News From the Cause
Orlando VA struggles to meet needs of rising tide of homeless vets: (ORLANDO SENTINEL)
March 15, 2011
Christopher O'Connor looks as if he just stepped out of a Marine Corps recruiting poster — the classic crew cut, the thickly muscled torso, the angular jaw — until the Orlando veteran rolls up his pants leg.
On his flesh are the distinctive circular scars of shrapnel wounds, welling up in spots where the metal is still lodged. On the eve of his 20th birthday, O'Connor was patrolling the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, when a remote-detonated IED exploded a few feet away. The blast left him with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and a left leg damaged so badly it was nearly amputated.
By age 21, he was retired from the Marines, working as a car salesman and buying a town house in Kissimmee.
A year later, he was unemployed, drinking too much and homeless — part of a growing population of Central Florida veterans who drift from sofa to sofa or wind up in homeless shelters, on the streets or pitching a tent in the woods.
"When I got out, they gave me a retired ID, and they pretty much just said, 'Thanks for your service,' " O'Connor said recently. "And, actually, I don't know if they really said 'thanks.' I had no idea how seriously injured I was."
Florida has the second-largest population of homeless veterans in the nation, behind California. And though some areas of the country have been working on the issue for more than 20 years, in Orlando the Department of Veterans Affairs didn't begin addressing the problem until 2007. It's now trying to play catch-up.
As a consequence, from 2008 to 2010, the population of homeless veterans in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties nearly doubled — to 1,250. Most live completely outside the system that might help them, avoiding shelters and unaided by housing programs or counseling from the VA. Three-quarters live on the streets, in abandoned buildings or cars or in camps.
More troublesome, some homeless advocates argue, is that they may be only the first wave of a flood of homeless veterans to come: soldiers from the War on Terror.
"It's going to get worse before it gets better," said Cathy Jackson, executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. "The period from military discharge to homelessness has accelerated dramatically. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that in the next three years there's going to be a surge in our numbers."
Adjusting to civilian life
During the years immediately after the Vietnam War, the average time from discharge to homelessness was six years. For current veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, the average is 18 months, largely because of high rates of traumatic brain injury and PTSD. Click here to view more
