Hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee - Housing Our Heroes, Addressing the Issue of Homeless Veterans in America

Statement

Hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee - Housing our Heroes, Addressing the Issue of Homeless Veterans in America

SEN. MURRAY: Good morning. This subcommittee will come to order. I want to begin today by recognizing that this is a joint hearing of the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittees.

And I want to say a warm welcome to Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member Hutchison from MILCON/VA who are with us today, as well as my own Ranking Member Senator Bond. We are now in the sixth year of the war in Iraq, and each month, thousands of service members are returning home to civilian life.

As with veterans from each of our nation's previous conflicts, many of these men and women suffer from serious psychological and physical health conditions. It's our duty to repay their sacrifice with the excellent quality of care they have earned. Yet, as we speak today, our nation is struggling to meet the needs of our veterans from all conflicts.

We know all too well that when our country fails to live up to our obligations to our veterans, the consequences are high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as chronic unemployment, and relationship problems. All of these are contributing factors to homelessness. The problem of homelessness among veterans is staggering, and it's a national tragedy.

Experts estimate that one in four of all of the nation's homeless are veterans. Each night, as many as 200,000 of our veterans will go to sleep without a roof over their heads and more than 300,000 veterans will experience homelessness in a year. Veterans from the Vietnam era are the most likely to be homeless.

In fact, according to the VA, the number of homeless veterans from the Vietnam era is greater today than the number of service members who died during that war. But advocates are also reporting that more and more veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are appearing in their shelters. And we've begun seeing a new trend in which more women who have seen combat are seeking help in shelters as well.

Our veterans are heroes who risked their lives for our country, and we must ensure that they are getting the services and benefits they have earned to help ensure they never reach the point of homelessness. As I have said countless times, I believe that how we treat our veterans when they come home is an indication of the character of our nation.

We have to find a way to make the transition from soldier to civilian a smoother one. This joint hearing is a reflection that tackling the issue of homelessness among veterans will require collaboration and cooperation. And it will take the hard work of our government agencies, veterans groups, public and private partnerships, and many others nationwide.

So I'm pleased today to welcome our panel of distinguished witnesses to talk to us about the services that are available for today's homeless veterans, and about what we can do better to address the challenges faced by our current and future veterans. All of our witnesses are experts in their fields.

But I do want to extend a special welcome to Paul Lambros who has traveled all the way here from my home state of Washington. Paul's organization, Plymouth Housing Group, has been serving the homeless in our state for over 25 years. Plymouth has opened a great facility in Seattle that serves homeless veterans, and Paul hosted a roundtable on homelessness among veterans that I held recently.

So I look forward to him and all of you sharing your experiences with us today. Though all private organizations across the country are taking important steps to get our veterans off the street and into housing, they cannot and should not bear this burden alone. The federal government must be a strong partner.

Last year, Senator Bond, my ranking member, and I, along with Senator Johnson and Senator Hutchison worked together on a bipartisan basis to provide real help to our homeless veterans. We revitalized a joint program between the VA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development that will ensure that more than 10,000 homeless veterans will receive a housing voucher and case management services.

The program will give them safe and stable housing, and enable them to get important services. It has been almost 15 years since new HUD-VA supportive housing vouchers known as HUD-VASH vouchers were issued. So this was a step that was long overdue. Since then, the president has also recognized its value.

And I'm pleased that the administration has now requested funding for 10,000 additional vouchers in Fiscal Year 2009. These vouchers will give communities important tools to help end homelessness for the many veterans who are now living on our streets and in our shelters. That as several of witnesses will tell us today, we have a long way to go to address the needs of our current veterans.

And we face new challenges as troops from Iraq and Afghanistan return in larger numbers. The current war has taken a tremendous toll on our service members. Many of our troops are serving longer tours with shorter breaks, and multiple redeployments are common.

