Vets on the Street; Agencies seek to aid forgotten soldiers

By Kristen Strobbe
As citizens of Manteno, Ill., gathered to celebrate the fourth of July holiday last year, many were unaware of the military past and troubled present of the others in attendance.

Scattered among the civilians were veterans from WWII, the Korean War, and the conflicts in Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Most were from the Manteno Veterans’ Home, a nursing home facility that offers care for incapacitated veterans.

A small group, however, were not from the nursing home but another facility altogether.

Earlier in the day, Deanna Mackey decided to take her group of 15 veterans to the Fourth of July festival in hopes of giving them a break from their daily routines of counseling, group therapy and job training classes.

As fireworks lit up the sky, it became apparent that not all of Mackey’s veterans were celebrating, he recalls. One soldier dove under a picnic table to take cover from the decorative explosives. Others cringed and grimaced with each boom.

“This is why these veterans are homeless,” Mackey said. “Things that happen in everyday life are a threat to them.”

“When a backfiring car or fireworks takes them back to combat; it’s hard to bring them back to reality,” said Mackey, clinical director of Prince Home at Manteno, a pet project of former Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich that houses 15 homeless veterans and helps them find employment and housing.

Prince Home opened in February 2008 and, in addition to helping veterans with employment, allows for them to receive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and other mental illnesses that, according to Mackey, can lead to homelessness.

While the facility, according to Mackey, lacks staffed nurses and physicians to address medical ailments of the residents, it has a partnership with Edward Hines, Jr. VA hospital in west suburban Hines, Ill.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness in its 2007 report said there were 1,475 homeless veterans in Illinois. And on any given night, 1,200 veterans will be homeless in Chicago, according to the Volunteers of America of Illinois’ Veterans Housing Project, which also concluded that veterans account for about 50 percent of the homeless in Chicago.

The statistics concerning the number of homeless veterans raise questions about the effectiveness of VA care, familial and community support – or the lack thereof – of returning veterans and the widening gap between the Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs, Mackey said.

Bob Adams, founder and clinical director of the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans in Wheaton, Ill., said the numbers themselves have to speak for the often silent voices of homeless veterans.

“Homelessness among veterans is certainly on the rise,” Adams said. “Judging from the initial number of homeless veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, even within the first years of occupancy, there is going to be a Katrina-like wave of homelessness when we finally withdraw troops from Iraq.”

Adams, a jovial 61-year-old and Vietnam veteran, was active for many years in the veteran community in DuPage County before opening the shelter. In 1997, Adams was invited to visit Boston’s New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans. Also a licensed clinical psychologist, Adams was offered a job with the New England shelter but turned it down.

“How could I possibly ignore what was happening in my own backyard?” Adams said. “So I said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ and started out building a shelter where it was needed— here.”

Despite Adams’ excitement over the success and work of the shelter, he is also somber that it is even needed.

“Veterans come to us so unaware,” Adams said. “They don’t know why they’re hitting their children, or why they’re drinking or why they lost their job.

“The military mentality makes them ignore what’s happening to them,” Adams said.

The Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans works on an annual operating budget of about $300,000 with half coming from government sources and half through fundraising. Both Adams and Mackey said that with the shift in the economy, funding has been more difficult to come by.

“Prince Home is sustained with state money, yet we are still struggling to get the space and money we need to expand,” Mackey said. “We would love to provide medical care on-site, but we’re waiting to see what the stimulus package can give us.”
Even the veterans feel the trickle-down effect the economy is having on shelters and facilities.

“More money means more outreach and more services,” said Jose Vasquez, a Vietnam veteran who said he was homeless for four years. “There’s no people walking the streets or in cars looking for veterans because they can’t afford to house them once they find them.”

With deep and sunken eyes – a consequence of getting up early that day to work as coordinator of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless’ Home Ground Coffee program and, also from the years of living a transient life, moving between Texas, Ohio and Illinois– Vasquez is impassioned as he talks about his life after the war.

“There were no parades for us,” Vasquez, who was in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, said. “The protesters were calling us baby killers. We weren’t seen as heroes.”
Although homeless shelters are seeing a rise in the number of veterans from the current war, Mackey said the majority of veterans she sees are those who, like Vasquez, served in Vietnam.

“There wasn’t recognition of PTSD back then,” Mackey said. “On top of that, people wanted to forget about Vietnam and get back to their lives and the soldiers tried to do the same even if they weren’t ready.”

Ray Parish is the one and only military counselor for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an activist group that often serves as advocates for distraught GIs currently enlisted, veterans of conflict from WWII to Iraq and members of the military who have deserted.

“Unlike Vietnam, GIs today are completing numerous tours and the PTSD just gets worse,” Parish said. “The fact that we know what PTSD is doesn’t help much if soldiers aren’t being treated for it.”

When Vasquez returned from Vietnam, he says he suffered from slight PTSD but never sought help for his anxiety and paranoia. He eventually turned to alcohol and later became homeless.

Parish said this is a common scenario among homeless veterans. Substance abuse, according to Parish, is an outlet soldiers feel is “tough enough” to use as a way of dealing with PTSD.

“Soldiers who are still in active duty and have not had their PTSD validated by superiors are going to get called up again,” Parish said. “It’s then, when they know they can’t go back and keep their sanity, that they go AWOL.”

Because so many homeless veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are deserters, they go undocumented for fear of arrest, Parish said. Unbeknownst to most soldiers, there are VA benefits available to those who went AWOL, or were dishonorably discharged.

The benefits require a lot of paper work and red tape, according to Vasquez, which is what he contends keeps so many veterans from seeking help from the VA.
“If people are homeless and have no food, why would you make them jump through hoops to get help?” Vasquez asked.

Candidly, Mackey says she wishes for there to be more communication between the VA and the Armed Forces. She contended that as long as the two stay separate entities, there will be a steady flow of veterans from the current war that eventually become homeless.

Vietnam almost caught 55-year-old Parish, but he was lucky enough, he says, to get a job as a Russian linguist stationed in Turkey during the war. His father, who made his career in the military and was even named Army recruiter of the year in 1964, volunteered for a second tour because he felt he’d already taken too many young lives as a recruiter, Parish said.

Much like his father, Parish is trying save the lives of those who serve America.

“Veterans helping veterans, that’s what it has to be about,” Parish said. “Vets who know the ropes of the VA and know what it’s like to deal with PTSD have to teach those that don’t.”