Mannix Porterfield
CHARLESTON — Last weekend found Jon Blair Hunter in downtown Baltimore, and like any other major American city, the streets were choked by throngs of homeless people, adrift in a human sea of nomadism and uncertainty about meeting life’s basic needs from one day to the next.
Blair paused to take in the scene and what it meant.
“I wondered at the time, just how many of them were veterans,” the state senator recalled. “I bet you there were quite a few.”
That’s more than a safe wager.
In fact, based on an analysis by a nonprofit education entity, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, one in four people on the street once wore a military uniform. That, even though veterans make up a mere 11 percent of the overall adult population.
Hunter, a Democrat who represents the 14th District in Monongalia County, found the scene unfolding before him a sad commentary on America.
For him, the plight of homeless veterans is important for two reasons.
First off, Hunter is a veteran, having served in the Korean War, and secondly, he co-chairs a special panel in the Legislature dedicated to issues affecting veterans, Select Committee B, and homelessness is one of its focus issues.
Exacerbating the problem is post-traumatic stress disorder, an emotional fugue that portends to be worse among Iraq and Afghanistan returnees since it already is beginning to rear itself, while it took about a decade for the problem to manifest in Vietnam veterans. Already, shelters are seeing soldiers just back from the Middle East, and it is there troops are being subjected to repeated deployments. In Vietnam, a soldier pulled a year and came home, unless he was a career man who either volunteered or was reassigned for follow-up tours.
“One thing we have found out is that the infrastructure out there — the people who are trained to work with veterans that come back — is just almost non-existent,” the senator said.
“We’ve got a a few people in some of the Veterans Administration centers, but we don’t have nearly the amount that we need. I see that as a major problem for people who come back and have a problem, and we don’t have the services.”
Figures unveiled by the National Alliance show there were 357 veterans homeless in West Virginia as of 2005, or about .2 percent of the state’s 175,697 veterans. And, as Hunter quickly pointed out, the war in the Persian Gulf has raged fully two years since those figures were kept. The numbers are likely to rise.
As a VA director in Lancaster County, Pa., put it, “We’re going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous.”
Blair’s committee is attempting to reach out to a known 3,000 returnees from the ongoing strife in the Middle East. That’s the number for which the panel has managed to get names and addresses. Of course, if other veterans already are homeless, that means the panel can’t survey them.
To get a handle on where veterans stand, the panel is working with the state Division of Veterans Affairs.
“This state sends more men and women per capita to war than perhaps any other state in the nation,” a panel co-chair, Delegate Richard Iaquinta, D-Harrison, said.
“When the United States goes to war, West Virginians consistently step up and serve, so we must work diligently to serve these men and women. This is a state populated by soldiers and their families, and I consider it a great honor to be able to pursue legislative action on their behalf.”
Another co-chair, Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, also D-Monongalia, said her panel is determined that returnees get the best possible care, a concern heightened by media reports that Walter Reed Army Medical Center had fallen into horrible conditions, including the presence of vermin.
“It was our intention to put the weight of state government behind ensuring that those suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injuries and other injuries typical of this conflict did not get lost in the system, especially those who live in more rural areas with less access to medical and counseling services.”
The only existing facility able to absorb homeless veterans is the home in Barboursville, but it is near capacity, the panel recently learned.
Hunter thinks he might have found a partial solution, the old Hopemont State Hospital in Terra Alta, which has gone unused for several years. Hunter feels the structure could be converted into efficiency apartments for some $200,000 and used to house homeless veterans. Hopemont originally was devised to treat tuberculosis and now contains a unit for long-term care of the elderly.
“We’d better look at that,” the senator said, adding there could be other such unoccupied state-owned structures suitable for similar use. Possibly, he suggested, some federal money could be plowed into such projects.
One aspect of the issue his panel is attempting to learn is whether the 21st century returnees are bringing home a higher percentage of PTSD and other emotional baggage than veterans of other wars.
“I think probably the other veterans had it and we just didn’t recognize it,” Hunter said.
“Especially Vietnam. Vietnam was really a very stressful war for veterans.”
At the outset, Hunter explored the prospect of using the building at Hopemont for a forensics unit, but the thought then came to him about converting it to living space for homeless veterans.
“The great thing about Hopemont is that the people in Terra Alta are used to having facilities like that,” he said. “They’re good at welcoming people of that type.”
Invariably, the homeless issue prompts some critics to blame veterans and others for being on the streets because of bad personal choices they made, namely drug and alcohol abuse. In some cases, there is no room for argument. But in many, perhaps the majority, especially among veterans, Hunter feels that factors beyond their control put them on the streets.
“They’ve gotten problems,” Hunter says of the veterans. “What happened to them in service?
“I don’t know of hardly anybody that’s homeless by choice.”
— E-mail:
mannix@register-herald.com
