Due to the incompetence and mismanagement of the VA....1,000's of Veterans are being forced to the brink of homelessness..some starving..others forced to quit school.
'A train wreck': Veterans haven't received GI Bill benefits for months
Shelley Roundtree departed the U.S. Army in 2013 after seeing friends and fellow soldiers die in combat during his tour in Afghanistan. He was committed to transitioning to civilian life, and one of his first steps was to enroll in college with tuition and housing benefits he'd earned under the GI Bill
"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."
Without the GI Bill's housing stipend, Roundtree was kicked out of his apartment and is now living on his sister's couch, miles from school, where he feels like a burden on his family. The new living situation required him to move all his belongings into a storage container, which he can no longer afford. Now all of his possessions are in danger of being auctioned off by the storage facility.
There are many veterans, like Roundtree, across the country who are still waiting for VA to catch up with a backlog created after President Donald Trump signed the Forever GI Bill in 2017. The landmark piece of legislation greatly expanded benefits for veterans and their families, but it did not upgrade the VA's technical capabilities to account for those changes.
While it is unclear how many GI Bill recipients were impacted by the delays, as of Nov. 8, more than 82,000 are still waiting for their housing payments with only weeks remaining in the school semester, according to the VA. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have been affected."
At the July 17, 2017, hearing in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs — before the bill was passed into law — Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity Curtis Coy highlighted this as his core worry in response to one of the few questions asked during the hearing.
“My biggest concern is two words: IT,” said Coy at the time. “We have an IT system in much or almost all of these sections that requires some degree of changes.”
After Coy retired earlier this year, VA cut his position and the Office of Economic Opportunity. Multiple Veteran Service Organizations said the loss of this role, as well as the office, meant that there was no one left at VA to communicate the issues to veterans or to lobby higher-ups about the GI Bill issues.
"People have been coming in and out of the VA like it’s a revolving door, and this is another example where a lack of consistent leadership causes these problems."
That’s not to mention the huge number of posts that remain unfilled at the agency. More than 45,000 jobs sit vacant at VA, according to the agency’s own numbers, and the department has not had a permanent chief information officer since LaVerne Council departed the office after Trump’s election.
"Right now Secretary Wilkie and Dr. Lawrence have only been on the jobs for months,” Murray said. “People have been coming in and out of the VA like it’s a revolving door, and this is another example where a lack of consistent leadership causes these problems.”
These people served our country..with honor and distinction...they were promised a a fresh start and the gratitude of our nation. Instead--they face homelessness and poveerty--because the greatest nation in the world cannot keep a simple promise.
SHAME!
'A train wreck': Veterans haven't received GI Bill benefits for months
Shelley Roundtree departed the U.S. Army in 2013 after seeing friends and fellow soldiers die in combat during his tour in Afghanistan. He was committed to transitioning to civilian life, and one of his first steps was to enroll in college with tuition and housing benefits he'd earned under the GI Bill
"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."
Without the GI Bill's housing stipend, Roundtree was kicked out of his apartment and is now living on his sister's couch, miles from school, where he feels like a burden on his family. The new living situation required him to move all his belongings into a storage container, which he can no longer afford. Now all of his possessions are in danger of being auctioned off by the storage facility.
There are many veterans, like Roundtree, across the country who are still waiting for VA to catch up with a backlog created after President Donald Trump signed the Forever GI Bill in 2017. The landmark piece of legislation greatly expanded benefits for veterans and their families, but it did not upgrade the VA's technical capabilities to account for those changes.
While it is unclear how many GI Bill recipients were impacted by the delays, as of Nov. 8, more than 82,000 are still waiting for their housing payments with only weeks remaining in the school semester, according to the VA. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have been affected."
At the July 17, 2017, hearing in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs — before the bill was passed into law — Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity Curtis Coy highlighted this as his core worry in response to one of the few questions asked during the hearing.
“My biggest concern is two words: IT,” said Coy at the time. “We have an IT system in much or almost all of these sections that requires some degree of changes.”
After Coy retired earlier this year, VA cut his position and the Office of Economic Opportunity. Multiple Veteran Service Organizations said the loss of this role, as well as the office, meant that there was no one left at VA to communicate the issues to veterans or to lobby higher-ups about the GI Bill issues.
"People have been coming in and out of the VA like it’s a revolving door, and this is another example where a lack of consistent leadership causes these problems."
That’s not to mention the huge number of posts that remain unfilled at the agency. More than 45,000 jobs sit vacant at VA, according to the agency’s own numbers, and the department has not had a permanent chief information officer since LaVerne Council departed the office after Trump’s election.
"Right now Secretary Wilkie and Dr. Lawrence have only been on the jobs for months,” Murray said. “People have been coming in and out of the VA like it’s a revolving door, and this is another example where a lack of consistent leadership causes these problems.”
These people served our country..with honor and distinction...they were promised a a fresh start and the gratitude of our nation. Instead--they face homelessness and poveerty--because the greatest nation in the world cannot keep a simple promise.
SHAME!
