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Many U.S. Iraq vets homeless
Some are poor, traumatized by war experiences
Jun. 24, 2006. 04:48 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS


NEW YORK — As a member of the U.S. army National Guard, Nadine Beckford
patrolled New York City train stations after Sept. 11, 2001 with a 9 mm
pistol, then served a treacherous year in Iraq.

Now, six months after returning, Beckford lives in a homeless shelter.

"I'm just an ordinary person who served. I'm not embarrassed about my
homelessness because the circumstances that created it were not my fault,"
said Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at a base in Iraq
that was a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks.

Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a
new nightmare — the risk of homelessness. The U.S. government estimates
several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any
given night across the country, although the exact number is unknown.

The reasons that contribute to the new wave of homelessness are many: some
are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks
and roadside bombs; some can't navigate government red tape; others simply
don't have enough money to afford a house or apartment.

They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small from
Washington state to Florida. But the hardest hit are in New York, because
housing costs "can be very tough," said Peter Dougherty, head of the
Homeless Veterans Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Former army Pte. 1st Class Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after
returning from Iraq last year. He slept in his Jeep, parked anywhere in New
York "where I wouldn't get a ticket."

"Then the nightmares would start," said the 26-year-old, who drove a
military fuel truck in Iraq — one of the war's most dangerous jobs.

At one point, he saw a friend's leg blown off.

"I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a truck. I relived that
every night," said Noel, who walks with shrapnel in his knee and suffers
from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.

To help people like Noel, the VA gives grants to non-profit, private
housing organizations that offer about 8,000 free beds across the country.
The space isn't always enough to accommodate everyone in desperate need of
shelter among the more than 500,000 vets of Iraq and Afghanistan who have
been discharged from the military so far.

When Noel returned, the shattered soldier couldn't immediately find a job
to support his wife and children and all the housing programs for vets he
knew of "were overbooked," he said.

The family ended up in a Bronx, N.Y., shelter "with people who were just
out of prison and with roaches," he said.

"I'm a young black man from the ghetto but this was culture shock. This is
not what I fought for, what I almost died for."

"This is not what I was supposed to come home to."

Noel now attends a Brooklyn, N.Y., program to train for a job in studio
sound production. He also is the protagonist of the documentary film When I
Came Home, which was named best New York-made documentary at the Tribeca
Film Festival this year.

Just after the news reports about his plight came out, he received a call
from the VA granting him the 100-per-cent disability compensation he sought
— after being turned down.

He's not blaming the military, which "helped make my dreams come true. I
had a house, a car — they gave me everything they promised me," he said.

"It's up to the government and the people we're defending to take care of
their soldiers."

Before she went to war, Beckford put all her belongings in storage. And
while in Iraq, she sent most of her National Guard earnings of about
$25,000 a year to her New York bank account. When she returned, the
Brooklyn storage locker had been emptied, as was her bank account. She
believes her boyfriend took everything and disappeared; she reported the
thefts to police but "he just vanished."

Without support from family — her parents are barely making ends meet in
their native Jamaica — Beckford lives in a Brooklyn shelter where she
shares a room with eight other women.

Beckford is no longer angry — just anxious to be back on her feet as she
attends a job-training program.

Long before the current war, the Homeless Veterans Program had guided men
and women back into daily life after service in Vietnam, Korea and the
Second World War. But Dougherty makes no secret of a truth few Americans
know: about one-quarter of all homeless adults in America have served in
the military — most of them minority veterans.

There are now about 200,000 homeless vets in the United States, government
figures show.

"In recent years, we've tried to reach out sooner to new veterans who are
having problems with post-traumatic stress, depression or substance abuse,
after seeing combat," said Dougherty.

"These are the veterans who most often end up homeless."

Across the country, 350 non-profit service organizations are working with
Veterans Affairs to provide a network that breaks the veterans' fall.

But they still land on a hard bottom line: almost one-half of the 2.7
million disabled U.S. veterans receive $337 or less a month in benefits,
the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration said.

Fewer than one-10th of them are rated 100-per-cent disabled, meaning they
receive $2,393 a month, tax free.

"And only those who receive that 100-per-cent benefit rating can survive in
New York," said J.B. White, a 36-year-old former marine who served with a
National Guard unit in Iraq.

His entire colon was removed after he was diagnosed with severe ulcerative
colitis, which civilian medical experts believe started in Iraq under the
stress of war.

White is in the midst of an uphill battle to win benefits from the
government. He also helps others, as head of the Hope for New Veterans
program for Common Ground, a Manhattan-based social service agency that
finds non-government housing for vets.

For those struggling to keep a roof over their head, filing for benefits
can be a bureaucratic Catch-22 that ratchets up the stress. But it's their
survival ticket, if their claim is not turned down.

To an outsider, the VA benefit formulas can seem like a riddle.

If, for instance, a vet is diagnosed as 70-per-cent physically disabled and
30-per-cent disabled as a result of post-traumatic stress, the total
disability does not necessarily add up to 100 per cent; it could amount to
80 per cent. And that means a monthly cheque of $1,277; $1,500 for a family
of four — a paltry amount in places like New York where cramped studio
apartments routinely exceed $1,000 a month.

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