Documentation That Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Are Becoming Homeless

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on a growing number of veterans from our current wars are returning home, only to not have a home.

In California, alone, more than 2,000 veterans each month are leaving the battlefields and returning home. Some are encountering post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and end up homeless.

Here’s one example cited in the article:

Moss spent 12 years with the military and had purchased a
house with a VA home loan, but she fell behind on payments.

"When I got
back from Iraq, I knew something was wrong," she said. Diagnosed with PTSD, she
found herself awake at night devising ways to keep her family safe. "I decided
to move the refrigerator in front of the door to bunker us in," she said. "Then
I would stay up all night baking cookies because I didn't want to go to sleep.
Eventually, I stopped leaving the house altogether."

Moss lost her job
and her income, and the bank foreclosed on her home.

Although the Veterans Administration is trying hard to address mental health issues among veterans—they have hired 17,000 mental health workers—many are worried that when the 2 million active service members return home, they will overwhelm the system.

Many homeless advocates echo the sentiment.

Once again, the system to end homelessness needs a much more significant proactive approach to preventing homelessness.

As a colleague of mine told me yesterday, if our country doesn’t recognize how today’s current economic crisis is increasing homelessness, we may very well see homeless numbers dramatically spike like in the 1980s.


(Pic from http://stpeteforpeace.org)