Homeless Veterans in Today's Economy

I’ve had the opportunity to have conversations about today’s economy with homeless veterans.  While most of the veterans who are homeless have experienced substance and/or alcohol abuse and/or mental illness, homelessness increasingly affects also those who have held stable jobs for many years until 2 or 3 years ago.  Those who have lost their jobs recently and became homeless, are the victims of the economy: in a better economic climate they would have kept their jobs or would have been able to find new ones.  For those veterans who have no family support, employment is the only thing that separates them from lives on the streets; for them loss of a job is catastrophic in its consequences.  For those who experience mild symptoms of mental illness under stable employment, loss of a job often means worsening of symptoms and deterioration in functioning.  Impairments in functioning, in turn, prevent them from effectively looking for work.  Unemployment leads to loss of income, loss of income leads to loss of housing. Loss of housing and little or no family support leads directly to homelessness.  When unemployed and homeless veterans are finally finding help in veterans housing programs, they are often disillusioned and discouraged, and feel guilty and ashamed about their positions in life.  Hearing them say “I don’t have anybody to call” when asked to write down emergency contacts is heart-wrenching.  In an industrialized and civilized country like the U.S., there should not be heartbreak of massive unemployment and underemployment – for veterans or for anyone who is willing to work. If social conflict is the generator for social change (reviewed in Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2006), then the only way to restore the opportunity for decent standard of living and work for the middle and working classes is for the conflict to reach a critical point that would entail shifting the decision making power (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2006).