Veterans Make Up One Quarter of US Homeless, Here Are Some of Their
Stories [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/67648/
Posted by Alex Jung, AlterNet at 11:00 AM on November 12, 2007.
If we are to demonstrate our true patriotism, then we must
rehabilitate the present and future lives of those veterans who
carried the biggest burdens of our declarations of war.
A recent AP article released sobering numbers about our nation’s
veterans: they make up 25 percent of homeless persons, while
representing just 11 percent of the overall population.
The data is already a couple of years old, which does not bode well
for the future:
Some advocates say such an early presence of veterans from Iraq and
Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took
roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the
point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry
that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans
particularly vulnerable.
"We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the
mental health toll from this war is enormous," said Daniel Tooth,
director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.
The image of a healthy soldier returning from war, physically and
mentally unscathed, is a fiction. If we are to demonstrate our true
patriotism, then we must rehabilitate the present and future lives of
those veterans who carried the biggest burdens of our declarations of
war.
Editor's Note:
When I Came Home is a documentary which follows the lives and
struggles of several homeless veterans, including those who have
recently returned home from the war in Iraq. The film examines the
factors which led over 150,000 Vietnam veterans from the battlefield
to the street and asks the question: Will what happened to Vietnam
veterans happen to a new generation of soldiers? The film also focuses
on the veteran-led movement which is fighting to end this national
disgrace. Check out the video to your right for some scenes from the
film.
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