|
Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after returning from military service
in Iraq. He slept in his Jeep, taking care to find a parking space where
he wouldn't get a ticket.
"Then the nightmares would start," says the 26-year-old former Army private
first class, who drove a fuel truck in Iraq. "I saw a baby decapitated
when it was run over by a truck. I relived that every night."
Across America on any given evening, hundreds of veterans of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan like Noel are homeless, according to government
estimates. The reasons for their plight are many. For some, residual stress
from daily insurgent attacks and roadside bombs makes it tough to adjust
to civilian life; some can't navigate government assistance programs;
others simply can't afford a house or apartment.
They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small, from Washington
state to California and Florida. Some of the hardest hit are in New York
City, where housing costs "can be very tough," says Peter Dougherty, head
of the federal government's Homeless Veterans Program. Studio apartments
routinely exceed $1,000 a month no small sum for veterans trying to land
on their feet.
As a member of the National Guard, Nadine Beckford patrolled New York
train stations after the Sept. 11 attacks, then served a treacherous year
in the Gulf region.
But when she returned home from Iraq, she found her storage locker had
been emptied of all of her belongings and her bank account had been depleted.
She believes her boyfriend took everything and "just vanished."
Six months after her return to America, she lives in a homeless shelter
in Brooklyn, sharing a room with eight other women and attending a job
training program. Her parents live in Jamaica and are barely making ends
meet, she says. "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," says Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist
at a U.S. base in Iraq a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks "where
hell was your home."
It was a "hell" familiar to Noel during his eight months in Iraq. But
it didn't stop when he returned home to New York last year and couldn't
find a job to support his wife and three children. Without enough money
to rent an apartment, he turned to the housing programs for vets, "but
they were overbooked," Noel says.
While he was in Iraq, his family had lived in military housing in Georgia.
In New York, they ended up in a Bronx shelter "with people who were just
out of prison, and with roaches," Noel says. "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."
There are about 200,000 homeless vets in the United States, according
to government figures. About 10 percent are from either the 1991 Gulf
War or the current one, about 40 percent are Vietnam veterans, and most
of the others served when the country was not officially at war.
"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," says Dougherty. "These are the veterans who
most often end up homeless." About 350 nonprofit service organizations
are working with the Department of Veterans Affairs to help veterans.
But the veterans still land on a hard bottom line: Almost half of America's
2.7 million disabled veterans receive $337 or less a month in benefits,
according to the government. Fewer than one-tenth are rated 100 percent
disabled, meaning they get $2,393 a month, tax free.
"And only those who receive that 100 percent benefit rating can survive
in New York," says J.B. White, a 36-year-old former Marine who served
with a National Guard unit in Iraq. His colon was removed after he was
diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis, which civilian medical experts
believe started in Iraq under the stress of war.
"I'd be homeless if it weren't for the support of my family," says White,
who is trying to win benefits from the VA. He also helps others, like
Beckford, as head of a Manhattan-based social service agency that finds
non-government housing for vets.
Noel now attends a program to get work in studio sound production. He
was 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, he learned the
government was granting him the 100 percent disability compensation he
sought after being turned down.
Noel doesn't blame the Army, which "helped make my dreams come true,"
he says, recalling the military base life in Georgia and in Korea that
his family enjoyed before his deployment to Iraq. "I had a house, a car
they gave me everything they promised me," he says. "Now it's up to the
government and the people we're defending to take care of their soldiers."
(From AP Wire)
|