A study by the RAND Corporation suggests that one in five service members from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder or major depression, and even more experienced a traumatic brain injury. But the same report found that only about half of those veterans sought help, and of that number, only half received even, quote, "minimally adequate care," unquote.

The face of our military is also changing. Today, women are serving in greater numbers than ever before. And alarmingly, they are also the fastest growing group of homeless veterans. Tragically, many of these women veterans have also been victims of military sexual trauma.

One study of women receiving health care services from the VA found that 23 percent had experienced at least one sexual trauma while in the military. Without treatment and resources, each of these challenges and conditions can contribute to homelessness. And their impact is that much worse when this economy is in a downturn.

Clearly, we have an urgent need to ensure that the programs and resources are in place to treat all of our veterans before the numbers of homeless veterans grow. If we are sitting here again years from now talking about beginning to address the staggering number of homeless veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will have failed them.

We must apply the lessons we have learned so far. We must ensure that the VA evolves along with the needs of the veterans it serves, and we must give the VA the resources to meet their needs. But the VA does not bear all of the responsibility. While it must take the lead, HUD must also be a significant player.

HUD must work to reintegrate its programs with those of the VA and it must take steps to promote affordable housing, and ensure veterans are informed about its program. I know that any homelessness among veterans is a huge responsibility. But we've got to make it a priority, and we have to make progress now.

By funding HUD-VASH vouchers last year, Congress took one step toward addressing this problem. Today, I'm pleased that we are continuing the discussion so that we can understand what other steps must be taken. When new service members took the oath to serve this nation, they did not take it lightly.

And it's the responsibility of this government to provide them the support and the care they've earned. That is a promise we made to these service members, and I intend to ensure that we fulfill it. With that, I would like to turn to Senator Johnson and thank him again for doing this joint hearing with us.

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SEN. MURRAY: Thank you very much to all of you for excellent testimonies today. I think very interesting and challenging to all of us, you have offered a lot of numbers and statistics in your data, the number of homeless veterans, the percentage that are struggling with mental illness, the number that are chronically homeless. And so I think I wanted to start by asking the question that everyone in America ought to be asking. How did we get here? How did we get to the point where every year over 300,000 of our nation's veterans are experiencing homelessness? Anybody have a thought?

Ms. Beversdorf?

MS. BEVERSDORF: Oh, I'm sorry, I just turned it off. Usually I often get that question from the media, and what I usually share is that there are three primary issues that we have to deal with. And you have heard all of them in one degree or another.

The first, of course, is the health issues. I mean, let's face it, war changes individuals. And when they come back, they are suffering from issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, a new issue now that is very much a result of this particular war, but other kinds of health issues have certainly been in the past, substance abuse issues, mental health issues. So that's the first aspect.

The second is the employment issues. Many of those who go into the service may be only 18, just got out of high school. And so when they go into the military, sometimes the activities that they are involved with, the skills that they have acquired aren't necessarily transferable once they get out of the military.

They may not have gone to college. They don't have a college education. They don't have any wherewithal in terms of getting a job. They aren't understanding of -- like writing a resume or dressing for an interview or getting the proper certification that is needed in order to get a job back in the civilian sector.

And the third is what we've been all talking about here is affordable housing. And so -- and what also happens is that when individuals first anticipates getting out of the service, first of all, the Department of Defense knows that it doesn't necessarily ask the right questions; do you have a job when you get out, do you have a home to go to?

And as the young people are anticipating getting out of the service, they often think that perhaps things are going to be just the way they were when they left. And we all know that that doesn't happen. I mean, we've also talked about the social and economic activities in terms of divorce rates skyrocketing.

The person is changed after he or she returns from the service, and the families that they are returning to have also changed. Because of multiple deployments, they really have to get along on their own. So it's all these factors that come together that make a person very different and then have very unique characteristics.

And finally, I would also say that even when you are in the military, while we have all these common communications done, tons of e-mail and video, they still don't necessarily have the support system that they need, and they may not have it when they returned. They are not always necessarily families that are going to be with them. And so it's these kind of issues that come together and focus and make homelessness among veterans a very unique issue.

