Veterans make up 1 in 4 homeless in US

[Capper]

This is an embarrassment.......and I want people to remember stuff like this when they see politicians voting themselves a raise, or taking slush money or special interest money......or the next time the VA gives their board a raise......It makes me mad beyond words that our society so easily forgets.

WASHINGTON - Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

The Veterans Affairs Department has identified 1,500 homeless veterans from the current wars and says 400 of them have participated in its programs specifically targeting homelessness.

The Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit, based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau. 2005 data estimated that 194,254 homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans.

In comparison, the VA says that 20 years ago, the estimated number of veterans who were homeless on any given night was 250,000.

Some advocates say such an early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable.

"We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous," said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.

While services to homeless veterans have improved in the past 20 years, advocates say more financial resources still are needed. With the spotlight on the plight of Iraq veterans, they hope more will be done to prevent homelessness and provide affordable housing to the younger veterans while there's a window of opportunity.

"When the Vietnam War ended, that was part of the problem. The war was over, it was off TV, nobody wanted to hear about it," said John Keaveney, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of New Directions in Los Angeles, which provides substance abuse help, job training and shelter to veterans.

"I think they'll be forgotten," Keaveney said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. "People get tired of it. It's not glitzy that these are young, honorable, patriotic Americans. They'll just be veterans, and that happens after every war."

Keaveney said it's difficult for his group to persuade some homeless Iraq veterans to stay for treatment and help because they don't relate to the older veterans. Those who stayed have had success — one is now a stock broker and another is applying to be a police officer, he said.

"They see guys that are their father's age and they don't understand, they don't know, that in a couple of years they'll be looking like them," he said.
After being discharged from the military, Jason Kelley, 23, of Tomahawk, Wis., who served in Iraq with the Wisconsin National Guard, took a bus to Los Angeles looking for better job prospects and a new life.

Kelley said he couldn't find a job because he didn't have an apartment, and he couldn't get an apartment because he didn't have a job. He stayed in a $300-a-week motel until his money ran out, then moved into a shelter run by the group U.S. VETS in Inglewood, Calif. He's since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.

"The only training I have is infantry training and there's not really a need for that in the civilian world," Kelley said in a phone interview. He has enrolled in college and hopes to move out of the shelter soon.

The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness — mostly related to post-traumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

Overall, 45 percent of participants in the VA's homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness and more than three out of four have a substance abuse problem, while 35 percent have both, Dougherty said.

Historically, a number of fighters in U.S. wars have become homeless. In the post-Civil War era, homeless veterans sang old Army songs to dramatize their need for work and became known as "tramps," which had meant to march into war, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Penn State University's Beaver campus who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.

After World War I, thousands of veterans — many of them homeless — camped in the nation's capital seeking bonus money. Their camps were destroyed by the government, creating a public relations disaster for President Herbert Hoover.

The end of the Vietnam War coincided with a time of economic restructuring, and many of the same people who fought in Vietnam were also those most affected by the loss of manufacturing jobs, DePastino said.

Their entrance to the streets was traumatic and, as they aged, their problems became more chronic, recalled Sister Mary Scullion, who has worked with the homeless for 30 years and co-founded of the group Project H.O.M.E. in Philadelphia.

"It takes more to address the needs because they are multiple needs that have been unattended," Scullion said. "Life on the street is brutal and I know many, many homeless veterans who have died from Vietnam."

The VA started targeting homelessness in 1987, 12 years after the fall of Saigon. Today, the VA has, either on its own or through partnerships, more than 15,000 residential rehabilitative, transitional and permanent beds for homeless veterans nationwide. It spends about $265 million annually on homeless-specific programs and about $1.5 billion for all health care costs for homeless veterans.

Because of these types of programs and because two years of free medical care is being offered to all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Dougherty said they hope many veterans from recent wars who are in need can be identified early.

"Clearly, I don't think that's going to totally solve the problem, but I also don't think we're simply going to wait for 10 years until they show up," Dougherty said. "We're out there now trying to get everybody we can to get those kinds of services today, so we avoid this kind of problem in the future."

In all of 2006, the Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 495,400 veterans were homeless at some point during the year.

The group recommends that 5,000 housing units be created per year for the next five years dedicated to the chronically homeless that would provide permanent housing linked to veterans' support systems. It also recommends funding an additional 20,000 housing vouchers exclusively for homeless veterans, and creating a program that helps bridge the gap between income and rent.

Following those recommendations would cost billions of dollars, but there is some movement in Congress to increase the amount of money dedicated to homeless veterans programs.

On a recent day in Philadelphia, case managers from Project H.O.M.E. and the VA picked up William Joyce, 60, a homeless Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair who said he'd been sleeping at a bus terminal.

"You're an honorable veteran. You're going to get some services," outreach worker Mark Salvatore told Joyce. "You need to be connected. You don't need to be out here on the streets."
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Associated Press writer Kathy Matheson contributed to this story from Philadelphia.
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On the Net: National Alliance to End Homelessness: National Alliance to End Homelessness
New Directions: Welcome to New Directions
Project Home: Project H.O.M.E.: Ending Homelessness in Philadelphia
County of Lancaster: Lancaster County Website
Veterans Affairs Department: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
U.S. Vets: US VETS: housing job development education training for homeless veterans through a public private partnership

[Athildja-x64]

Rich, I agree with you.
When I got out of the millitary after serving for 9+ Years (over 15 years ago) and fighting in multiple conflicts and one declared war I found that no one cared.
I ended up working at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.
I am frustrated beyond belief at the way I was treated then and the way our country treats vets now.

[Fasttazz]

This kind of treatment of our Vets is appalling.Fookin pisses me off to no end. And the failure of help for Katrina victims.

