1 in 4 U.S. Homeless Are Veterans, Private Study Finds

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1 in 4 U.S. Homeless Are Veterans, Private Study Finds

Thursday, November 08, 2007

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 National 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 the 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 National 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."