Help lags for homeless female veterans
About 8,000 women lack permanent shelter. Need is likely to rise as more women return from war.
from the July 18, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Ms. Gates, a single mother who says she had "a hard time getting help" from the VA to find housing when she returned from Iraq, thinks that the department should institute a "buddy system" to pair up female veterans with others like them in their area.
The needs of women veterans stretch far beyond that for beds in temporary shelters, says Jack Downing, executive director of a VA-funded shelter in Leeds, Mass. "Everything has failed these women," he adds. "They need to be tethered to VA services for the rest of their lives. They need to be permanently connected to something if they are going to make it."
The VA has no permanent housing program for veterans; it only funds "temporary transitional" housing programs around the country. The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides housing vouchers to the homeless that are administered by local authorities. The problem, experts say, is there are not enough affordable housing vouchers for all who need them.
But "if a woman is a veteran, it actually helps," says Beversdorf, because being both female and a veteran elevates her status for housing over other applicants.
Increasingly, veterans are getting connected to services better than ever before, says Mr. Dougherty. "What we're finding is that the vet community is being aggressive about trying to find homeless veterans," he says, noting that many recently returned veterans contact the VA via the Internet if they face health or housing problems.
Beversdorf agrees that there is "a lot more help out there than there was after [the Vietnam War]," in which she served from 1969 to 1971.
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