[Shadow_Group] (UPI) US Homeless Iraq Vets Showing up at Shelters

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041207-121848-6449r.htm

Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters

By Mark Benjamin
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are 
beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and 
advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless 
vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said 
Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless 
Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting 
them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

"I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for 
a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone 
interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in 
California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country 
dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months 
after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home 
and the next day you are on the streets," he said.

In Iraq, shrapnel nearly severed his left thumb. He still has trouble 
moving it and shrapnel "still comes out once in a while," Arellano said. 
He is left handed.

Arellano said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after 
getting back from Iraq without medical attention he needed for his hand 
-- and as he would later learn, his mind.

"It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They 
treated us like cattle," Arellano said about how the military treated 
him on his return to the United States.

"It is all about numbers. Instead of getting quality care, they were 
trying to get everybody demobilized during a certain time frame. If you 
had a problem, they said, 'Let the (Department of Veterans Affairs) take 
care of it.'"

The Pentagon has acknowledged some early problems and delays in treating 
soldiers returning from Iraq but says the situation has been fixed.

A gunner's mate for 16 years, Arellano said he adjusted after serving in 
the first Gulf War. But after returning from Iraq, depression drove him 
to leave his job at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He 
got divorced.

He said that after being quickly pushed out of the military, he could 
not get help from the VA because of long delays.

"I felt, as well as others (that the military said) 'We can't take care 
of you on active duty.' We had to sign an agreement that we would follow 
up with the VA," said Arellano.

"When we got there, the VA was totally full. They said, 'We'll call 
you.' But I developed depression."

He left his job and wandered for three months, sometimes living in his 
truck.

Nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, and almost half 
served during the Vietnam era, according to the Homeless Veterans 
coalition, a consortium of community-based homeless-veteran service 
providers. While some experts have questioned the degree to which mental 
trauma from combat causes homelessness, a large number of veterans live 
with the long-term effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and 
substance abuse, according to the coalition.

Some homeless-veteran advocates fear that similar combat experiences in 
Vietnam and Iraq mean that these first few homeless veterans from Iraq 
are the crest of a wave.

"This is what happened with the Vietnam vets. I went to Vietnam," said 
John Keaveney, chief operating officer of New Directions, a shelter and 
drug-and-alcohol treatment program for veterans in Los Angeles. That 
city has an estimated 27,000 homeless veterans, the largest such 
population in the nation. "It is like watching history being repeated," 
Keaveney said.

Data from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows that as of last July, 
nearly 28,000 veterans from Iraq sought health care from the VA. One out 
of every five was diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to the VA. 
An Army study in the New England Journal of Medicine in July showed that 
17 percent of service members returning from Iraq met screening criteria 
for major depression, generalized anxiety disorder or PTSD.

Asked whether he might have PTSD, Arrellano, the Seabees petty officer 
who lived out of his truck, said: "I think I do, because I get 
nightmares. I still remember one of the guys who was killed." He said he 
gets $100 a month from the government for the wound to his hand.

Lance Cpl. James Claybon Brown Jr., 23, is staying at a shelter run by 
U.S.VETS in Los Angeles. He fought in Iraq for 6 months with Alpha 
Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and later in Afghanistan with 
another unit. He said the fighting in Iraq was sometimes intense.

"We were pretty much all over the place," Brown said. "It was really 
heavy gunfire, supported by mortar and tanks, the whole nine (yards)."

Brown acknowledged the mental stress of war, particularly after Marines 
inadvertently killed civilians at road blocks. He thinks his belief in 
God helped him come home with a sound mind.

"We had a few situations where, I guess, people were trying to get out 
of the country. They would come right at us and they would not stop," 
Brown said. "We had to open fire on them. It was really tough. A lot of 
soldiers, like me, had trouble with that."

"That was the hardest part," Brown said. "Not only were there men, but 
there were women and children -- really little children. There would be 
babies with arms blown off. It was something hard to live with."

Brown said he got an honorable discharge with a good conduct medal from 
the Marines in July and went home to Dayton, Ohio. But he soon drifted 
west to California "pretty much to start over," he said.

Brown said his experience with the VA was positive, but he has struggled 
to find work and is staying with U.S.VETS to save money. He said he 
might go back to school.

Advocates said seeing homeless veterans from Iraq should cause alarm. 
Around one-fourth of all homeless Americans are veterans, and more than 
75 percent of them have some sort of mental or substance abuse problem, 
often PTSD, according to the Homeless Veterans coalition.

More troubling, experts said, is that mental problems are emerging as a 
major casualty cluster, particularly from the war in Iraq where the 
enemy is basically everywhere and blends in with the civilian 
population, and death can come from any direction at any time.

Interviews and visits to homeless shelters around the Unites States show 
the number of homeless veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan so far is 
limited. Of the last 7,500 homeless veterans served by the VA, 50 had 
served in Iraq. Keaveney, from New Directions in West Los Angeles, said 
he is treating two homeless veterans from the Army's elite Ranger 
battalion at his location. U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the 
country dedicated to helping homeless veterans, found nine veterans from 
Iraq or Afghanistan in a quick survey of nine shelters. Others, like the 
Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training in Baltimore, said 
they do not currently have any veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan in 
their 170 beds set aside for emergency or transitional housing.

Peter Dougherty, director of Homeless Veterans Programs at the VA, said 
services for veterans at risk of becoming homeless have improved 
exponentially since the Vietnam era. Over the past 30 years, the VA has 
expanded from 170 hospitals, adding 850 clinics and 206 veteran centers 
with an increasing emphasis on mental health. The VA also supports 
around 300 homeless veteran centers like the ones run by U.S.VETS, a 
partially non-profit organization.

"You probably have close to 10 times the access points for service than 
you did 30 years ago," Dougherty said. "We may be catching a lot of 
these folks who are coming back with mental illness or substance abuse" 
before they become homeless in the first place. Dougherty said the VA 
serves around 100,000 homeless veterans each year.

But Boone's group says that nearly 500,000 veterans are homeless at some 
point in any given year, so the VA is only serving 20 percent of them.

Roslyn Hannibal-Booker, director of development at the Maryland veterans 
center in Baltimore, said her organization has begun to get inquiries 
from veterans from Iraq and their worried families. "We are preparing 
for Iraq," Hannibal-Booker said.

Copyright 2004 United Press International








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