Recently we've been publishing a series of articles on women veterans and homelessness in the Huffington Post, which has been generating some much-needed attention on this deserving population who is poorly understood, marginalized in conversations about veterans and the homeless, and frankly, also very much under-researched.
The reporting for the series was conducted under a Howard G. Buffett inaugural grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation, and there was an article in Military Times about it as the project was starting to kick off, as well as some foundation laid in an Op-Ed in the Texas Tribune.
There are more than two million women veterans in the U.S., and a growing percentage of them are homeless. In fact, they're the fastest growing group of homeless veterans, a fact many people are not familiar with. If you want to learn more about women veterans and their unique struggles in this area -- as well as the tie between military sexual trauma (MST) and homelessness -- here are a few places to start:
- “G.I. Jane Needs a Place to Sleep,”
- “Into the Gap: Women Veterans Describe Homelessness,”
- “Camaraderie Offsets Trauma for Women Veterans,” and
- “The Path Home for Women Veterans.”
Garnet News picked up the original story, and the Center for Women Veterans (VA) featured it on their home page. There's also an article about the project on the ACEs Too High website, the leading collection of resources about the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which is foundational public health work on trauma and its aftermath.
The original survey research (n=400) on women veterans and periods of unstable housing after military service was presented at TexVets symposium, the Southwest Social Sciences Association, the fourth annual Military Social Work conference at University of Texas-Austin, and at the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Texas state conference, all in 2016. The current, revised and expanded survey of women veterans about housing issues after military service is still open but has received more than 2,200 responses and 1,500 completions to date.
Other elements of the project include:
- An interactive timeline of how we got to this point,
- A radio show/podcast featuring Lily Casura, BriGette McCoy and Rosie Palfy talking about female veteran homelessness, and
- A data visualization showing the comments of 400 women veterans describing their experiences of unstable housing after military service.
Finally, there’s a website of state-specific housing resources for women veterans at risk for homelessness, where you can recommend additional resources.
And if you're a woman veteran or currently serving as a female reservist, please go ahead and take this brief, IRB-approved survey on housing issues after military service. If you're an advocate or you have women veterans in your social networks, please also alert women veterans and women reservists to the survey so that they also can have their voices heard. Thank you!