Make Sure Ending Veteran Homelessness Is on the Agenda

The nation's Department of Veterans Affairs serves about 92,000 homeless veterans. Veteran homelessness is a difficult task to tackle, and the VA is no doubt making a commendable effort, no matter how short the scope of its assistance may fall of the ideal. Unfortunately, there are still another 15,000 homeless veterans on the streets of America, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

While all homelessness is something we ought to be ashamed of, veteran homelessness — 23 percent of the homeless population, according to United States Interagency Council on Homelessness — is unique. Veterans have contributed to our country in a way no other citizens have. They have offered up their lives, their safety, and often times their sanity, for our freedoms and way of life.

Tell the Senate to pass the End Veteran Homelessness Act!

We can disagree about foreign policy or the justness of certain wars, but when a young person decides that the best or only way he or she can individually give back to this country is to risk everything — and everything bears repeating here — we need to honor him or her.

What, in this instance, does honor include? Our productivity and our excesses, our freedoms and our transgressions are all predicated on the work of veterans. Like the unseen cells that form the organs with which we fight disease, our lifestyles are guarded by our soldiers. The least we owe them is our full guardianship.

It is a task perhaps too much to ask of the government, which makes the work of organizations like Swords to Plowshares so important. Started in 1974, the non-profit provides a continuum-of-care approach to serving veterans in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In partnership with the Chinatown Community Development Center, Plowshares is building a permanent, supportive housing complex for chronically homeless senior veterans. The facility will have 75 units, complete with "wrap-around care." Says Michael Blecker, executive director of Plowshares: "For Vietnam-era veterans who have suffered for decades, permanent housing and wrap-around care is the solution that will save their lives."

The new center will only be the most recent step in an ongoing campaign to end veteran homelessness. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our problems so we don't forget to solve them. It's a fortunate thing when those reminders come from steps forward like this.

The End Veteran Homelessness Act of 2010 has been passed by the House and now sits in the Senate, waiting for action. The Congressional Budget Office estimates funding for the bill at about two dollars per American citizen.

Please help honor our veterans more fully. You can use the petition below to easily remind your senators — and chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs Daniel Akaka — that veteran homelessness matters.

Photo credit: US Army Africa