SEN. MURRAY: Mr. Weidman?

MR. WEIDMAN: Now, Senator Murray, I'm reminded that when they became a national press phenomena that tripwire vets in the Olympic Mountains. In the early 1980s, people would call us up and said, what about tripwire vets. And we were astonished because both Bobby Muller and I and John Tizano (ph) and all the early people in VBA at the national office said, they're all around you. You don't have to go to the Olympic Mountains. It's easier to hide in the cities and in the small towns than it is in the Olympic Mountains.

Now, as you have people who are basically there because their psychosocial readjustment problems were not dealt with effectively by anybody when they came home, and certainly not by the VA. So we're doing a much better job of dealing with those. We just are behind the curve in terms of catching up with the number of mental health staff, and particularly those who are qualified in PTSD at the VA.

Certainly, that would be one of the reasons how we ended up here, because we lost ground in the '90s and because of the flat lining of the VA budget. And actually we're losing -- were losing ground even before that with the inpatient PTSD programs. That bleeding has now been stanched for some years, but it's going to take a while, and there's still some businesses without a inpatient PTSD program. So that's part of it.

Part of it also has to do with real change in the effectiveness of the publicly funded labor exchange, which has been starved for the last 25 years for funds. And as a result, the DVOPs and LVERs are a larger percentage -- ever-growing percentage of the folks devoted to that and less and less accountable. Not because they are great people, these DVOPs and LVERs, but because the system, the State Workforce Development Agency, see them as cash cows.

So it's not very effective on a nation-wide basis. It's not an accountable procedure.

And that's one of the reasons why we're so high on the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program is because it is the most accountable of all those programs. You know what you're getting for the 50 million and it's a heck of a bang for the buck, the cost for a permanent placement is the best of any program at DOL.

So it's a combination of those and the other thing that Cheryl pointed out, is increasing lack of affordable housing, which is the most highest aspect of inflation in this country. And many times the cities get excited, and the small towns, about the reinvigoration of downtown. But what happens is -- that's where the flop houses were, that's where cheap housing was, it might have been terrible housing, but it wasn't the street.

And when that is rejuvenated, if you will, what happens is they simply run off the poor people. It's not that they have a place to go. They are just doing run off drill. And so those that have no other place to go, they go to the street, and that's part of what has happened in the last 25 years.

SEN. MURRAY: And even though it's a very complex problem, yet there are some solutions that are working. Mr. Lambros, you talked about finding a vet and bringing him in, a 70-year-old vet, I think you said. What are the examples of success, what do you think is most effective?

MR. LAMBROS: Well, I think the most effective is the housing, but not just the housing, but the type of housing I think is very important. And for so many homeless vets I want to add one thing because of lack of community, I mean, we have these long-term homeless vets. They are on their own. So maybe they had family at one time, maybe they had friendships, but because of the issue they have been dealing with, they've lost them.

And so without that community, how are they going to get help? They need to get help from non-profit providers, from the VA and others. That's the main part we're trying to deal with. But moving people in and putting them in supportive housing, it's been very effective. We have a great success rate. Many non-profits do around the country, at keeping people stable in the housing. And again, in the long-term effect that they need to deal with. So we need more of that.

I want to add one thing. I think there is a missed opportunity here. Right now I mentioned the 10-Year plan on homelessness. In King County, our county, the United Way stepped up to say they are going to raise $25 million for support services to those of us developing housing for homeless people, and that's happening around the country.

And we have an opportunity here to get more capital dollars and service dollars to homeless veterans, especially capital into all these projects being developed so that those can be long-term. So when the vet issue is not the biggest issue on the table, 10 years from now maybe, those housing units are still there. And we don't have to worry about it as much as we do today.

SEN. MURRAY: Okay.

