"60 Minutes" on Veteran Homelessness

Here's something worth watching and paying attention to. 60 Minutes had a great piece last weekend about homelessness among veterans (click and watch below). The story focused on a Stand Down event in San Diego attended by more than 900 homeless veterans. For three days, these veterans could be seen by doctors and dentists, get help with employment, find out about the (scant) housing opportunities, and tap into the wide variety of services offered to veterans by the VA and to homeless people everywhere by other government and social service agencies. This event, and others like them all over the country, are going to be initial indicators of whether soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan thrive or sink towards poverty and homelessness. Find out what's happening in your community, and try to get involved.



Here at Community Voice Mail, we are trying to help end homelessness among veterans by giving out voice mail numbers to more than 4,000 veterans each year, and connecting them to information that can help them get jobs, find housing, stay healthy, and get the help they need to get on with their lives. Many of our managers regularly provide CVM numbers at Stand Down events like this around the country. And next year, we're going to do much, much more (more about this in another post).

At minute mark 10:20, the reporter says "Stand Down can't track a thousand homeless vets, so there's really no way to know how many might have picked up a lead on a job or a home..." But of course, there is a way. Give every veteran attending a Stand Down a Community Voice Mail number, tell them that they're going to start receiving regular broadcast voice messages about jobs, housing and all the services they learned about at the event. Tell them they can also receive this information via email, or on a blog, or using Facebook or Twitter. And finally, tell them that from time to time someone will contact them and ask them how they're doing, whether they've found a job, and if they've received the services they need. These are capabilities we have now that could be offered at Stand Down events all over the country. It's not that hard.

In this age of "social networking," we sometimes forget how important it is to stay connected to people. Hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless come to Stand Down and Homeless Connect events all over the country each year, and most of them leave these events without a simple way to stay connected to the resources offered there. Every agency offering services has a form where they will take phone numbers, mailing addresses and maybe email addresses, but there is no summing of the parts, no coordinated effort to make it easy to reach every attendee with follow-up information that can help them. They come as individuals, and they leave as individuals, with little effort to bring them into a community or network of people facing similar problems (or offering solutions to these problems, like the agencies or individuals that participate). Without the ability to stay connected to veterans attending a Stand Down event, the value of every service provided there is diminished.

Imagine a day when every homeless person becomes part of an information network specifically designed to increase opportunities for rising out of poverty, to match people with available services, and to increase a feeling of connectedness that people living on the streets often lack. That's what we're trying to build here at Community Voice Mail.

Unemployment Among Recent Veterans

Military Times reports today that the unemployment rate among recent veterans (those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since September 2001) is rising, and still higher than the unemployment rate for all veterans. In July, the rate for these recent veterans was 11.8%, while the rate for all veterans was 8.4%. The overall unemployment rate in the U.S. for July was 9.5%.

According to another article in the Wall Street Journal, 25 to 29-year olds make up 39% of unemployed Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, and the unemployment rate for this group is 14.9%. Many recent veterans from these wars are returning to the U.S. with traumatic brain injuries and other service-related injuries that make it difficult or impossible to work. These veterans are also returning to a country with a struggling economy and little or no job growth. With combat operations in Iraq ending this month, and the promised withdrawal of all ground troops by the end of next year, there will be a lot of veterans looking for work in the coming years.

Kudos to U.S. Senator Patty Murray (Washington State), sponsor of the Veterans Employment Act (S. 3234), which is designed to improve employment options and opportunities for veterans, and especially focused on transition programs so that returning veterans can move from the military directly into jobs. This bill has made it out of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and will now go to the full Senate for consideration.

We serve a lot of veterans here at Community Voice Mail; they make up 11% of our total client population. We're not yet seeing many of the younger veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan asking for our services, but I fear we may in the future. Most of our veteran clients are Vietnam-era or perhaps Desert Storm/Desert Sheild; 62% of our vets are 45-59, while only 28% are 26-44 and 2% are 18-25. 28% have told us they're disabled, and 8.5% are women. 86% our of veteran clients list an employment goal when they first get their CVM number. 55% identify as homeless or at-risk of homelessness.