Capper,remember me telling you to "Follow the MONEY"? My point exactly!

I hope no one votes for a "PRO-WAR" candidate!

[stinger608]

It is just a complete fricking OUTRAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sure makes a person just want to kill someone

[Stormcrow]

As much as I'm against the current occupations, I still support the troops. Why? Even if they agreed to go over and fight, their still risking their lives and busting their ass for something they believe in. I'm against the fact they have to be over there at all, putting their lives on the line to further the ideas of a government that simply labels them expendable pawns. They come back with missing limbs, emotional scars, having seen things that normal people can't imagine and forced to deal with them day in and out...only to be tossed on the street with a "nice working with ya." I can't say much more that wouldn't be a long string of profanity, but these guys are the ones that have more then earned the nice cars and good houses, a moral war or not..not the politicians who simply sit back and watch.

[Quakindude]

Never have been treated like an "expendable pawn" at any time during my military career. If you've not served, it will be very difficult to understand where I'm coming from on this.

I don't agree with the processes that got us here nor the blurriness of the path ahead. But the end result and ancillary benefits are seen by some of us.

I know it sounds well used, perhaps a bit trite and definitely Republican, but if we weren't fighting them there, it would be on the streets here. Make no mistake about that. My disgruntlement comes from our not being willing to lock down our borders, kick out the trash and put some dumbass politicians out the door. There's a better way of handling this war than fighting it over in the middle east. But you'll never see an America that has shuttered the gravy train, no matter the politics of the person in office.

There will always be war. Until this planet and her occupants finally rip this world apart, there will be no peace. It's the nature of humanity. Until a quantum shift in belief systems occurs, there will be men and women willing to do what must be done to protect our interests. As long as there's war, there will be an abnormal amount of veterans per capita that fall on hard times. Some Vets can handle the mental anguish and trauma of war, some can't. Some of us flirt with a desperate expanse of sanity interlaced with mountainous ranges of insanity. Some of us never fully come back from war because once exposed to that environment, we cannot "live" without it. To experience it and be alive while being threatened with death is a drug more powerful than any ever known. And to not be infused with it is to live a life of dealing with the extreme emotional highs of those intense times. But the fear of being back on that drug is so intense, it can remove you from this world of pleasure and security for ever.

I've seen figures upwards of 65% that indicate the homeless are by and large mentally ill.

For those service members who are living on the streets, that percentage is probably much higher.

[Stormcrow]

That was an extremely good post, Quakin. I knew a few Vietnam vets who were in a care home when my aunt was there, and looking back on the war they felt they were considered expendable by the military, so thats what I know about that not having served. I can't say much on it that wouldn't be opinion because I haven't actually been in that situation, at least from an army standpoint. But I do wish those who have would get treated so much better by the ones they served.

[fstroupe]

I'm a 7 year veteran, have been out just over 16 years. I can't believe it has been that long, but it has.

Ditto on everything that Quakindude said.

I dunno....I really don't understand homelessness, why people get there, etc. I know that in the past, there were stories of homeless people being helped...given jobs, places to live...yet they ended up back on the streets. You don't see those stories any more.

They only interviewed two homeless people in the article...everyone else interviewed makes their living helping homeless people.

I do know that the featured person of the story, the guy that hopped a bus to LA, with no family, friends, job, prospects of a job, is a total dumb-ass. What the hell did he think? That LA has a big reception center with a billboard that says "Vets Register Here"? Has he never seen any of the movies where a star-struck girl goes to LA and becomes a hooker cause she couldn't find a job?

No one gave me a damn thing when I was discharged, and I didn't expect them to. I took about a $12,000 cut in pay when I got out. I would have gotten a better job if I hadn't squandered my spare time and finished my degree, there are all kinds of educational opportunities for active duty soldiers. I have what I consider a suck-assed job now...though I guess it is one of the higher paying non-management jobs in the area. (I spent most of the first 10 years I was out of the army in management, got burned out on it and now punch a clock)

I have a brother in law that is a vet. He is an alcoholic, weighs close to 400lbs, diabetic, and occupies a chair all day feeling sorry for himself. He will probably be dead within a few years. I guess that he could have PTSD...but I don't think he got it at Ft. Lewis or in Germany. He has no one to blame but himself.

The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness — mostly related to post-traumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

I don't know where he came up with this information, but if nothing else, it gives that much more reason that women shouldn't be in combat zones.

Sorry for the rant. It would probably be longer, but I gotta go to work....so I won't be homeless.

[Reloadron]

I can only speak for myself and what I have seen. My personal little war was Vietnam. Looking back it is hard to believe 35 years have passed since I left Nam as a Marine Corps Sergeant 22 years old. I spent 10 years in the Corps before going DOD. I was fortunate as I fared well but I can't say the same for many of my friends.

Looking back over all the years I will tell you what I do see. I see a slow but steady erosion of GI benifits. I watched them totally screw the VA benifits to oblivion. The change has been slow but little by little benifit after benifit has eroded to next to nothing. Strange to look back and see it all unfolded.

I have friends today my age who unfortunately rely on VA Hospitals for their care. I don't envy them. A good friend totally screwed up in Cambodia (back when we weren't there) finally last year declared mentally insane and finally getting a disability.

Yeah, while on active duty they love you, however, following an honorable discharge it seems you are cast aside like a used rubber.

Yeah, Capper how strange how our elected officials manage to well feather their nest while forgetting the veterans who really want little other than some basic care. They have no problem themselves at the feeding trough (read into that term) but seem hard pressed to find funds to help our vets once they leave active duty.

New rule: All public officials will now use the military health care system. This includes the use of VA Hospitals.

Ron