Nonprofits' Washington conference focuses on homeless veterans

By Mike Cronin

Without Oakland’s Pittsburgh VA Healthcare system, Thomas Longo said he’d likely be homeless, unemployed and on drugs.

"They’ve helped me integrate back into the workforce, learn how to manage my money and make decisions myself," said Longo, 25, who was an Army machine gunner in Baqubah, Iraq, for 13 months in 2004-05.

"Every day in Iraq was stressful — knowing you have to go out the gate and that you might not come back," said Longo, who sees a psychiatrist for post-traumatic stress syndrome. The pressures of combat caused him to turn to drugs for relief.

The Army demoted him from sergeant to specialist just before he left the military, Longo said

The Army demoted him from sergeant to specialist just before he left the military, Longo said.

After a year adrift in the Pittsburgh area, he finally entered the VA substance-abuse and homeless programs in 2007. Now, Longo’s clean, has a housekeeping job at the VA and his own apartment in Forest Hills.

Although experts say help for vets today is much improved over what it was for those returning from Vietnam, it could be better, said Chad Lego, spokesman for the Circle of Friends for American Veterans, a nonprofit based in Falls Church, Va.

To that end, the National Convention for Veterans convenes today in Washington. The two-day conference is a joint effort by officials from Lego’s organization and officials from another Washington nonprofit, the Reserve Officers Association.

"We want to lay siege to the U.S. Congress and demand veterans become a top national priority once again," said Lego, 31, a former Army specialist and Altoona native who served in Mosul, Iraq, from 2007-08.

Lego and his colleagues hope one or more members of Congress will introduce a bill that would increase federal funding dedicated to getting homeless vets off the streets.

More than 154,000 are homeless on any given night, said Mary Cunningham, a researcher at the Urban Institute in Washington. More than 4,000 of them served in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Circle of Friends and the Reserve Officers Association.

"The numbers of homeless vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t big yet, but there are troubling indicators," said Cunningham, citing post-traumatic stress syndrome, brain injuries, high unemployment and the recession as factors that could cause a spike in homeless vets.

The reasons wartime vets become homeless haven’t changed too much since the Vietnam era: physical and emotional trauma, unemployment, mental illness and substance abuse remain major causes, said the Rev. Mike Wurschmidt, 51, pastor of Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship in Uptown, an Episcopal parish and refuge for homeless veterans.

"The difference is we’re dealing with them on the front end, rather than waiting years for things to fall apart," Wurschmidt said.

The challenge will be to continue providing the necessary care to vets who sometimes have done three combat tours and can’t hold down jobs, said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. The former dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh plans to serve on a panel at the conference today.

"We’re moving in the right direction, but it’s going to take a while," Korb said of providing necessary funding for homeless vets.

Mike Cronin can be reached at mcronin@tribweb.com or 412-320-7884.