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Congressional Interest Grows in Helping Homeless Veterans
2007 may be shaping up as a good year for enactment of legislation to address the problem of homelessness among U.S. veterans, according to speakers at a Jan. 26 discussion on “Veterans and Housing — The Vital Link” at the National Housing Conference in Washington, D.C.
Cheryl Beversdorf, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, cited findings from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) that there may be 200,000 veterans who are homeless on any given night and twice that number experiencing homelessness within the course of a year.
The ranks of the nation’s homeless veterans are largely made up of older men who served in Vietnam, but they are slowly being joined by women and soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Beversdorf said. One in five returning from the current war will experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and a VA study found that 35% of soldiers in combat are likely to develop psychiatric problems.
Some 200 organizations are currently providing community-based support and transitional housing, she said, including a full continuum of care: case management, crisis intervention, legal aid, job placement, food and clothing, treatment for mental and physical illness and more.
One of those organizations, U.S. VETS, is assisting some 20,000 homeless veterans annually in several cities across the country, providing transitional housing in a safe and sober environment, with the goal of returning them to the workforce in 90 days, according to Stephanie Buckley, the organization’s regional director.
“We are finding more and more veterans seeking our services to get their lives back on the right track,” Buckley said, and a 36-bed facility in Long Beach, Calif. has been dedicated exclusively to supporting women vets, a significant share of whom are dealing with sexual trauma issues. “It’s hard putting women into a men’s program,” she said.
Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are also posing a unique challenge, because they don’t feel that they belong in programs that predominantly serve Vietnam vets and can’t relate to them, she said.
A major part of the effort to address homelessness among veterans involves preventing them from becoming homeless, an approach that wasn’t understood during the Vietnam era but has become apparent now, said Jeremy Rosen, director for homelessness and mental health for Volunteers of America.
“We know what has to be done to prevent homelessness among the vets who are coming back,” he said, and what’s needed now is political momentum to get the necessary resources. Spending those resources on seeing that vets “get the help they need before they become homeless” will be a cheaper approach in the long run, he added.
In 90% of the cases, “there are existing federal programs and resources that can do the job,” such as those at the VA and the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and Labor, he said. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we have to increase resources.”
“We need to make sure we are targeting resources to veterans in return for the service they have given the country,” Rosen said.
Noting a pattern of real bipartisan momentum on the veteran homelessness issue in the 109th Congress, Jonathan Harwitz, director of public policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, said that “we know what works for this population. We have the technology to rebuild these lives. It’s being done every day.”
Several bills to address the plight of veterans were introduced, but not acted upon, during the 109th Congress. Introduced in the Senate by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Robert Andrews (R-N.J.), the “Homes for Hero Act of 2006” (S. 3475/H.R. 5561) is “a marker of what’s needed,” said Harwitz.
Harwitz added that he assumes many of last year’s proposals will be reintroduced in the 110th Congress “in some form or another talking about homeless veterans.”
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