Veterans account for nearly one-third of all homeless men.

[underpants]

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/net/20050223/capt.27125ba638f5bb0c39a6d53bf1602824.pjpeg

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ydownload_apgraphics/20050223/photos_net_ap_gr_ts/1109194721&e=1&ncid=705

[LisaLynne]

1. How can this be with ...

all the "Support the Troops" ribbons on all the SUVs I see?

[bigtree]

7. SUVs keep our soldiers at risk

in defense of the oil it takes to keep them running.

[whathappened]

2. was in a mall the other day

and there was a big stack of ribbins there support troops , i think not , this money was going to the stores and china

[Journeyman]

3. There were an incredible number of "lost" men in the service. . .

when I was in the military. Men who had no aims, little or no ambition, and who were neither quick nor resourceful. When you speak of veterans who "served. . . at least three years," you're talking about people who joined up when they were very young and left at a young age, too. You could probably draw as many corollaries between homelessness and fast-food employment.

It is shameful we have any who are homeless in this land of plenty, but I think this particular graph illustrates as much the state of recruitment as it does a cause and effect between service/wartime experiences and future homelessness.

[Blue Wally]

4. Percentages don't look right.

The very youngest Vietnam Vet is now 51 years old. Interpolating on the age chart would mean that an inordinate percentage of the homeless veterans came from the peacetime low-turnover years.

I am also suspicious that the origin of the data is an advocacy group. Lots of homeless profess to be veterans when they are not.

[bigtree]

9. This number is acknowledged by our own government

check the VA site . . .

[diamond14]

12. say "HI" to the new generation of homeless Veterans...from Iraq...

wars are ALWAYS done on-the-CHEAP...with war-profiteering tax evaders making ALL the money, using OUR soldiers as CANNON FODDER for profit...Vietnam was the SAME.....

some returning Veterans are already homeless....as bush* WARS rage on.....and your nastiness against homeless Veterans is not appreciated....WAR injuries/mental health WAR damage, PTSD, Shell-shocked/toxic chemical exposures (Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, napalm burns, etc.) do NOT get better over the years...if untreated...the injuries JUST GET WORSE, and need constant care throughout one's lifetime....toxic chemical exposures take years to develop symptoms (carcinogens, teratogens, mutagens)...your unkind allegations that OUR Veterans are 'faking it' do NOT belong on DU...we support OUR troops...obviously, YOU think many are 'faking' their injuries....


read and see more of bush* IRAQ tragedy here, bush* CANNON FODDER for his war-on-the-cheap....PURPLE HEARTS: BACK FROM IRAQ
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0412/purplehearts_intro.html

ALREADY, back from Iraq...and LIVING IN A CAR with VA-certified 100 % disabled from IRAQ WAR WOUNDS

"I'm burning on the inside. I'm burning."

Cpl Tyson Johnson III, 22, a mechanic with 205 Military Intelligence, was injured in a mortar attack on the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on September 20, 2003. He suffered massive internal injuries and is 100 percent disabled. Photographed in Prichard, Alabama May 6, 2004



living alone in a trailer, in the poorest county in Pennsylvania

"I lost my left leg, just below the knee. Lost my eyesight, which is still unsettled about whether it will come back or not. I have shrapnel in pretty much every part of my body. Got my finger blown off. It don't work right. I had a hole blown through my right leg. Had 3 skin grafts to try and repair it. It's not too bad right now. It hurts a lot, that's about it. You know not really anything major. Just little things. I get headaches. I have a piece of shrapnel in my neck that came up through my vest and went into my throat and it's sitting behind my trachea, and when I swallow it kind of feels like I have a pill in my throat. Some stuff like that. And my left ear, it don't work either.

Spc. Sam Ross, 21, combat engineer, 82nd Airborne Division, was injured May 18, 2003 in Baghdad when a bomb blew up during a munitions disposal operation. He is blind and an amputee. Photographed in the woods near his trailer where he lives alone in Dunbar Township, Pennsylvania October 19, 2003.

[Blue Wally]

15. While I grieve for Cpl Johnson and Spc Ross

Both of them should be on one hundred per cent disability retirement and be receiving a government check every month. They should not be homeless. We were talking about HOMELESS WAR VETS.

As noted by the graphs themselves, the WWII, Korea, and Vietnam war vets cannot be very heavily represented among the homeless veterans. 74% of the homneless veterans are between the ages of 35 and 54. The youngest possible man to have served in Vietnam would be 51 and most would fall into the 55-65 age group. I don't think that there are too many homeless war vets from Iraq that are over 35. As a result, this 74% chunk of homeless veterans are pretty much all peacetime vets (Iraq I didn't have that many casualties).

wars are ALWAYS done on-the-CHEAP...with war-profiteering tax evaders making ALL the money, using OUR soldiers as CANNON FODDER for profit...Vietnam was the SAME.....

Yeah, spent a couple of years there. It certainly wasn't done on the cheap. We blew off an awful lot of money plus all of our war reserve stocks over there.

