Once in a lifetime you are given a chance to make a difference. My chance came in the late1980s when a couple of Vietnam veterans who had never done anything of the magnitude of what you’re about to read embarked on a journey that led to one of the most successful veterans’ programs in the nation.
After the Vietnam war ended in 1975, Vietnam veterans were quickly forgotten by the government and civilians alike. Sadly, in the years after the last American left Saigon, thousands of American veterans ended up not in comfortable homes with their families, but on the streets, homeless.
This is a story of how a small band of brothers changed the way our nation dealt with homeless veterans. Anti-war protestors, combat veterans, family members of veterans, lawyers, politicians and a few dedicated veteran advocates came together and changed the paradigm on the care and programs that were offered.
But the challenge was immense. Regretfully, two decades later, the problem of homelessness among veterans still exists and while the solutions are evident, there is not the political will to implement them.
When you’re an unemployed veteran, homelessness begins on your mother’s couch and then moves to your car if you have one and then quickly to the streets where the problems become huge.
Until this country gets serious and makes an effort to work on the underlining problems of more affordable housing, rooming house creation, and jobs, the problem of homeless veterans will be with us into the next generation.
Rooming houses were available until the mid 1980s when developers started to turn them into condos and all those marginal Americans who lived week to week in this type of housingincluding many vetswere thrown onto the streets within a few short years.
The mentally ill vets were institutionalized until there was a cry by liberals that it was inhuman to let these Americans live in the group community environment, and it was 10
determined that they needed to be reintegrated into the mainstream. That came with a cost.
The reintegration strategy didn’t work and never has worked, and nobody has ever had the fortitude to say it has been a failure.
The way we treat those American vets who are mentally ill and homeless and who live on our streets is borderline criminal.
Those who need to take medication every day to maintain a level head don’t have anywhere safe to leave that medication during the day when they are not at a shelter and they soon learn that those pills are a commodity on the street, and they can be sold for quick cash. That’s the reality on America’s streets today. The mentally ill homeless veterans are selling the medication they need to survive.
The stories told in this book are stories that I remembersome good, some badbut all are reflections of the human spirit of our nation’s veterans.
So sit back and read some stories that I hope will inspire you to take action.
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