We don’t leave a soldier behind on the battle field, but why do we leave a soldier behind here in the U.S.?
The numbers of homeless veterans is staggering. In every state there is a problem with returning veterans who find themselves on the streets, with no benefits and no one to turn too. However with all the support that is out there provided by organizations such as The Soldier Project, Stand Down and other nonprofit organizations, we still see veterans stumbling to get back on their feet.
Some say these veterans themselves were the reason for their failure as many fell into substance abuse problems and some say it’s because of failures in the government system. Whatever the case may be, we still need to realize that for a veteran who served our country and who many fought in ugly wars, we owe it to these people to keep them off the streets and give them enough support to get them back on their feet.
Here is a link of the number of homeless veterans in each state for the year 2006.
http://www.nchv.org/page.cfm?id=81
Today with veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan we are seeing the numbers increase. Here is an article by the New York Times about the increase in homeless veterans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/us/08vets.html
Stand Down organization
http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=6
The Soldier Project
http://www.thesoldiersproject.org/
Below is a link to my Transitioning Veteran WIKI Homeless Veterans section which has numbers and information pertaining to helping homeless veterans.
http://transitioningveteran.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Homeless_Veterans
Lets not leave these guys behind who have sacrificed so much for us.
Good post. We need to do all we can for the men and women who have given so much for this country. Hopefully this will bring awareness to the problem so others can get involved
ReplyDelete