Back Home, and Homeless

[High_Gravity]

The U.S. Army should implement some kind of transitional program to see that no U.S. Army veteran
returning to the United States ends up Homeless. If the military can spend Billions killing people, the least
they can do is to see that x soldiers have a roof over their heads when they return back to civilian life.
A few billions from the pentagon budget should be able to do the job?$$

Hmm, not bad 52nd Street, you actually posted something that wasn't totally stupid for once in your life.

I was just thinking the same thing. There are a lot of charities specifically set up to support vets to get back into civilian life... On Veterans Day, I hope that a few of us can dig deep and help these charities to help our warriors.

I'm donating money to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for the CFC this year.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

 

[High_Gravity]

The U.S. Army should implement some kind of transitional program to see that no U.S. Army veteran
returning to the United States ends up Homeless. If the military can spend Billions killing people, the least
they can do is to see that x soldiers have a roof over their heads when they return back to civilian life.
A few billions from the pentagon budget should be able to do the job?$$

Hmm, not bad 52nd Street, you actually posted something that wasn't totally stupid for once in your life.

The Army or Pentagon can budget for a program to keep veterans housed in apartments or homes.This "homeless veteran situation" has happened before right after the Veitnam war.
I think it wrong that ex soldiers are being left to fend for themselves , after risking their lives for their country.

I totally agree my man, good post.

 

[California Girl]

Hmm, not bad 52nd Street, you actually posted something that wasn't totally stupid for once in your life.

I was just thinking the same thing. There are a lot of charities specifically set up to support vets to get back into civilian life... On Veterans Day, I hope that a few of us can dig deep and help these charities to help our warriors.

I'm donating money to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for the CFC this year.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

There is no better way to show our appreciation. I'll join you.

 

[High_Gravity]

I was just thinking the same thing. There are a lot of charities specifically set up to support vets to get back into civilian life... On Veterans Day, I hope that a few of us can dig deep and help these charities to help our warriors.

I'm donating money to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for the CFC this year.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

There is no better way to show our appreciation. I'll join you.

Thank you, I know alot of our Troops are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and having troubles adjusting, they can use all the help they can get.

 

[California Girl]

I'm donating money to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for the CFC this year.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

There is no better way to show our appreciation. I'll join you.

Thank you, I know alot of our Troops are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and having troubles adjusting, they can use all the help they can get.

I know. Many of us on this forum have skills that - if donated in time - can also help our vets. I would encourage anyone that can to donate - time, money, whatever they can.

Don't just thank them, help them.

 

[High_Gravity]

There is no better way to show our appreciation. I'll join you.

Thank you, I know alot of our Troops are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and having troubles adjusting, they can use all the help they can get.

I know. Many of us on this forum have skills that - if donated in time - can also help our vets. I would encourage anyone that can to donate - time, money, whatever they can.

Don't just thank them, help them.

I agree 100% CG.

 

[whitehall]

Let's see, there's the G.I. Bill and the unemployment office. There's family back home. There are Veterans groups and the V.A. for health issues. Why live on the street? More importantly why live on the street and whine about it? Read Burkett's book Stolen Valor. Media types have been interviewing phony Vets for years and never checking if they ever served. There was a guy who hung around the Wall. He looked so gosh darned authentic with his wild beard and wild eyes not to mention faded remnents of a military uniform that everyone was sure he was a genuine VietNam Vet. They liked to take his picture and throw him a buck and for an extra few dollars he would clutch a Flag or lean against the Wall and cry. It went on for more than a decade before someone checked on him. You guessed it, He never served in the Military.

 

[High_Gravity]

Let's see, there's the G.I. Bill and the unemployment office. There's family back home. There are Veterans groups and the V.A. for health issues. Why live on the street? More importantly why live on the street and whine about it? Read Burkett's book Stolen Valor. Media types have been interviewing phony Vets for years and never checking if they ever served. There was a guy who hung around the Wall. He looked so gosh darned authentic with his wild beard and wild eyes not to mention faded remnents of a military uniform that everyone was sure he was a genuine VietNam Vet. They liked to take his picture and throw him a buck and for an extra few dollars he would clutch a Flag or lean against the Wall and cry. It went on for more than a decade before someone checked on him. You guessed it, He never served in the Military.

Rubbish, alot of people don't have a family or support system to lean on when they get out. Wise the fuck up.

