Healing Combat Trauma

Coming Out of the Shadows: Women Veterans and Homelessness

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!

The New Face of Veteran Homelessness

If you asked the average American this Veterans Day to describe a homeless veteran, you’d probably get a description like this: older white male, Vietnam-era, probably single, often with a drug or alcohol problem.

What you might be surprised to learn is that there’s a new face of veteran homelessness, and it is increasingly young, black and female.

Women today represent roughly 15 percent of the U.S. armed forces and about 19 percent of post-9/11 veterans — a population that is projected to grow. While the number of male veterans has been declining over the past few decades, the number of female veterans has doubled since the 1980s. The Department of Veterans Affairs expects female veterans to number more than 2 million, or close to 10 percent of the veteran population, by 2020.

Researchers have known for years that veterans make up a disproportionate share of the homeless population — as many as one in four. But they’ve never been able to identify a clear link between military service and homelessness. Instead, they’ve pinpointed certain factors, like post-traumatic stress disorder, that increase a veteran’s chances of becoming homeless. Still, the root causes remain largely unclear, especially given the protective factors — such as the world-renowned VA health and benefits system — that military service offers.

But welcome to the new 2014 model, in which the fastest-growing segment of the homeless veteran population appears to be women, many of whom have children. Statistically, female veterans are between two and four times as likely as their civilian counterparts to become homeless, according to recent studies. And if they’re young and black, those chances seem only to rise.

Among these “new” homeless veterans, one risk factor stands out: a past history of sexual trauma — whether before, during or after military service, and sometimes all three. In a survey of the roughly 130,000 homeless veterans who used VA outpatient services in 2010, about 40 percent of the females, and 3 percent of the males, said they’d experienced military sexual trauma (MST). In another study that compared homeless female veterans with housed female veterans, over 50 percent of the homeless population reported experiencing MST — twice the rate of their housed counterparts. Suddenly, trauma appears to be linked to homelessness among female veterans, and MST on top of prior trauma may be an even bigger risk factor.

The homeless have always been hard to count accurately, and homeless veterans are no exception. One prominent female veteran who was homeless for years after suffering MST during her Army career said the problem is compounded because “it’s hard to count women who don’t want to be found.” As researchers learn more about trauma among homeless female veterans, the struggle begins to find gender-specific housing facilities that can accommodate these young women and their children. As one national advocacy group said last month in a comprehensive report, female veterans “are being put at risk by a … system designed for and dominated by men.”

As the VA nears the end of its five-year initiative to eradicate veteran homelessness, it’s a good sign that the numbers overall are dropping. But the ranks of homeless female veterans are growing, and that means there’s still work to be done. 

Published originally in the Texas Tribune, linked here: http://bit.ly/1pKBhQq

Shocking Statistics and Veterans: When "9" Is Not So Lucky a Number...

Here's a shocking statistic I ran across today, in some material online provided by the veterans' charity, Swords to Plowshares:

"It took an average of 9 years post deployment for Vietnam and prior era veterans to fall into homelessness. Today, Swords to Plowshares and our homeless veteran service colleagues throughout the nation are seeing an alarming influx of homeless OIF/OEF veterans, sometimes just months after separating from the military..."

As you can well imagine, the 9 years must have involved a steady deterioration of resources and ability to cope.  Unfortunately, today the problem is taking place at an even more accelerated rate -- hence the need for more awareness and more care to be taken with the topic.

As the foundation says, "We prepared the following paper for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans to help decipher why this new generation are becoming homeless so quickly in the hope that, by understanding the issues, we may prevent or at least mitigate the kind of long suffering our older clients have endured. The paper looks at bureaucratic, social, economic, and physical and mental health issues impacting our new veterans. It is up to us, as providers, as neighbors, and as citizens to prevent homelessness and truly support our military and veterans with the services and support they have earned."  The link to the presentation, in PDF form, is here.

Editor's note: For more posts where we've covered the topic of homelessness and veterans with PTSD, click here, which takes you to an index of posts on that subject.

Homeless Veterans: Still Hidden in Plain Sight

The plight of homeless veterans may not be making the news right now as it did around Thanksgiving -- but one thing's for certain: they haven't stopped being homeless in the meantime.

Recently, Homeless Veteran Provider Technical Assistance Center listed our blog as an excellent resource -- thank you.  Note the wonderful illustration at left, done by veteran activist and artist John Paul Hornbeck, creator of the "Shattered Soldier" lifesize sculpture about PTSD, blogged about earlier, here.  John's revisions to the famous POW/MIA flag says quite kindly about the homeless veterans among us, "You Are Not Forgotten Either."  If only that were really the case -- perhaps over time we as a society can make it so.  (He's also cleverly changed "MIA" to mean, "Missing in America," pretty much the same as, "missing in plain sight" -- since clearly the homeless, and homeless veterans in particular, are everywhere, whether we choose to tune in and notice, or not.  (To see more about John Paul Hornbeck's "Shattered Soldier" sculpture, click here, here or here.) 

If you want to learn more about the plight of homeless veterans in America, start here, with the Homeless Veterans Fact Sheet, produced by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.  The fact sheet discusses statistics for both homeless veterans and incarcerated veterans.  And the statistics paint a grim and sorrowful picture.  According to statistics supplied by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the nation's homeless veterans have been historically mostly males (though those figures are likely to change, with the advent of more women serving in the military). 

The vast majority are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone. (Editor's Note: observe the connection between substance abuse and/or mental illness and homelessness. More work needs to be done to study other predisposing factors to homelessness, including PTSD and Military Sexual Trauma.)

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans also has a good, web-based list of service providers -- programs that are geared towards homeless veterans.  Click here for that link.  They say they periodically update their website by adding more programs as information becomes available, but right now you'll only find organizations listed in the following handful of states: California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota and New York.  (Click on any of those states' names to go right to the information available on their site.)