Many American veterans wind up on the streets

Many American veterans wind up on the streets
by Michele Munz

ST. LOUIS–Larry Strong, 52, a homeless veteran, was hanging out downtown on Thursday with some of his homeless friends. Strong served in the Air Force 1973-78 as a jet engine mechanic and fuel specialist at Scott Air Force Base. Strong says he has been homeless for about three years, after he got addicted to painkillers following loss of a thumb at work. Sometimes he sleeps on the streets, other times at his niece’s house, he says.

They enlist because it’s their only opportunity for a better life. Some to escape poverty, others to escape abuse. But they leave facing even bigger challenges.

They are America’s soldiers. They are America’s homeless.

One out of every three men stopping you for spare change or sleeping on a park bench has served our country, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and a national survey…

A 2002 Washington University study found the same percentage of homeless veterans in St. Louis.

The estimated number of homeless veterans in the metro area is 1,200 to 1,500 over the course of a year.

And the number is expected to grow as soldiers return from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

National studies also show:

47 percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam era.

67 percent served three or more years.

33 percent were stationed in a war zone.

76 percent experience alcohol, drug or mental health problems.

The vast majority are single, and most come from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are plagued by the same troubles that drive others to the streets: addiction, health problems, inability to earn a livable income and shortage of affordable housing.

But why veterans are twice as likely as their nonveteran counterparts to become homeless, as a recent Department of Veterans Affairs study points out, is a guess. Several researchers are trying to come up with answers.

The National Coalition of Homeless Veterans, a nonprofit advocate for the group, lists some possibilities:

Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse.

Family and social supports deteriorated while they were in the service.

Military occupations and training are often not transferable to civilian jobs.

Many cannot adapt from a structured and orderly military environment.

After graduating from Normany High School, Jeffrey Brackett, 48, signed up for the Army in 1975 as a way to support his new wife and baby. It was steady and easy. “I just sent money,” he said.

After his service, however, he had trouble finding a good-paying job because he lacked a college education. He didn’t see a way to apply the helicopter mechanic skills he learned in the military. He floated from one minimum wage gig to the next – cleaning floors, shining shoes and washing cars. By then, he had three kids and was making less than he did in the service.

He turned to alcohol and drugs to deal with the pressure. His wife left him, and he ended up on the streets for 12 years, sleeping in shelters, wooded areas and abandoned cars.

Life on the streets can be a vicious cycle. Many turn to crime to survive. According to the National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness, more than half of the homeless are incarcerated at some point, which hinders them later on rental or job applications.

“Heaven help you if I went by your house and saw your windows open,” Brackett said. “If I could carry it, I would leave with it.”

A housing-first approach

The VA tries to get homeless veterans back on their feet, but those who work with veterans think their long-term success will require broader efforts.

Since starting homeless assistance programs almost 20 years ago, the VA has become the nation’s largest provider of homeless services, helping more than 100,000 veterans annually.

But with more than 500,000 of the nation’s 24 million veterans homeless at some point during the year, the VA can’t reach everybody.

At the VA Medical Center in St. Louis, three staff members deal with 400 to 600 homeless vets each year.

Combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are already trickling into some homeless service providers, but studies show that most combat veterans do not seek help for mental and emotional problems for several years after their homecoming. The average was 12 years for Vietnam vets.

The solution many are looking to is a concept known as “permanent supportive housing” – a place to live paired with health and counseling services. The idea is that people need housing before working to better themselves.

For the past five years, the need for long-term housing tops annual surveys of homeless assistance providers and homeless veterans in St. Louis and nationwide. The need for emergency and transitional housing, on the other hand, is dropping. The change reflects an increasing interest in the proven success and long-range savings of the housing-first approach first studied in 1999.

Traditionally, assistance programs require treatment and employment efforts before handing out housing aid or a spot in a transitional housing program. That’s how the VA system works.

The VA provides about 70 transitional housing beds in partnership with St. Patrick Center and the Salvation Army in St. Louis, and Eagle’s Nest in St. Clair County. Those are in addition to the program at the Jefferson Barracks VA Medical Center, which houses up to 50 homeless vets for six months.