 

[whitehall]

Let's see, there's the G.I. Bill and the unemployment office. There's family back home. There are Veterans groups and the V.A. for health issues. Why live on the street? More importantly why live on the street and whine about it? Read Burkett's book Stolen Valor. Media types have been interviewing phony Vets for years and never checking if they ever served. There was a guy who hung around the Wall. He looked so gosh darned authentic with his wild beard and wild eyes not to mention faded remnents of a military uniform that everyone was sure he was a genuine VietNam Vet. They liked to take his picture and throw him a buck and for an extra few dollars he would clutch a Flag or lean against the Wall and cry. It went on for more than a decade before someone checked on him. You guessed it, He never served in the Military.

Rubbish, alot of people don't have a family or support system to lean on when they get out. Wise the fuck up.

Let's see, you joined up so you must have been motivated at one time in your life. You have a couple of years honorable service and chances are you could re-enlist and get a pretty nice duty station. You see the mess the Country is in and yet you walk away from the Military, buy a sleeping bag and a twelve pack and camp out in a parking lot? Get some therapy.

 

[High_Gravity]

Let's see, there's the G.I. Bill and the unemployment office. There's family back home. There are Veterans groups and the V.A. for health issues. Why live on the street? More importantly why live on the street and whine about it? Read Burkett's book Stolen Valor. Media types have been interviewing phony Vets for years and never checking if they ever served. There was a guy who hung around the Wall. He looked so gosh darned authentic with his wild beard and wild eyes not to mention faded remnents of a military uniform that everyone was sure he was a genuine VietNam Vet. They liked to take his picture and throw him a buck and for an extra few dollars he would clutch a Flag or lean against the Wall and cry. It went on for more than a decade before someone checked on him. You guessed it, He never served in the Military.

Rubbish, alot of people don't have a family or support system to lean on when they get out. Wise the fuck up.

Let's see, you joined up so you must have been motivated at one time in your life. You have a couple of years honorable service and chances are you could re-enlist and get a pretty nice duty station. You see the mess the Country is in and yet you walk away from the Military, buy a sleeping bag and a twelve pack and camp out in a parking lot? Get some therapy.

Go get fucked in your slutty ass mouth bitch, after multiple deployments to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan alot of Troops can't handle going back for more, if you have ever been in a war you would know why. Next time shut the fuck up when grown people are talking and don't embarass yourself.

 

[whitehall]

Rubbish, alot of people don't have a family or support system to lean on when they get out. Wise the fuck up.

Let's see, you joined up so you must have been motivated at one time in your life. You have a couple of years honorable service and chances are you could re-enlist and get a pretty nice duty station. You see the mess the Country is in and yet you walk away from the Military, buy a sleeping bag and a twelve pack and camp out in a parking lot? Get some therapy.

Go get fucked in your slutty ass mouth bitch, after multiple deployments to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan alot of Troops can't handle going back for more, if you have ever been in a war you would know why. Next time shut the fuck up when grown people are talking and don't embarass yourself.

You could have had a couple of semesters in school with the enlistment bonus money and a couple years pay not to mention the G.I. bill and a part time job but you blew it on God knows what and you ain't got a dime. You roll over in your sleeping bag and dodge the wine bottles and grab the first reporter you can find and explain what a hero you were and what a raw deal Vets are getting.

 

[California Girl]

Let's see, there's the G.I. Bill and the unemployment office. There's family back home. There are Veterans groups and the V.A. for health issues. Why live on the street? More importantly why live on the street and whine about it? Read Burkett's book Stolen Valor. Media types have been interviewing phony Vets for years and never checking if they ever served. There was a guy who hung around the Wall. He looked so gosh darned authentic with his wild beard and wild eyes not to mention faded remnents of a military uniform that everyone was sure he was a genuine VietNam Vet. They liked to take his picture and throw him a buck and for an extra few dollars he would clutch a Flag or lean against the Wall and cry. It went on for more than a decade before someone checked on him. You guessed it, He never served in the Military.

Rubbish, alot of people don't have a family or support system to lean on when they get out. Wise the fuck up.

Let's see, you joined up so you must have been motivated at one time in your life. You have a couple of years honorable service and chances are you could re-enlist and get a pretty nice duty station. You see the mess the Country is in and yet you walk away from the Military, buy a sleeping bag and a twelve pack and camp out in a parking lot? Get some therapy.

