Chattanooga, TN · Est. 2026
We find you where you are.
VA disability benefits aren't charity. They're compensation — earned through service and sacrifice. Most unsheltered veterans don't know what they're owed, and the VA process is designed to frustrate anyone who tries to navigate it alone.
Worth Their Weight walks the streets of Chattanooga to find veterans where they are. When we find one, we personally navigate their VA claim from start to finish — staying in their corner until benefits are secured.
"Chattanooga ended veteran homelessness once in 2019. The numbers crept back up. Worth Their Weight exists to finish what this community started — and this time make it permanent."
Most unsheltered veterans have earned VA disability benefits they've never claimed. No one showed them how.
Street outreach finds veterans. Benefits navigation connects them to monthly tax-free income and free VA healthcare for life.
Functional zero veteran homelessness in Hamilton County — 15 to 20 veterans connected to benefits in year one.
VA disability compensation ranges from 10% to 100% rating. We pursue the highest defensible rating — every condition, every dollar.
For a veteran in their 40s, a fully secured claim can exceed half a million dollars in lifetime tax-free income — plus healthcare.
Every successful claim unlocks free VA healthcare for life — including mental health care, addiction treatment, and primary care.
We find veterans on the street, and we stay in their corner until the VA has paid what it owes.
Community ambassadors walk Chattanooga with a wagon stocked with supplies — socks, hygiene kits, water, resource cards. No clipboard. No intake form. No clinical lens. Just genuine human contact. The primary function: identify veterans and build the trust that makes everything else possible.
When we identify a veteran, we personally navigate their VA claim from start to finish. We connect them to the Hamilton County VSO, pursue the highest defensible disability rating, and stay in their corner until monthly tax-free benefits and free VA healthcare are secured. We do not stop at the first number the VA offers.
In 2021, Cory Gold lived on Riverfront Parkway. Every day he walked downtown with a backpack full of supplies — handing them out to unsheltered neighbors because it was the right thing to do. No org. No funding. No plan. Just a person who decided to show up.
Worth Their Weight is the infrastructure Cory built around that original instinct. As a disabled veteran, Cory navigated the same system these veterans face. He knows what it takes to get what you've earned. And he decided to share that with every veteran who needs it.
The approach comes straight from his background as a software engineer: pay top dollar for exceptional people, move fast, document everything, and build something that can be handed off and replicated city by city. The competition is homelessness — and homelessness does not take days off.
Your donation funds the outreach that finds veterans and the navigation that connects them to what they've already earned. There are 80–110 veterans sleeping unsheltered in this region tonight. We know how to help them.
Donate NowQuestions? cory@worththeirweight.org · (423) 414-4948