Too many veterans need our services...

Photo credit: Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal

VA Sec. Shinseki on Homeless Veterans

In the video below, Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki talks about homelessness among veterans, and how the VA is working to end it in the next five years. I was particularly struck by his description of "two images" of veterans: one is of those who served their country on high-performing teams in very difficult and dangerous circumstances; the other is of the 131,000 veterans who are homeless in the U.S.. He said the VA's goal is to make sure that the second image doesn't define the veterans who embody the first image. An eloquent, thoughtful person, and we hope he and the rest of the VA (and our country) is successful.

New Resource for Homeless Veterans

The VA has created a new resource for veterans in the U.S. who may be experiencing homelessness. The National Call Center for Homeless Veterans is a 24-hour toll-free number for homeless or at-risk veterans who may benefit from local VA homeless programs and mental health services. Trained VA counselors will answer the phone, conduct a brief screen to assess your needs, and connect you with the Homeless Point of Contact at the nearest VA facility. If you're calling on behalf of a homeless veteran, you'll be given information about VA programs in your area.

If you're a homeless veteran, a friend/family member of one, or working with a veteran who is experiencing homelessness, call 1-877-4AID VET (877-424-3838). This is a toll-free call, and a free and confidential service.

You can read more about the call center here, and learn more about VA programs for homeless veterans here . You can hear the broadcast voice message we sent to our clients in New York City (around the country) here. If you call the Call Center and are willing to share your experience, please do so in the comments. Thanks.

Phoneless Veterans

When I talk about Community Voice Mail, I sometimes find myself reverting to the simplistic view of what we do and who we serve: "We provide free voice mail boxes to homeless people." The reality is a lot more complex, and as it's Veterans Day, I wanted to write about the thousands of veterans who are using Community Voice Mail to improve their lives.

We ask for a lot of information from our clients, and below is some of the data about the more than 4,000 veterans who have used our service in the past few years. These statistics in no way captures the breadth of the veterans population we serve, but some of the data is astounding:

• 90% are male, and about 10% are female. We've provided voice mail to at least 7 transgender vets.

• 61% are between the ages of 45-69, with 31% between 26-44. Only 2% are younger than 25, and as soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan, we hope these numbers stay low.

• 27% have a disabling condition, presumably as a direct result of their military service.

• 71% tell us they have no monthly income at all, while 26% make less than $1,000 a month.

• Half are Black/African-American, 45% identify as White, and the rest are American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander or Asian.

• 10% report having children as dependents, with at least 731 total kids dependent on our clients. Community Voice Mail is often a resource for entire families.

• 47% of those who identify as "homeless" live in emergency shelters , while 34% live in transitional housing and 15% live on the street.

• 17% have provided us with their email addresses, which we use to send messages about jobs, housing, events, and other local resources. It's likely that a higher percentage of these veterans use email; based on other client surveys, we estimate that 59% of our total clients have email addresses.

• When our clients are provided with a voice mail box, we ask them what their goals are for using the service. 87% of our veteran clients have goals related to employment, 73% list housing, and 58% list health care or social services. For those vets who reported an outcome to us, approximately 65% said they had achieved their goals, and 95% told us that having a Community Voice Mail box was either "very helpful" or "somewhat helpful" in this pursuit.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates that 154,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, with perhaps twice as many experiencing homelessness over the course of the year. The number of homeless Vietnam era veterans is actually greater than the number of service persons who died during that war. It is estimated that veterans account for 23% of all homeless people in America.

Most veterans, of course, are not homeless or in danger of becoming so. Especially on this day, however, it's important to remember that nearly 1/3 of the homeless people you see on the streets where you live have worn a uniform and served this country.

If you'd like to hear the story of a particularly inspiring veteran who uses Community Voice Mail as a tool to rebuild his life, I suggest you listen to this.

We're proud to be able to help...