COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
Many U.S. Iraq Vets Homeless
Associated Press, Toronto Star
June 24, 2006
NEW
YORK As a member of the U.S. army National Guard, Nadine Beckford
patrolled New York City train stations after Sept. 11, 2001 with a 9 mm
pistol, then served a treacherous year in Iraq.
Now, six months after returning, Beckford lives in a homeless shelter.
"I'm just an ordinary person who served. I'm not embarrassed about my
homelessness because the circumstances that created it were not my
fault," said Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at a
base in Iraq that was a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks.
Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are
facing a new nightmare — the risk of homelessness.
The U.S. government estimates several hundred vets who fought in Iraq
and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night across the country,
although the exact number is unknown.
The reasons that contribute to the new wave of homelessness are many:
some are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent
attacks and roadside bombs; some can't navigate government red tape;
others simply don't have enough money to afford a house or apartment.
They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small from
Washington state to Florida. But the hardest hit are in New York,
because housing costs "can be very tough," said Peter Dougherty, head
of the Homeless Veterans Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Former army Pte. 1st Class Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after
returning from Iraq last year. He slept in his Jeep, parked anywhere in
New York "where I wouldn't get a ticket."
"Then the nightmares would start," said the 26-year-old, who drove a
military fuel truck in Iraq — one of the war's most
dangerous jobs.
At one point, he saw a friend's leg blown off.
"I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a truck. I relived
that every night," said Noel, who walks with shrapnel in his knee and
suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.
To help people like Noel, the VA gives grants to non-profit, private
housing organizations that offer about 8,000 free beds across the
country. The space isn't always enough to accommodate everyone in
desperate need of shelter among the more than 500,000 vets of Iraq and
Afghanistan who have been discharged from the military so far.
When Noel returned, the shattered soldier couldn't immediately find a
job to support his wife and children and all the housing programs for
vets he knew of "were overbooked," he said.
The family ended up in a Bronx, N.Y., shelter "with people who were just out of prison and with roaches," he said.
"I'm a young black man from the ghetto but this was culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I almost died for."
"This is not what I was supposed to come home to."
Noel now attends a Brooklyn, N.Y., program to train for a job in studio
sound production. He also is the protagonist of the documentary film
When I Came Home, which was named best New York-made documentary at the
Tribeca Film Festival this year.
Just after the news reports about his plight came out, he received a
call from the VA granting him the 100-per-cent disability compensation
he sought — after being turned down.
He's not blaming the military, which "helped make my dreams come true.
I had a house, a car — they gave me everything they
promised me," he said.
"It's up to the government and the people we're defending to take care of their soldiers."
Before she went to war, Beckford put all her belongings in storage. And
while in Iraq, she sent most of her National Guard earnings of about
$25,000 a year to her New York bank account. When she returned, the
Brooklyn storage locker had been emptied, as was her bank account. She
believes her boyfriend took everything and disappeared; she reported
the thefts to police but "he just vanished."
Without support from family — her parents are barely
making ends meet in their native Jamaica — Beckford
lives in a Brooklyn shelter where she shares a room with eight other
women.
Beckford is no longer angry — just anxious to be back on her feet as she attends a job-training program.
Long before the current war, the Homeless Veterans Program had guided
men and women back into daily life after service in Vietnam, Korea and
the Second World War. But Dougherty makes no secret of a truth few
Americans know: about one-quarter of all homeless adults in America
have served in the military — most of them minority
veterans.
There are now about 200,000 homeless vets in the United States, government figures show.
"In recent years, we've tried to reach out sooner to new veterans who
are having problems with post-traumatic stress, depression or substance
abuse, after seeing combat," said Dougherty.
"These are the veterans who most often end up homeless."
Across the country, 350 non-profit service organizations are working
with Veterans Affairs to provide a network that breaks the veterans'
fall.
But they still land on a hard bottom line: almost one-half of the 2.7
million disabled U.S. veterans receive $337 or less a month in
benefits, the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration said.
Fewer than one-10th of them are rated 100-per-cent disabled, meaning they receive $2,393 a month, tax free.
"And only those who receive that 100-per-cent benefit rating can
survive in New York," said J.B. White, a 36-year-old former marine who
served with a National Guard unit in Iraq.
His entire colon was removed after he was diagnosed with severe
ulcerative colitis, which civilian medical experts believe started in
Iraq under the stress of war.
White is in the midst of an uphill battle to win benefits from the
government. He also helps others, as head of the Hope for New Veterans
program for Common Ground, a Manhattan-based social service agency that
finds non-government housing for vets.
For those struggling to keep a roof over their head, filing for
benefits can be a bureaucratic Catch-22 that ratchets up the stress.
But it's their survival ticket, if their claim is not turned down.
To an outsider, the VA benefit formulas can seem like a riddle.
If, for instance, a vet is diagnosed as 70-per-cent physically disabled
and 30-per-cent disabled as a result of post-traumatic stress, the
total disability does not necessarily add up to 100 per cent; it could
amount to 80 per cent. And that means a monthly cheque of $1,277;
$1,500 for a family of four — a paltry amount in
places like New York where cramped studio apartments routinely exceed
$1,000 a month.
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