Believe me there is nothing so infuriating to a group of Vietnam veterans than seeing a substance abuser panhandling for drink money in an army field jacket holding a sign saying Vietnam Vet when he is obviously ten years too young ever to have seen the place. You say to him, "Hey man were you in Long Thuy?" "No, I wasn't there." "Oh, you must have been up north in the Ba-Moui-Ba area then , I never got up there" "Yeah, yeah, that's where I was, Ba-Moui-Ba". "Man, Ba-Moui-Ba was a rough place, were you with the 6th Division or the 10th?" "Oh, I was in the 10th, man." "You dumb shit, get a better story"

[diamond14]

5. PHOTOS from DC....about HALF the homeless here are VETERANS

senators and congressional representatives TRIP OVER THESE PEOPLE on their way to work in DC....if bush* ever stepped OUT OF OUR WHITE HOUSE, he would see THOUSANDS of homeless Veterans within just a FEW BLOCKS...the total homeless population in DC is now estimated about 19,000 AND HALF are Veterans...so about 9,500 HOMELESS VETERANS living on the sidewalks, heating grates, and benches....

the Veterans keep pouring into DC from all over America, on that last bit of money for a bus ride, or hitching a free ride on a freight train, or dropped off by colleagues...I occasionally talk to them, and ALL have told me that they come here for HELP from OUR Government for war wounds, PTSD, jobs, rehabilitation, counseling, etc....and they find out that HELP is NOT HERE....this past year, I have TWICE called an ambulance to pick Veterans up and take them to the VA Hospital (lord only knows what happens when they get there....but some of these people actually DIE on the sidewalk, waiting for bush* to help them)....


this is the COST OF WAR....these are VETERANS, throw-away people, DISPOSABLE HEROES....bush* doesn't care....these Veterans need MEDICAL CARE, dental care, mental health counseling, vocational rehabilitation, job training, housing and DIGNITY....currently, 9,500 Veterans living on the sidewalk with NO bathrooms, NO showers, NO food, NO medical/mental care, rag-covered in ruins, sitting in the drizzling cold rain, these people ONCE UPON A TIME wore the American Military Uniform and served US....


WELCOME to OUR Nation's Capital, where tourists and politicians try to ignore OUR Veterans as much as they possibly can....the carnage of WAR....the DISPOSABLE HEROES...

[underpants]

6. That is so tragically sad

Amazing.

[bigtree]

10. I've had many a conversation with these folks

the one story that is common among them is their hunger. Many have taken to getting themselves arrested, over and over, just for a meal and a place to sleep. Dig it. It's not hard to donate to these folks. Just drive by any government alcove and call out to them and they'll come over and gratefully unload anything you have to offer.

[Ironpost]

8. This is a sad truth

I believe the vietnamn veterans are there because there were no real support base for them when we got home.

[porphyrian]

11. Good thing they're cutting veterans' benefits...

Veterans make much better homeless people than the drunks and mental patients we already don't pay for, since they know how to follow orders.

[tx_dem41]

13. What percentage of men are veterans?

I need to know that before I can really react to the stat in the OP.

[Dark]

14. I did a research paper for a class not too long ago on homelessness

and how little it would actually take to fix that problem.

I'll see if I can find it.

[Blue Wally]

17. Feeding and housing the homeless would be pretty cheap

So long as they don't demand to be housed and fed in expensive urban centers. Next time they close a remote miltary base, just convert it into a national homeless shelter with three hots and a cot, detox, medical care, and job training for the homeless.

[underpants]

26. The state mental hospitals are wide open in many states

I know they are in Va.

Currently the "reinvestment program" is working to get even more out of the state facilities.

[Cleita]

16. Remember when there were old soldier's homes?

They were part of the VA Hospital system back before the Reagan Administraton. Old, retired and handicapped veterans, who didn't have a place to live, got a room, food, health care and some spending money from their Social Security check. Then one day the homes were closed and even though the VA tried to place the men in private nursing homes, many of them got thrown out on the streets. It was very early in Ronald Reagans first term. Things have gotten a lot worse in the following decades.

[Blue Wally]

20. There still are

Some of the nursing activities are still active:

http://www.carolynjburns.com/soldiers/

[Cleita]

22. I think there are a few, but they used to be common. Now

many old guys I talk to that are vets from Korea and Vietnam tell me there is no hope hardly of getting into one of the homes. Shame isn't it. I also remember when they closed up most of the Old Soldiers Home in Los Angeles because of budget cuts, it was like we had a population of dysfunctional old guys sleeping on benches, parks and doorways almost overnight. I really blame Reagan for so much of this.

[Blue Wally]

24. Check out the time frame, it might not have been Reagan.

[Cleita]

25. Was not Reagan elected in 1980?

It was sometime in the beginning of that decade that it became noticeable on the west side of LA. In particular many of the "old soldiers" at that time turned up on the doorsteps of businesses like bars and coffee shops that they had frequented begging acquaintances for money or a place to stay because they had been turned out in the street.

[masaka___]

18. We gotta stop paying fo this...

http://warresisters.org/wtr.htm

[No Exit]

19. You can add at least one homeless woman veteran to that--

I saw her in a courtroom the other day.

[greatauntoftriplets]

21. A good friend is a psych nurse with the VA.

She works with a lot of vets with PTSD. Many from the Vietnam era, and now new ones arriving virtually every day.

It is so damned sad.....

[gorbal]

23. 15 percent of mentally ill are homeless.

Not only that, but 15 percent of the severely mentally ill are homeless-

http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/8525697700573E1885256F9B0057BC90

In 2004 23 percent of the homeless population was mentally ill and 40 percent was families with children-

http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/hungersurvey/2004/onlinereport/HungerAndHomelessnessReport2004.pdf

(Scroll to the Appendices at the end)

Check out the huge percentages ithat are children in the various cities. Yes those homeless people, they deserve their lot. (sarcasm)

Social Darwinism sickens me.

[LynnTheDem]

27. They VOLUNTEERED to be homeless! They KNEW what they were signing

up for!

PURPLE HEART BANDAIDS for homeless veterans!!!

*Support Our Troops the republican way!