Homeless Vets
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.
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In all of 2006, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 495,400 veterans were homeless at some point during the year.
In any discussion about those without health insurance, someone on the right invariably tells us that many (most?) of those who are uninsured choose not to have insurance. With homelessness, that tradition goes back farther… Reagan himself told us many of the homeless were “urban campers” who chose to be homeless. No doubt that explains the over-representation of Vets who presumably have better survival skills than most. To the rest of us, its another cost of the war, borne disproportionately by a few.