Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

 WASHINGTON

— On the day of the presidential inauguration, Marguerita Clarkson, who injured her head during Army training, was living in a homeless shelter, and sometimes on the streets of Washington.

 She came to the nation’s capital looking for work, but wound up without a home for three months as she jumped among hotels and shelters.

 Even though her head injury lead to sever vertigo, and it was sometimes hard for her to stand or walk straight, Clarkson preferred sleeping in the streets over a homeless shelter.

 “It’s deplorable,” said Clarkson, 53, about the shelters where she sometimes stayed. “It’s as if someone is in prison. I dreaded every minute of it.” She said that no one bothered her if she slept outside.

 “I stayed out as late as I could, even in the dead of wintertime,” said Clarkson, who is one of an estimated 200,000 veterans who are homeless on any given day. 

 The National Coalition for the Homeless says 400,000 veterans like Clarkson are homeless during course of the year. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, about 3.5 million people experience homelessness in the United States in a given year.

 The Obama administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs have vowed to eliminate homelessness among veterans within five years.

 The VA offers grants to community agencies that provide services to homeless veterans and to build housing for homeless veterans. Congress is considering bills to increase assistance to veterans, help veterans on the verge of losing their homes and address the needs of women veterans with children.

 “We can’t just look at one part of the issue. We have to take care of all of the approaches, and I think the secretary of the VA understands that we have to try to implement more, and we need more money for a comprehensive holistic approach,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “This is our commitment and we have to do it.”

 During an October visit to the VA, first lady Michelle Obama highlighted the efforts of her husband’s administration in eradicating homelessness.

 “There have been new commitments to the moral outrage of veterans falling into homelessness,” Obama said. “We shouldn’t be in a position where our men and women in uniform are ever without a place to live after serving this country.”

 The VA is holding a summit in Washington this week about eradicating homelessness among the veteran population. 

 Today, Clarkson lives at Chesapeake House, an extension of the Southeast Veterans Service Center in Washington. She is studying for an online degree in criminal justice and has started her own online catalog business, selling clothing, candles and decorative items.

 “It’s such a huge difference than the shelters,” Clarkson said. “I have my own space, my own time. I’m very tranquil in my space.”

 The Southeast Veterans Service Center and Chesapeake House have 30 transitional apartments and 20 single-room-occupancy units for veterans who pay a portion of their incomes for rent. The center offers counseling and an outpatient clinic.

 “Oftentimes, our veterans need someone to talk to, to understand what they are going through,” said H.R. Crawford, founder of the veterans center and an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1970s. “Sometimes, we find that even their own families don’t understand what is going on. We are one big family, and we try to solve our problems in-house.”

 According to the VA, about 45 percent of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness, and with considerable overlap, about 70 percent suffer from alcohol or other substance-abuse problems.

 “Anybody who pays attention to homeless issues notices the instant combination of mental problems mixes in with substance abuse,” said John Bradley, a veterans consultant with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “Homelessness does not come as a failure to use what’s available, but as a complex combination of things that come together at once. Homelessness is not monolithic; it is multi-faceted.”

 Bradley said soldiers who return from war with mental conditions may have problems at home that can lead to addiction and even homelessness.  

 “Marital strife creates conditions not addressed, and soldiers can wind up separating, and you begin this slippery slope until you reach bottom and there is nothing there,” he said. “Substance abuse, overuse of prescription drugs – these are all contributing variables to becoming homeless.” 

 Ceasar Valdes, 49, has lived in the Southeast Veterans Service Center for three years and works part time in the kitchen.

 As a young Marine, he was sent to Beirut in 1983 as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. Valdes lived at the Marine headquarters building that was bombed on Oct. 23, 1983, and was outside the building when the bomb went off.

 “That moment made my life totally a Marine,” Valdes said. “From that moment, my life was made to be a Marine until death.”

 Although he saw friends die and was injured himself, he didn’t show signs of post traumatic stress disorder until years later, after he was already living at the center. He started having nightmares, feeling anxious and angry.

 “The sensation you see for the first time is the same sensation you’re going to feel in every nightmare,” said Valdes, who had nightmares about being in a hospital in Beirut. 

 But his time at the center helped him cope because he was among other veterans.

 “You are surrounded by people who are in the same program as you are, and you realize you are not the only one who is in that kind of situation,” Valdes said. 

 After leaving the military, Valdes moved back to his native El Salvador, where he ran an international relations firm. When he returned to the states, Valdes lived in several VA shelters on the West and East Coasts before transferring to the veterans center in Washington. Valdes is planning to move out of the veterans center into his own apartment soon but will still work there part time.

 Crawford said he wants to expand Chesapeake House to include units for families.

 Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., introduced the Homeless Women Veterans and Homeless Veterans with Children Act that would extend federal grant programs to help local organizations provide transitional housing, job training, counseling and child care to children of homeless veterans.

 “Women veterans and veterans with children often have different needs and require specialized services,” Murray said in a statement. “This bill will help provide an open door to women and families that have made tremendous sacrifices and deserve safe and stable homes.”

 Another Senate bill, the Zero Tolerance for Veterans Homeless-ness Act, would expand assistance to homeless veterans and veterans at risk of homelessness.

 House bills addressing the homeless are awaiting committee action and may be combined to form a comprehensive bill.

 One of the bills, the Help Our Homeless Veterans Act, would create a national media campaign aimed at homeless vets. During a committee meeting in early October, Peter Dougherty, the VA’s director of homeless programs, said that an outreach campaign already exists.

 But Filner, the House committee chair, said the VA is not doing enough to reach out to homeless veterans.

 “They are not reading or watching TV waiting for a PSA to come,” Filner said. “People don’t have the resources or means to get the resources. The VA has to take their hand and give it to them. It’s the only way it will be done.”

 Filner represents the San Diego area, which has moderate weather and abundant services likely to attract people without homes. The VA says California has the highest number of homeless veterans, almost 50,000.

 According to the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans, approximately 300 community-based organizations across the country serve homeless veterans. 

 Clarkson would like to see more transitional housing like the Chesapeake House throughout the country. She lived in Georgia and Nevada after being honorably discharged from the military.

 “Veterans weren’t welcome. We were ostracized because we were veterans,” she said of one of the shelters she lived in. “I would like to broaden the space available for veterans so that veterans don’t have to be living out in the streets, or be ostracized. We should have a place to go to, not just a place to sleep and to feel safe, but a place to live and a place to go to during the day time.”