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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrthk0fDWUM]YouTube - More Homeless Seeking Place To Weather Cold[/ame]
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After a survey taken on one night in January 2009 it was determined most of the homeless vets needed to turn to emergency shelters or transitional housing programs for accommodation.
The remaining 43 percent were either living on the streets or in abandoned buildings. Many were in totally uninhabitable places. Veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and even from earlier conflicts suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Some are unable to return to their old lives when they return from combat zones. The overall stress of combat has caused many veterans to take their own lives.
Tens of thousands of US veterans without a place to stay
Dale City homeless all packed up, with nowhere to go: Some 80 residents of a longtime tent settlement along Interstate 95 expressed fear and sorrow as they were evicted from the land, which is owned by the Virginia Department of Transportation. He has lived in the woods here in Dale City for more than a decade now. Thursday morning, he and dozens of other people whove been camped out in a few small, entrenched communities near Interstate 95 got kicked off the land, which is owned by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
I got nowhere to go, Sawyer said as he began to limp along the highway to pack up his things, stopping to rub his bad knee every now and then. All morning, people hurried to and from tents, lugging sacks of blankets, dragging broken suitcases full of old clothes, cradling propane canisters in the crooks of their arms. Many said the same thing: They didnt know where they would go. Its a very sad situation, said Joan Morris, a spokeswoman for VDOT. Its not something we sought to do.
Virginia State Police lined up around the curves of the ramps at 10:45 a.m. and went in telling people that they had to leave today. Morris said her agency received complaints from the office of State Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William). People were walking back to their tents in the dark and crossing the ramps where cars speed around the blind curves, a hazard both to the walkers and to the drivers. A spokesman for the delegate said safety was the concern. Morris said they tried to clear the area and make it safe in a sensitive way, giving people with lots of heavy items overnight to finish moving.
At least 80 people are believed to live in tents scattered through the area, near a Prince William County winter shelter, a bus terminal, a Kmart and some fast-food places. In the woods nearby, small neighborhoods have sprung up with camps. Some have wooden lean-tos, generators, TVs, heavy dinner tables. Its good people, said Kerwin Washington, who lost his job as a machine mechanic this winter. People help each other out, lending a blanket or a tarp, especially within the same cloverleaf. Strangers arent trusted, and there is crime. But longtime residents such as Sawyer have good friends there. People visit, he said.
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