Street roots
Jan. 6, 2012
VETERANS, from page 1
end up on the street is not drink or mental
difficulties — it is poverty.
The drawdown of US troops in Iraq is
already in full stride. In Afghanistan, NATO
is training a force of 350,000 Afghan police
and soldiers to take over when the last
foreign troops leave Afghanistan by 2014.
“I don’t think there is a bureaucracy big
enough to deal with the number of folks and
the needs of the people who are coming
back,” said Belle Landau, executive director
of the Oregon Returning Veterans Project.
Landau’s son is an Iraq War veteran.
The Returning Veterans Project is a
statewide nonprofit that helps veterans with
mental and physical problems related to
their service. Service providers offer pro
bono services for veterans. Among the most
common issues are depression and anxiety,
PTSD, drugs and alcohol abuse, and a new
phenomenon — sexual addition, fueled by
unlimited Internet access, lots of downtime,
and the constant need for stress relief.
“In April, May 2010, 2,500 soldiers from
the National Guard 41st Brigade came back
to Oregon after an almost 12 months
combat deployment,” Landau said. “Three
months later, we saw a 144 percent increase
in the number of clients we were serving.”
here are still relatively few of this new
breed of veteran in the homeless
population. But according to Neil Donovan,
Executive Director of the U.S. National
Coalition of the Homeless, those on the
path to homelessness are still at the early
stages of that transition.
“This is my 33rd year working in
homeless services, so I have seen Vietnam
veterans, I have seen other veterans, (and) I
kind of have a good sense of how long it
takes to come back home and spiral down.
And it takes a while. It doesn’t happen in a
year, and it doesn’t happen in two years,” he
said.
“What tends to happen is you have a
year’s worth of nightmares, and then your
wife leaves,” he said, “And then you have
another year of nightmares, and the
Oxycontin or the Percoset that you’re on
stop working because it’s a narcotic that will
only work for so long, and then the pain
becomes so profound that you begin using it
beyond the prescribed amount, and then the
doctor won’t prescribe it any longer so you
start self-medicating, and then you start
getting into illegal behavior.”
At this point, up to three years down the
road, the soon-to-be-homeless veteran slides
below the poverty line and the risk of
homelessness becomes acute.
“We are quite far out from seeing the true
wave of people who will become homeless.
And there are going to be a lot of people
who are homeless and the people who are
homeless are going to be people who are
physically handicapped as well as
emotionally handicapped,” Donovan added.
There are other dangers in the current
economy for the newest population of
veterans. Many Western countries are
cutting spending as they wrestle with huge
deficits, and that could threaten funding for
vital programs just at the point the newest
veterans need help.
anada recently proposed $226 million in
budget cuts from its Veterans Affairs,
but a government spokesman told
Vancouver street magazine Megaphone
these were aimed at improving efficiency
rather than lowering benefits.
Canadien MP Peter Stoffer said he was
concerned about the impact on health care
and services. “As the official Opposition
C
young veterans in the homeless population,
there are already signs of potential trouble.
Determining a global count of veterans on
the street is difficult, in part because of
varying official definitions of what
constitutes homelessness.
According to the most recent data
available from the U.S. Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), 144,842 American
veterans, or 11.5 percent of homeless
adults, spent at least one night in
emergency or transitional housing between
October 2009 and September 2010, down 3
percent from the year before. A second
measure, the number of homeless veterans
on a single night, rose 1 percent.
For its part, the National Coalition for
Homeless Veterans in the United States
estimates that while only 8 percent of the
general populace are veterans, those who
served in the military account for nearly
T
R E U T E R S / D E N IS S I N Y A K O V
A soldier with BRAVO Copany, Royal Canadian Regiment
critic for Veterans Affairs, I have many
examples of how the system of caring for
our veterans is broken,” he wrote in a blog
on the Canadian Veterans Advocacy website.
“Veterans’ homelessness is also on the rise
and more veterans are using food banks.”