Interesting how you assume you know so much about another person's life that you can judge them. Idiot.

 

[whitehall]

Rubbish, alot of people don't have a family or support system to lean on when they get out. Wise the fuck up.

Let's see, you joined up so you must have been motivated at one time in your life. You have a couple of years honorable service and chances are you could re-enlist and get a pretty nice duty station. You see the mess the Country is in and yet you walk away from the Military, buy a sleeping bag and a twelve pack and camp out in a parking lot? Get some therapy.

Interesting how you assume you know so much about another person's life that you can judge them. Idiot.

I don't know where you are going with this girlie but it's interesting that you assume you know about a person's life because you feel so damned sorry for him. The fact is the guy allegedly served in the Military and he is homeless. I filled in logical blanks and you cry about it.

 

[High_Gravity]

Let's see, you joined up so you must have been motivated at one time in your life. You have a couple of years honorable service and chances are you could re-enlist and get a pretty nice duty station. You see the mess the Country is in and yet you walk away from the Military, buy a sleeping bag and a twelve pack and camp out in a parking lot? Get some therapy.

Go get fucked in your slutty ass mouth bitch, after multiple deployments to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan alot of Troops can't handle going back for more, if you have ever been in a war you would know why. Next time shut the fuck up when grown people are talking and don't embarass yourself.

You could have had a couple of semesters in school with the enlistment bonus money and a couple years pay not to mention the G.I. bill and a part time job but you blew it on God knows what and you ain't got a dime. You roll over in your sleeping bag and dodge the wine bottles and grab the first reporter you can find and explain what a hero you were and what a raw deal Vets are getting.

You are such a disrespectful little shit, you should be ashamed of yourself for posting this nonsense. I know your momma raised you better than that, eat a neg for posting this bs.

 

[OldUSAFSniper]

My father waded ashore on Omaha beach. Before I left for 'Nam, he told me, "Do what you have to do to get back here. I don't care what it is, do what you have to do to survive. Then before you get on that plane to come home, you take all of those things you did, write them down and throw it into the trash. Leave it there where it belongs. When you come home, you let me and your mother worry about everything else."

So I did. I didn't care what it was I had to do, my only goal was to get on that plane and go home. The day I packed to come home, I wrote down some things on a piece of paper, wadded it up and threw it in the trash. When I got off the plane, my mom and dad took me home and all he said was, "If you want to talk, I'm here." When I finally came to him, he told me about the things he wrote down and threw into the trash there in England. I was very lucky. I didn't have that many or that horrible of things to write down. But I have to say that the simple act of writing them down and throwing them into the trash for me, was like a break of some sort. They didn't follow me home.

Some never had that. Some wrestle with what they did for the rest of their lives. I was so very lucky that I never had to do or see some of the things that others did. But most importantly, I had someone who had been there. If you ask me what is the answer, I have to tell you that I just don't know. Government agencies aren't the ONLY answer, they never are. The government has only shown that they are HORRIBLE at almost everything they do. Family, friends, comrades in arms.

I give generously to private charities that work with veterans. AND I pray for those heroes... every day.

 

[waltky]

No End in Sight for Veteran Homeless Crisis...

Past Deadline, Feds See No End in Sight for Veteran Homeless Crisis
Aug 26, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Federal agencies now say they cannot predict the end of homelessness among veterans, a national crisis that President Barack Obama hoped to stop by 2015.

Six years after Obama set his goal, he announced Aug. 1 that veteran homelessness in the country had decreased 47 percent since 2010. "We knew that those were all going to be tough goals to achieve," said Ann Oliva, deputy assistant secretary for special needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "But we thought they were doable, and if we made the right policy decisions and had the right data and resources we needed, we could progress, which is what we did." Yet Oliva said she couldn't give a date when homelessness for veterans across the country would end, though agencies attempt to put more resources toward the effort and more cities are meeting federally established benchmarks that show progress in housing homeless veterans.

Though the 2015 goal was missed, Randy Brown of the nonprofit National Coalition for Homeless Veterans said Obama attracted attention to the issue and created a sense of urgency behind the effort, which increased funding to record highs. In most years since 2008, Congress has appropriated about $75 million toward a voucher program to house homeless veterans. However, lawmakers allocated $50 million in 2011 and $60 million in 2016. HUD and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the two federal agencies most involved with battling the problem, recently announced funding for the first half of 2016 -- approximately $39 million that the agencies say has the potential to house about 5,300 veterans. "When it was announced that the goal was to end veteran homelessness in five years, I think that was taken by everyone as, 'Can we actually do that?'" Brown said. "But that goal and the serious efforts to put a plan behind it and put resources behind it changed the landscape from managing homelessness to actually ending homelessness."

