Thread: Where Veteran Homelessness Is Rising And Falling

Where Veteran Homelessness Is Rising And Falling



Despite the end of the Iraq war and efforts to enable the Afghan military to take over their country's security, the sight of a homeless U.S. veteran struggling to keep warm in a doorway will sadly remain common in major American cities this winter.

Mon, 11/12/2018 - 22:40
18 SHARES

Despite the end of the Iraq war and efforts to enable the Afghan military to take over their country's security, the sight of a homeless U.S. veteran struggling to keep warm in a doorway will sadly remain common in major American cities this winter.



Over the past couple of years, the U.S. has made progress in reducing the number of homeless veterans.

After a slight rise last year, Statista's Niall McCarthy notes that the homeless population declined 5.4 percent over the past 12 months. There are currently about 38,000 homeless vets across the country, about half the amount counted in 2010.
Some states have had more success eliminating the problem than others, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. The following infographic shows where the homeless veteran population has increases and decreases at state level over the past year.



You will find more infographics at Statista
While Connecticut, Delaware and Virginia have effectively ended it, solutions are harder to come by in states with high property prices such as California.
Nevada has seen the number of vets sleeping rough fall by almost 88 percent but Mississippi has experienced a 79 percent increase.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ng-and-falling

Stop all foreign aid and rebuild our country.

We have plenty of vacant lots in cities on bus lines.

Build affordable tiny homes to get them off the streets and into jobs!

We do not need ANY work visas. Work for welfare, work for shelter!

People would be surprised who many of these homeless people are. They aren't who you think they are. They are good, decent Americans, from all walks of life who got crapped on by bad trade and immigration policies that cost them their jobs, which cost them their homes, who became unemployable because they didn't have an address, who turned to the only spot left for them, the streets. Once there, there are few roads back. Of all the many sad things going on in our country, to me, this is one of the saddest. This didn't used to be possible. Communities had "no loitering" laws, that forced a different route for people, a better route, a better choice, a safer option with more alternatives with more roads to get back in the groove, back on your feet.

We should restore "no loitering" laws and end this. It's indecent to allow this on public streets, sidewalks, parks, under bridges, alleys, it's just wrong, it's wrong for the homeless, it's wrong for businesses, it's wrong for the general public, it's just wrong all the way around.

I read an article where there are 3.5 million Americans as of a couple of years ago or so who have nowhere to sleep each night. That's more people than the entire Muslim population in the United States.

The solution is a specially designed room for rent housing system, cute little rooms like a hotel room, with a little refrigerator and microwave, a small cabinet on the wall above the frig and microwave. The refrigerator is where they can store their milk for cereal, lunchmeat, cheese, sandwich salads, potato salad, etc., a small freezer for a few frozen dinners. A small cabinet for bread, crackers, cookies, canned goods. A small table and chairs. A TV and Internet and phone service with a small table and some chairs, a chest of drawers, a desk, bathroom, and a lock box for them to lock up and secure their important documents and money. Cleaning service once a week, not daily. A low cost restaurant/cafeteria, buffet located in the system grounds or complex for tasty but inexpensive hot meals that they can use their EBT food stamp card at, and also use the area for gatherings and events as well as meetings and interviews with prospective employers. Make them recruiting sites for employers. Have a low cost shuttle service so they can get to important appointments. Have an office they can go to for help with getting their documents restored, new driver's licenses, copies of their birth certificates, passports, social security cards ... many homeless have lost all those or they've expired on them, and they need these for their road back to a normal life. This will help them with employers as well as opening up a bank account if they want or need one. Have a barber shop for haircuts and big shaves, have someone come twice a week if it doesn't support a full time barber shop. Have a laundry room for them to wash their clothes.

Give them first 60 days free, then start charging according to their income. No drug addicts, they will need to go to a drug rehab facility. Pot users are okay. But any hard drugs, no, they need a different environment, much more controlled. Set goals, all cleaned up, with new nice but inexpensive clothes immediately and documents and job interviews within first 30 to 60 days. Have mobile health units to give them medical and dental exams, and then the shuttle service can be used for more extensive lab or treatment appointments as the case may be. I think dental will probably be the biggest problem, homeless people are pretty strong people, otherwise they couldn't live the way they do, but without a home, it's very hard to take care of your teeth and without good teeth, you will not do well. Again, give them some free medical until they're on their feet and then they can sign up for a health insurance plan, hopefully they will find a full time job that offers company health insurance or earn enough to afford a low-cost or subsidized policy or not. You can live and function without health insurance.

Some may not be able to work full-time if at all for a long time, so encourage part-time work, day labor, whatever the market needs that they can fill. Others will snap right into it, it will depend on their situation. Keep the mental health "experts" and the social workers out of the place. You can ask them if they feel they need help in this area and if so, can help them to make an appointment. These people are used to being free and on their own, they will reject any type of control or manipulation by "experts".

The rooms need to be small but large enough to hold all above mentioned, as well as have a bike rack on the wall and a place to store their grocery cart if they have one. This cart is like a life-line, you will not want to take that away from them.

Call it the Restart Program but give the places nice normal names. so they aren't stigmatized.

Hire good, decent, smart, common sense people to run and work in the operations, no nonsense but compassionate people who are results oriented. The goal is to keep them off the streets and find them a job and potentially a road out of the complex, but here's the thing, if they like the complex and want to stay, let them!! Just charge them. The best result possible would be for what started out as a program to get the homeless off the streets, turned into a community of working, self-sufficient people, then you privatize with some guidelines to protect the rent paying residents, and go build another one somewhere else. You could design the funding with government, 501 C 3's funding as well as private funding so the tax-exempt funding and the private funding could take over when the success standards have been met and they buy out the government share.

And keep the religious people on salvation missions out of it. This is a government business project to help people our policies cheated out of everything, many of those policies were driven by religious people, the homeless don't have homes, they're not stupid, they aren't godless, and they will resent the "missionaries" and "do-gooders".

Now is the time to do this when there are so many jobs available.

JUST DO IT!! Ben Carson, you should have already thought of this, but if you haven't, take the idea and run with it. Solve this problem, just do it, do it right and do it now.

Hi Airbornesapper07, I added a bunch of stuff to my post if you're interested.

Originally Posted by Judy

Hi Airbornesapper07, I added a bunch of stuff to my post if you're interested.

looks good too me