Funding at the U.S. VA has actually risen
after a 2009 pledge by U.S. Secretary of
Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki and President
Obama to end veteran homelessness by
2015. But Angell agrees it is hard to predict
what will happen in the future.
“It’s hard to imagine that people wouldn’t
be behind the employment of veterans,” she
said. “And really that’s not just a
government issue — that’s the American
People’s issue. It’s not up to government to
hire every single veteran. It’s really up to
the private sector to join forces with that
and make those employment opportunities
available.”
Even though there are relatively few
Fallen Off
the Edge
A new book by A rt Garcia
"Fallen Off the Edge" is a chronicle
of one man's experiences after returning
from the Vietnam War. Told through the
eyes of Street Roots columnist Art
Garcia, this book celebrates the major
victories born from a series of
questionable choices. Art's jocular
storytelling takes the reader along with
him In and out of the California prison
system over the course of 10 years until
he found the strength and courage to
pull himself up from the fall.
The book Is available online at www.
blurb.com under searchword Art Garcia.
one-fifth of the adult homeless population.
Official counts are likely low since they
leave out veterans who never register at a
homeless facility — those who go from
friend’s house to friend’s house, sleep in
cars, in the woods or on the streets. It also
leaves out those who don’t admit to being
veterans.
Jennifer Wilcox is the program manager
for Central City Concern’s Employment
Access Center, which works with about 300
homeless and near-homeless veterans. While
most of their clients have been out of
service for many years, this past year, they
saw 9 veterans who had been out of service
for three years or less, a significant increase
over past years.
“We’re starting to see more,” Wilcox said.
“We’re still waiting to see what these waves
of returning vets is going to look like for us.”
Wilcox noted that unlike most other
states, Oregon does not have an active
service military base, a central point for
veterans to connect with their military
community and its services.
In place of such a base, the VA and the
veteran community conduct Yellow-Ribbon
events to keep veterans to stay connected
with counseling, services and other
opportunities.
xperts cite a host of reasons veterans
may be at risk of homelessness: trouble
adjusting to the chaotic rhythm of “normal”
life after the comforting rigor of military
routine, post-traumatic stress disorder,
difficulty translating work in the service into
marketable job skills, loss of camaraderie,
dependence on alcohol or drugs, serious
physical injury.
Veterans may also contend with all the
issues that can cause homelessness in the
mainstream of society: lack of affordable
housing, jobs that don’t pay a living wage,
red tape that makes social services
impossible to navigate, physical or mental
disabilities.
There is also the trained mindset of a
soldier.
“One thing I’ve learned from this job is
that a veteran will ask for help if their buddy
needs help, but it’s difficult for them to ask
for help for themselves,” said Belle Landau
with Returning Veterans Project. “The other
part is that only 1 percent of the country is
serving in the military. Most people are
disconnected from their neighbors who may
be a military family. There’s such a
disconnect in these two wars more than any
other. It makes people feel isolated. If
nobody knows, they feel totally
disconnected, as if their service wasn’t
worth much. The community needs to get
more involved, and that’s what we’re trying
to do.”
McNabb echoed the same experience.
“My generation of service members is
very skittish and they don’t necessarily
come out and say I’m homeless,” McNabb
said. “It is pride. The military is a very fear-
based society. They pretty much tell you if
you talk to someone, it’s on your permanent
record. You have the pride of wearing the
uniform, you’re children’s heroes, and now
you’re needing help and asking for it? That
just throws so many people off.”
The high unemployment rate, combined
with personal relationship problems and the
trauma of war are being blamed for Oregon
National Guard having the highest rate of
suicides of all national guards. Twelve
soldiers at Fort Lewis-McChord in Tacoma,
Wash., took their lives in 2011, up from nine
in 2010. More than 34,000 soldiers are
based there, up from 19,000 prior to the
Iraq War.
The new returning veterans also face a
greater likelihood of serious physical
disability than those of the past, according
E
See VETERANS, page 9
Canning jars &
equipment,
cookware, kitchen
took & appliances
Organic cotton
sheets, towek,
& blankets
Food dryers
Juicers
Books on meat-free
cooking, gardening