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SEN. MURRAY: Well, we have a lot that we could do. Unfortunately, I'm running out of time and I want to ask one last question that I focused a little bit on my opening statement. I have heard mentioned several times and that is the issue of female veterans. You know, the VA was designed in large parts to deal with men.

And the fact is that we have a growing number of women who are serving us honorably. And when they get out there, it's not the same ability for them to access VA or that they even feel comfortable -- often doing -- think of themselves as veterans. And we know that the sexual trauma issue is growing and needs to be addressed.

Mr. Weidman, you testified about some of the challenges within the VA system that could limit the VA's ability to meet the needs of female veterans. Can you talk a little bit about what steps do you think we need to address that population in particular?

MR. WEIDMAN: Theoretically, every hospital has a women veterans' coordinator.

SEN. MURRAY: Right.

MR. WEIDMAN: And in some cases, that's only theoretically. There are only about 40 of the 156 medical centers that have freestanding women's clinic. It's our view that we need a freestanding women's clinic in every VA medical center, certainly in the tertiary facilities. That would be number one.

The second thing is the C box of the 800 community-based outreach clinics. They have -- their goal is 80 percent of them have mental health services, but what they are calling "mental health services" is a part-time psychologist or clinical social worker who may or may not know PTSD from ABCD, and much less be skilled in meeting the needs of military sexual trauma, particularly complicated by those young women who have been exposed to both hostile fire and military sexual trauma.

These are very -- going to be very complicated cases. So you need freestanding women's clinics that most of the VA hospitals which they currently do not have. And you need also to ensure that within the vet center system there are enough female veterans who are staffers who have the clinical skills to provide the military sexual trauma.

Although the vet center has many fine counselors, by and large, women who have been subject to military sexual trauma are not going to open up to men, one. And two, you also need for -- and just in general across the system -- and this is something VVA has been asking VA to get geared up for now for five years -- is you cannot take women veterans who have been exposed to hostile fire and throw them into a group therapy section with the guys. Just think about the nature of PTSD.

The women aren't going to open up about the problems they have with intimacy in front of the guys, and the guys who as the victims aren't going to open up to the problems that they have, in front of the women. So it's a -- in this case, you really need separate but equal treatment and focus on the needs of women when it comes to PTSD as well as other --

One last point, if I may. By having a freestanding women's clinic, nobody knows why any woman goes there. And she is much more likely to see a psychologist and talk about the sexual trauma if nobody knows why she goes there. She could be going in there for physiological reasons. And so that's why having a freestanding women's clinic is so important, one of the many reasons.

SEN. MURRAY: Thank you.

Mr. Dougherty, do you have any thoughts on that?

MR. DOUGHERTY: Yes, I would -- there are several things, Madam Chairman. The department has recognized the need for sort of some safety and security issues in residential treatment programs on VA property. And so we have moved so that the women, if you will, aren't sort of at the end of the hallway where the men are located and so on.

All of our programs are now moving to separate areas so that the women have their own environment in which to be housed and placed. Under our community programs, we have women-only programs under the Grant/Per Diem Program. And we also have programs for women veterans, including those who have children as special needs funding, so we can fund some of those additional services that those women need.

But under the HUD-VASH program, we think one of the great advantages this is giving us is that for many of those women who have children or have families, this will give them a place to have that place in the community where they can then go and access VA health care services where before they would be reluctant to come and get services from us.

So we think this will be a great addition to particularly those younger women veterans coming back from service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

SEN. MURRAY: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Chairman Johnson, do you have any additional questions?

(No audible response)

SEN. MURRAY: Well, we do have some additional questions from other members of the committee. Our time has run out. We will submit those and ask all of you to respond for the record. But let me just personally thank each and everyone of you for your commitment to this critically important issue and your time and energy on working on it and coming before us and giving us a lot to ponder as we move forward to try and meet this tremendous need.

So thank you very much to all of you. With that, this committee is adjourned subject to the call of the chair. Thank you.

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