Ranks Of Homeless Veterans Growing

Ranks Of Homeless Veterans Growing

By Jennifer Grogan

Genavesse Spader depended on a paycheck from her job as an accounts payable analyst and child support from her ex-husband to care for her three children.  In June, her contract position with Fidelity Investments ended and, a week later, her ex-husband was laid off from work. 

“We went from two incomes to no income,” said Spader, 31.   Born in New London and a Fitch High School graduate, she moved to New Hampshire in January to work for Fidelity.

She served in the Connecticut Army National Guard from 1995 to 2001, where she fixed communications systems in the aircraft at the 1109th Aviation Classification Repair Activity Depot in Groton.

Without a job, she left her apartment in New Hampshire and moved back to Connecticut, to be near family. But there was not enough room at relatives’ homes for her and her three children so she turned to the Covenant Shelter of New London.

“If the economy wasn’t this way, I would’ve gotten a job in a short period of time and it would’ve stopped the progression of everything else that happened,” said Spader, who has lived in the shelter since late July with her three children, ages 10, 4 and 2.

As the economy has worsened this summer, local shelters and organizations that assist veterans have seen an increase in the number of veterans, like Spader, seeking their services.

Many are worried about how they will cope with the predicted influx in the winter months, when rising home heating costs become an additional burden on those already struggling to make ends meet.

“We’re a very small operation and we have very limited funding,” said Catherine Zall, executive director of the New LondonHomeless Hospitality Center, which runs the overnight shelter at St. James Episcopal Church.

The 110 beds across the state used by the federal Department of Veterans Affairs for transitional housing for homeless veterans are almost always full.

“We have never had a May, June, July and August where we have not only every bed that we have in the state occupied, but we have waiting lists,” said Laurie Harkness, director of the VA’s Errera Community Care Center in West Haven. “And in some places, we have waiting lists of eight to 10 people for a bed. A bed.”

The state Department of Veterans’ Affairs receives 60 to 70 applications a month for its residential program in Rocky Hill, which includes 75 beds for veterans with substance abuse issues and about 300 beds for veterans who need a place to stay—a 125 percent increase in applications since 2003, said Linda Schwartz, the state’s veterans’ affairs commissioner.

“These folks have no other place to go,” she said. “By the number of applications we’re seeing, the need is greater and we do attribute that to the fact that they have no money. People are living in cars, people are sleeping on couches and that gets old.”

As the economy continues to tighten, she said, more veterans of all ages are struggling to maintain an acceptable quality of life.

The Covenant Shelter turned away an average of more than 100 people a month from May to July, compared with an average of about 40 a month last summer.

The shelter has room for 14 single men, three single women and five single-parent families.

“This is the first summer I’ve spent where almost every day we are full,” Tracy Morton-Morales, case manager at the shelter for the past seven years, said in an interview earlier this month. “The only reason I have anything open today is I had a family relocate and two men moved out. I guarantee by tomorrow, it’ll be full again.”

She said later that the shelter was in fact full the next day.

Spader is looking for customer service or clerical work so she can leave the shelter soon.

“It’s easy to bounce back when you have one thing go wrong. It’s like ‘OK, I still have transportation, I still have shelter, I just need to find a job,’ ” said Spader, who has never lived in a shelter until now. “But then when you lose your job and then you lose shelter and then you lose transportation, it’s very, very difficult. It’s a cycle — you can’t get a job if you can’t get there, but you can’t get a car if you don’t have a job.”

Veterans more vulnerable

Service members returning from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are more vulnerable to the economic downturn, according to Jim Tackett, director of veterans’ services for the state Department of Mental Health and Addition Services, because many of them are experiencing psychological problems, primarily depression, anxiety, anger, irritability, substance abuse and trouble sleeping.

“It’s much more difficult for individuals grappling with emotional programs to compete successfully in the economic arena,” Tackett said. “It’s harder for them to focus on issues of livelihood when they are depressed, they can’t sleep or they’re drinking too much.”

The problem can be exacerbated by some employers, who are reluctant to hire returning service members because they hear about these issues readjusting to civilian life, Tackett said. Of the 1.64 million service members who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, about 300,000 are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, according to The RAND Corp.

And National Guard and Reserve combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to develop drinking problems than active-duty soldiers, possibly because of inadequate preparation for the stress of combat and reduced access to support services at home, according to a study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, some who are living in their cars or on friends’ couches, have started going to the VA’s community center for help finding an apartment or a job, or to deal with substance abuse and mental illness issues, Harkness said.

Zall expects that some of these veterans will eventually come to shelters like hers.

It may take years for this to happen, she said, since people will “struggle desperately to avoid becoming homeless,” by emptying their savings accounts and staying with friends and relatives before going to a shelter.

“Everywhere across the country, people are dealing with veterans in crisis and we have to assume that this is going to eventually impact us here,” Zall said of the hospitality center.

The New London City Council recently mandated that homeless people must pass a Breathalyzer test to stay at the overnight shelter.

Almost 13 percent of more than 800 people who stayed there in the past 18 months are veterans.

“We were a resource to veterans struggling with addiction because they could utilize our shelter while they were dealing with this,” Zall said. “Post implementation of the City Council’s requirements, we will be required to bar them.”

Zall said she does not know where these veterans will go especially in the winter months, given the limited temporary transitional housing in the state.

Members of American Legion Post 15 are hoping to build 18 apartments at their South Main Street hall in Jewett City, with homeless veterans given preference for the housing. The apartments will be permanent supportive housing, which is rental housing with support services to help prevent people from returning to homelessness.

“It’s disgraceful that people who served their country come home to live on the streets,” said post member Ed Burke.

The post applied to the state and federal government to fund the project, which is estimated at about $5 million, Burke said. If the funding is approved in the fall, construction could start in 2009 and the facility could open as early as the spring of 2010.

“It’ll probably be filled the day it opens,” Harkness said.

Few job opportunities

The average length of time a person stays homeless is less than six months, Harkness said.

“My fear is that’s going to grow, with the economy this way,” she said. “Right now, there are not a whole lot of good employment opportunities out there.”

Spader interviewed for an accounting position in Mystic, but many other companies have not responded to her resumes.

Still, she remains hopeful that her stay in the shelter will be short.

“I’m not just going to be on a downhill spiral until life ends,” she said, laughing. “I feel that everything happens for a reason. I always had a caring heart and I wanted to help people but sometimes I would look at them and say, ‘Why don’t they just get a job?’ But now I understand that sometimes you can’t just get a job.”

    Original Story: http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=d80f4073-0d4a-4db0-bfd5-7b92f9f56afd.aspx?re=d80f4073-0d4a-4db0-bfd5-7b92f9f56afd