critchlow said, adding: "What Jericho offers is hope for the future and very tangible support."

Jericho Project entered the event with $250,000 pledged to its Veterans Initiative, and ended with an additional $300,000 raised through ticket sales and a live auction led by Piers Davies of Christie's.

Providing uplifting entertainment at the event were Jonatha Brooke, who has a new album of songs from the Woody Guthrie archive due out this summer, and an a cappella group of formerly homeless men, Anointed Voices.

agordon@nysun.com