Street Spirit July 2004

Homeless Veterans

It is estimated that 55,000 homeless veterans reside in California.

Taken in part from Street Spirit, July issue, 2004 Author Robert L. Terrell

From a report on homeless veterans by the California Veterans Board.

“The fact that there are homeless veterans is a national disgrace. To allow veterans to live under bridges and in back alleys is shameful. People who put their lives on the line for others deserve to be honored and treated with respect.”

They have done their duty. They are on their own. Any significance they have been to war and nation’s long-term best interests has come to an end. As a result, the news media swarm off in search of other, more newsworthy, targets of opportunity.

Unfortunately, for many veterans the most trying period of their lives begins almost immediately after they saunter arm-in-arm out of the journalistic frame and into their own private versions of hell.

Statistics laboriously gathered by those tasked with caring for veterans, homeless ones in particular, consistently indicate that far too many of them become haunted, tortured victims of their memories of war. As a result, they suffer emotional, physical and financial collapse.

The least lucky ones, those without families or social support networks, sometimes commit suicide, or end up in mental institutions, or jails, or cold, windswept street corners, reeking of cheap liquor and begging for free food and spare change.

EVERY WAR CREATES HOMELESS VETS

My first memories of homeless, limbless, begging veterans are rooted in childhood. Whenever I was taken downtown in any of the small Detroit-area cities in which I grew up, I would see old unshaven men begging on the streets.

What I did not know at the time is that most of them were veterans of World War II. Many of them were alcoholics, and virtually all of them conveyed the impression that they were broken, abandoned human beings.

I was excruciatingly aware that many of them had missing limbs. It was not unusual to see them scooting about on small, padded, wooden platforms perched atop small wheels scavenged from roller skates.

Some of the old, broken, sad-eyed veterans sold pencils. But most often, they sat quietly in front of begging cups, waiting patiently to hear the tinkle of a few coins tossed in their direction by anonymous passers-by who rarely took the time to speak to them.

As I grew older, I watched the ages of the broken beggars change as their populations expanded to include younger veterans from Korean War. During recent decades, the streets of cities across the nation have flooded with veterans from other wars, including the Cold War, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Lebanon, anti-drug operations in Central and South America, and Gulf Storm.

Given the United States’ current activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems appropriate to note that, within a relatively short period of time, a new flood of hapless, haunted men and women will appear on the nation’s streets.

ONE OUT OF EVERY FOUR HOMELESS PERSONS IS A VETERAN

Even though no branch of the Federal Government is entrusted with the task of keeping up-to-date and accurate statistics on the number of homeless veterans, reports issued by the Veterans Administrations indicate that, on any given night, approximately 300,000 veterans are sleeping outdoors.

The Veterans Administration also estimates that more than 500,000 veterans are homeless on U.S. streets at some point during any given year. Approximately one out of every four homeless persons in the United States is a veteran.

The 1999 report issued by the Interagency Council of Homelessness indicated that 67 percent of the male homeless population in the United States served more than three years in the military, and that 33 percent of them were stationed in a war zone.

The report also indicated that a significant percentage of the nation’s homeless veterans are deeply troubled human beings. Unfortunately, there is little indication that the vast majority of those who need assistance are receiving it. This is patently clear to anyone who reviews this data regarding systematically inadequate emotional and medical services provided to veterans.

In addition to such factors as the nation’s catastrophic shortage of affordable housing, “a large number of displace and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks.” This assessment was provided by the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which currently serves as the nation’s largest provider of homeless services, is a source of limited assistance to approximately 100,000 veterans each year. Nonetheless, the Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledges that more than 80 percent of the nations’ homeless veterans are not provided any assistance. The amount of money spent by the Federal Government on homeless veterans is limited to only one in 10 of those in need.

One of the most important results is that human beings who have served this nation as best they could, for better or worse are being left to suffer and sometimes die of neglect on the streets.

Many of those who temporarily escape death on the streets suffer horrendous health problems. Homeless veterans are particularly susceptible to hepatitis C, diabetes, prostate cancer and HIV/AIDS, according to a 2002 report on homeless veterans in the state of California.

The report, which was sponsored by the California Veterans Board, estimated that there are approximately 55,000 homeless veterans residing in shelters or on the streets of this incomparable wealthy state. That is almost 20,000 veterans more than were on the streets in California cities in 1994.

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