2012 Jerald Washington Memorial Founders' Award

[BDBoop]

President Obama, First Lady Honored for Leadership to End Veteran Homelessness - PR Newswire - The Sacramento Bee

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2012 -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans has announced that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have been selected as recipients of the 2012 Jerald Washington Memorial Founders' Award, the highest honor bestowed by the nation's homeless veteran assistance community.

President Obama is the first person to receive the award more than once. He was honored in 2009 as the first president in U.S. history to make ending veteran homelessness a priority of his administration. Within months of that event, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki announced the "Five-Year Plan to End Veteran Homelessness," an ambitious initiative to ensure veterans in crisis will never again be left to fend for themselves on the streets.

By June 2010, every member of the president's cabinet had signed onto "Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness," the nation's first comprehensive blueprint for multi-agency cooperation to end all homelessness in America. That historic document incorporated Secretary Shinseki's Five-Year Plan, which calls for increased access to housing, health care, income supports and homelessness prevention assistance for veterans and their families.

 

[The Gadfly]

That's well and good BD, but three years into that "five year plan", too many of my veteran brothers and sisters are homeless and forgotten on the street, and just last month a disabled vet I know, with a wife and three young children, lost their home to foreclosure (they have yet to receive the first dollar of help from the promised programs). Now, I'm certainly glad the president cares, and I know GEN Shinseki does, but until and unless that caring is followed up with money and action, I'm afraid all the pretty words don't help much. Speaking of which, where are the rest of our fellow Americans on this? We veterans wonder.

 

[BDBoop]

It matters to me. It's a start. Nobody had to, but somebody did, and he is at least attempting to do something about it.

I knew they were working on it. That's one somebody who didn't know there was anything to work on, before. I know there's a Coalition for Homeless Veterans - I didn't know that before, either.

 

[whitehall]

Is there really a "national coalition for homeless veterans"? It must be an oxymoron. National coalitions require lots of money to function so why do homeless veterans exist? My guess is that it's another democrat sponsored political scheme. Anybody think Barry and Michelle care about current or former members of the US Military? Like almost all the other democrats in congress Barry undermined the Military mission during the Bush administration and democrats actually get away with saying that the mission is fraudulent and illegal. So ....duh...democrats had a total majority for two years with an ultra left wing inexperienced president who would have signed anything they put in front of him. Why didn't they end the mission? Why does the administration waste time prosecuting members of the Military for trivial issues while US Troops slug it out in Afghanistan with virtually no support or encouragement from the political hacks who are in charge?