Soldiers on the streets

When I sent this comic by Tony Auth to Ed a few weeks ago he responded, "Hmmm...I'm having a hard time figuring out what the author is trying to say here. The point is a bit too subtle I think."

That was Ed speaking his preferred language, sarcasm. I've been trying to explain to him that email is not the best medium for sarcasm, but he seems to have some trouble grasping that.

In case anyone reading the blog is having a hard time grasping the "subtleties" of the cartoon, consider the following: A recent study by the Veterans Administration found that on any given night 154,000 veterans are homeless. Sadly this passes for "good news." The number is down about 20 percent from the 2006 estimate of nearly 196,000 homeless vets per night.

The V.A estimates veterans make up 1/3 of the adult homeless population. (Because slightly over 1/3 of all homeless people are children under the age of 18, the statistic is sometimes presented as, 'veterans make up 20 percent of the homeless population'). Nearly 50 percent of homeless vets suffer from a diagnosable mental illness (including but not limited to PTSD) and, with considerable overlap, slightly more than 70% suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems.

Now, according to the V.A., although many homeless veterans suffer from combat related PTSD, other factors, such as family background, access to support from family and friends, and various personal characteristics, appear to be stronger indicators for homelessness than military service. Given that we haven’t looked at the statistics and the studies, we’ll take them at their word. Because, regardless of the causations or correlations, the fact remains that a large number of those ‘bums,’ those ‘people who just need to get a job,’ had a job at one point. They had a job serving their country, often under conditions most of us can only imagine.

And what about those "one alley over?" Roughly 1/5 of the single, adult homeless population suffers from "some form of severe and persistent mental illness." The next alley? Perhaps people losing their homes in the sub-prime mortgage debacle. The next? Women and children fleeing domestic violence. And so it goes…people with addictions (a number of whom may be self-medicating mental illnesses), those who have lost jobs, or had a major medical crisis; the reasons a person may find him or herself (although it’s overwhelmingly men) homeless are numerous.

Why do we care? Well, in part it goes back to that statistic - 1/3 of homeless adults are veterans. If Ed was to come back from a year or multiple years in a war zone with injuries, either physical or mental, that left him incapable of holding a job or re-integrating into society and his family, I don’t think any of us would want to see him end of up the street. It also has a bit to do with where we bought our house last year. We live in an urban environment, and not a day goes by when Kathy does not see homeless people. Sometimes it’s the guy talking to himself. Sometimes it’s the man or woman sitting at the freeway exit holding up a sign asking for food. Sometimes it’s the guy sleeping in her front yard (which to be honest, didn’t thrill her). Last Friday morning it was the two men sitting on the sidewalk in front of a business that hadn’t yet opened, who wished her a very pleasant day as she walked to work. Where any of them veterans? Probably. But really, does it matter? Regardless of the reason, regardless of whether you consider the person in question to be among the “deserving poor” or not, to paraphrase the Melville Charitable Trust, 'the persistence of homelessness in the wealthiest democracy in the world is, quite simply, scandalous.'

But back to the vets.... For the past five years, most Americans, whether or not they agreed with the initial invasion, or how the war has been managed, have claimed to support the troops. What “supporting the troops” meant has not always been clear. For many, at least for the first three years or so, it meant not criticizing the war or the President. For others, especially as time went on, it meant bringing the troops home. For others, it involved placing a yellow ribbon on their car or wearing an American flag on their lapel. But what supporting our troops should mean is that we provide them with the support and assistance they need when they return and that we continue to do so long after the history books have condensed this escapade down to a couple of paragraphs.

Homelessness among veterans is just one of the many costs of this war not accounted for by the Bush administration, a monetary total currently costing $12 billion a month. And yet, despite the costs of keeping troops in Iraq and treating the growing numbers of Iraq war vets seeking help from the VA (which currently has a backlog of over 600,000 claims), the true monetary costs will likely not set in for years. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes recently calculated that costs of the Iraq war, both conducting it and treating vets, could total over 3 trillion dollars by 2017. And that number will very likely keep growing beyond that point. VA expenditures for World War II veterans didn’t peak until more than four decades after the war ended. And of those 154,000 homeless veterans, a majority are actually from the Vietnam war era. In fact, there are now more Vietnam veterans living on the streets than the number of service personnel who died in the war. Let’s hope that four decades from now we aren’t quoting the same statistics for the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.