CONCORD, MASS.

Not far from where the Boston Massacre helped sow the seeds for the Revolutionary War, David Dyer points toward the underpass where he’d score crack cocaine by day and the train depot where he’d sleep some nights.

Now, he has a family, a home and a job — helping homeless veterans get off the streets, like he did.

Dyer is part of a team of veterans, some formerly homeless themselves, that the state of Massachusetts has hired to get veterans off the streets in the Boston area. Typically, they spend one day a week roaming the city’s storefronts, alleys and shelters, which is what he was doing one recent morning outside Boston’s South Station. “I guess you could call this my home for about a month,” he reminisced.

President Barack Obama’s administration has pledged to eliminate homelessness among veterans by the end of 2015. And while the rate has been dropping, time is running short.

So communities such as Boston are aggressively hitting the streets with offers of housing, treatment and hope. Using formerly homeless veterans such as Dyer and team leader Christopher Doyle helps them make inroads with a community that often is distrustful of people who haven’t experienced what they’ve been through.

“When they say, ‘Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ I can say, ‘Yeah, I do, because I was there myself,'” said Doyle, who at one point lived in a VA homeless shelter with about 180 other veterans before landing a job with the state.

The federal government estimates that the homeless rate among veterans has dropped by about 25 percent in the past three years, but nearly 58,000 veterans remain on the streets or in temporary shelters on any given night.

“I have said from the beginning, the climb will get steeper the closer we get to the summit,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said earlier this year in Washington. “All the easy cases will have been housed. In the end, we will have the toughest, most difficult cases to solve — some prior failures, some behavioral problems, even some serious mental health issues.”

VA officials point to Boston as a model for what can be done when local and federal organizations work together. Their focus is to get chronically homeless veterans into a house or apartment as soon as possible instead of putting them into temporary or emergency shelters for months at a time. Then, once the vet gets into a house, officials arrange the support services the veteran will need to stay there, such as substance abuse counseling and job training. Typically, the federal government pays most of the cost for the home through a voucher. Local officials and nonprofits also help coordinate the support services that are, again, mostly paid for through the VA.

“When you put housing as the priority, the treatment and everything else comes along in a much more effective way because they’re getting their most basic needs met first,” said Vincent Kane, director of the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, which conducts policy analysis and research. “They’re not worried where their next meal is coming from or what roof will be over their head that night.”

To estimate the number of homeless veterans, the federal government relies on an annual count that takes place in January. Thousands of volunteers, government employees and nonprofit workers search their local streets, parks and shelters in an effort to count the number of homeless people. The latest count in Boston estimated 458 homeless vets on any given night in 2013, a drop of 15 percent over the past three years. That’s not as steep as the national drop, but VA officials in Massachusetts said that’s partly because their outreach efforts have helped them find homeless people who previously would have gone uncounted.

Most of the team’s clients have drug and alcohol issues that require counseling and treatment. Harrington said he’s never had a problem with drugs or alcohol and said his problems were financial. He said in recent years he spent most of his nights at the airport. At dawn, he’d head over to the Boston Public Library.

One night, an airport worker brought in a social worker from the VA to talk to him. The VA helped him get a pension to supplement his Social Security. It also helped him land a government voucher. He marveled at the support he’s received.

“They had a whole team of support people, like, if you need furniture, they get you furniture. If you need food, they’ll bring food to you,” Harrington said.

At Boston’s Emmanuel Church, Bryant Draycott says he’s been told he is No. 5 on the list to get a government voucher that would let him live in an apartment. The Navy veteran said he’ll take help, but only on his terms.

“I’m the vet. They’re not,” he said. “You want to give me a room? You want to give me an apartment? OK, I’ll stay there for at least a couple of days. I’ll give it a try for a week. If I don’t like it, I’ll tell you what you can do with it.”

And another thing, don’t use the word homeless in his presence.

“To me, personally, I hate that word. I refuse to use the term homeless. With me, I’m on vacation.”

Draycott estimates that he’s been on vacation for about eight years.

“And loving every minute of it,” he said.