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Study: 1 in 4 homeless are veterans

Shelters are seeing more young veterans of recent wars.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 8, 2007

WASHINGTON - Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released today.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

The Veterans Affairs Department has identified 1,500 homeless veterans from the current wars and says 400 of them have participated in its programs specifically targeting homelessness.

The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness - mostly related to posttraumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

Overall, 45 percent of participants in the VA's homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness, more than three out of four have a substance abuse problem, and 35 percent have both, Dougherty said.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit group, based the findings of its report on numbers from the Veterans Affairs Department and the Census Bureau. Data from 2005 estimated that 194,254 homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans.

In comparison, the VA says that 20 years ago, the estimated number of veterans who were homeless on any given night was 250,000.

In all of 2006, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates, 495,400 veterans were homeless at some point during the year.

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.

FAST FACTS:

Homeless veterans

According to a review last year of the nearly 39,000 veterans who participated in the Veterans Affairs Department's homeless-specific programs:

4.9 percent served before the Vietnam War.

42.5 percent served during the Vietnam War.

41.9 percent served after Vietnam and before the Persian Gulf War.

10.6 percent served after the Persian Gulf war began, including veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

[Last modified November 8, 2007, 00:49:00]