Tech. Sgt. Jamal J. Hogan independent duty medical technician, 108th Medical Group, New Jersey Air National Guard, takes down medical information of a homeless vet at the National Guard Armory in Cherry Hill​

The latest point-in-time count, which are compiled every January, showed there were about 40,000 homeless veterans left to house, and 13,000 of those veterans live on the streets, according to VA and HUD estimates released Aug. 1. Oliva said there are most likely more than 40,000, because the count didn't include veterans who are newly homeless or veterans who have vouchers and can't find housing. A lack of affordable housing across the United States is one problem, Olivia said. But the agencies also "haven't made as much progress as we would have liked," she said, because more veterans are becoming homeless than was estimated when Obama announced the goal.

HUD estimates the number of veterans who are becoming homeless each year by gathering information from VA medical centers and homeless organizations. Oliva said the estimates were "steeped in internal modeling" and made using assumptions, and won't be released publicly. "We thought it was going to decrease over time," she said. "That didn't play out the way we thought it would." But the latest round of funding toward the effort was made just days after the city of Austin, Texas, announced it met the benchmarks to declare it had "effectively ended homelessness among veterans." However, the designation comes with several conditions and doesn't mean there are no homeless veterans left in Austin. "Well, no, it doesn't mean that. We're going to have vets that find themselves in that position," Austin Mayor Steve Adler said. "The way it's defined is that you have removed the backlog for social services, such that we can identify homeless veterans and immediately start accessing those services."

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Whatever Phoenix is doing right, Washington needs to take a lesson from...

Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona
JAN. 15, 2014 — Their descent into homelessness began almost as soon as they had closed a dignified chapter in their lives: their military service.

Dexter Mackenstadt, 63, a sailor who spent the Vietnam War tracking submarines along the East Coast, slipped into alcoholism. Robert Stone, 56, who spent three years stationed at naval bases in California, fell to that, too, and to a failing heart. John Hankins, 52, who repaired intercontinental ballistic missiles at an Air Force base in Wyoming, spent years as a drifter, living in a methamphetamine lab in the Arizona desert. Today they are neighbors and participants in a program that White House officials have said has led Phoenix to become the first community in the country to end homelessness among veterans with long or recurrent histories of living on the streets.

In 2011, by a city count, there were 222 chronically homeless veterans here, a vulnerable, hard-to-reach population of mostly middle-age men, virtually all battling some type of physical or mental ailment along with substance abuse. Federal and city officials acknowledged that was not an exact number, but it is widely regarded as the best measure of the veteran population. Last month, the last 41 members of that group were placed in temporary housing. Shane Groen, a director at the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness, one of the city’s partners in the program, said the goal was to have them all in permanent housing by Feb. 14.

John Hankins, right, who repaired intercontinental ballistic missiles for the Air Force, played chess with William Godwin as Gary Workman watched. All three veterans were considered chronically homeless but are now living in Victory Place, an apartment complex in Phoenix.​

Mr. Stone said, “I’m coming up on nine months sober, and a big part of it is because I have a roof over my head.” He lived on the streets off and on for 15 years until he moved into an apartment here in March. This month, Salt Lake City placed the last of its chronically homeless veterans in housing, its mayor, Ralph Becker, announced.

These milestones are the first significant achievements by individual communities in the federal government’s plan to end homelessness among veterans by 2015, part of its ambitious and complex push to eliminate homelessness over all by 2020. Although officials have conceded that the plan is behind schedule, they point to the significant decline in the number of homeless veterans — to roughly 58,000, or 9 percent of the homeless population, last January from 76,000, or 12 percent of the nation’s homeless, in 2010 — as a hopeful sign, given that it happened in spite of difficult economic times. (The number of homeless people over all fell by 5 percent during the same period.) “We do think we can get to the point where we can say there are no more homeless veterans in the country,” Laura Zeilinger, deputy director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness, said in an interview. “And if we do this for veterans, it’s something that as a nation, if we set our mind to, we can achieve for other populations as well.”

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