For those programs, participants must complete 14 to 21 days of treatment before coming in, and attend all their doctor appointments, group therapy and life skills classes while housed.

Those requirements can be too much for someone suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, or both, and just trying to survive.

“Look, I’m still living under a bridge by Del Taco, I can’t worry about what I’m going to wear to a job interview,” says Jerry Ellis, 43, a Navy veteran who was given a psychiatric discharge after he tried to slit his wrists. After a troubled childhood, he was homeless by the time he was 18. He was sleeping in the back of his 1968 Malibu when he signed up for boot camp. After his service, he was in and out of friends’ and relatives’ homes – at times sleeping under the Highway 40 overpass on Grand Boulevard – until he hooked up with Places for People about six years ago.

Offering more help

Places for People is one of a few agencies in St. Louis using the housing-first approach. The nonprofit agency serves the mentally ill by placing them in one of two residential facilities or using grants to help clients pay rent. Treatment teams with small caseloads provide 24-hour support and forgive setbacks and mistakes. Often, they control a client’s income to ensure it is going toward rent and necessities.

The nonprofit boasts that 87 percent of those seeking its help maintain a home, a much cheaper alternative than stints in psychiatric hospitals.

“People come to us after having been through every program in the VA and not making it,” team leader Debbie Moormann said.

Some veterans flourish while in the transitional programs but then flounder on their own. Finding a safe, affordable home on a limited salary is difficult. They walk out the doors with little or no follow-up from their case managers.

“Even though a lot of these guys are working . . . , they aren’t able to get an apartment in an area free of drugs and alcohol,” said Capt. Beverly Best, co-administrator of the Salvation Army’s transitional housing program.

And that can be the downfall of even the most committed.

“If you keep going to the barbershop, you’re going to get a haircut,” said Brackett, who just completed the transitional housing program at the VA Medical Center for the second time. After graduating the first time, Brackett felt himself slipping while staying at a motel downtown, which was cheap and near his job. “For a person trying to stay clean, that is not the place to be,” he said.

While in the program for a second time, Brackett got a job cooking at Maurizio’s downtown and saved some money. With graduation looming in February, he struggled to find an apartment. He figured the most he could afford to pay in rent was $300 a month. He feared having to return to the motel, but he got lucky.

Brackett got into an Oxford House, one of a few dozen small group homes in the metropolitan area that help addicts maintain sobriety. Residents interview applicants, share expenses and must remain drug and alcohol free or face quick eviction.

Many like Brackett fail to make it on their own after leaving the transitional programs. Locally, over a quarter return for a second chance, statistics show.

This is where permanent housing stops the revolving door.

“There needs to be a program to help low-income vets, particularly those who have completed transitional housing programs,” said John Driscoll of the homeless veterans coalition. The nonprofit is lobbying for funding for 5,000 more housing vouchers for veterans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development Department.

The VA and HUD have paired up to offer a supportive housing program for homeless mentally ill veterans. It’s small – only about 1,780 vouchers are available nationwide. And the program isn’t offered in St. Louis.

Changing approaches

The federal government is making permanent-housing projects a priority. After St. Louis included these projects in its HUD application, it received $8.8 million in homeless assistance money, nearly double the amount received last year.

William Siedhoff, director of the St. Louis Department of Human Services, said part of the money will pay for 94 permanent supportive housing units, 22 specifically for veterans.

But Evelyn Paul, of the VA Medical Center in St. Louis, said she would like to see more projects specifically for veterans.

According to HUD, of the $1.33 billion awarded this year to programs assisting the homeless, less than 3 percent primarily target homeless veterans. Of the $8.8 million St. Louis received, only $353,000 is going to the veteran-specific program.

Local VA leaders have stressed collaboration with those in the community to fill this gap.

“We need community partnership,” Paul said. “We don’t take care of everything, and we shouldn’t. Veterans are members of the community, too.”