Essay Sample: Background of Veterans' Homelessness

Veterans form an important part of the nation's population. Their services to the country, protecting her from an external attack is invaluable. No amount of money can compensate them or pay them fully. All the nation can do is helping them have a peaceful retirement or sunset years as possible. Even so, though their home country, when the veterans return the nation becomes totally alien to them. They find a lot of changes and bring themselves with a lot of changes. Psychologically, they feel like they can't quite fit in the society, because what they really consider as a family is their colleagues with whom they had been in the combat, some of whom died and others returned to their respective homes.

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It is even that the combat field often seems to be safest than their homes. They have used to war that peace looks like some trick to them. All those problems are summarized by one major problem- homelessness. Getting the veterans settled is the step towards helping them. So why is homelessness a problem? For how long has it been a problem? What has the government done to mitigate it? This paper attempts to answer all those questions while putting veterans' homelessness into a historical perspective.

The Scope, Nature, and Causes of Homelessness

In December 2001, both the Senate and the House of Representatives in Congress convened a meeting to extend, improve, and enhance certain sections of the constitution to take care of veterans' homelessness situation (An Act, 2001). In the formulation of the relevant policies and amendment of various relevant sections of the constitution, the Congress acknowledged that homelessness was a significant problem among the veterans. That special meeting also acknowledged the causes of chronic homelessness among veterans even after so much effort had been put into seeing them become productive members of the society again.

The first cause of the spread of homelessness among veterans was found to be the disproportionate representation of veterans among the homeless men. Their representation had to be, therefore increased. The nation had many programs to facilitate settling of veterans in good homes. However, resources to power such programs or services were inadequate to cater for all of the needs of the homeless veterans. Keeping some of them even in homes required further assistance and support because of the post-traumatic stress disorder, prevalent in over 30% male veterans and over 25% female, which some of them came with the back home. Lack of such support made some leave their homes, joining other homeless people. Psychological insecurity was thus a cause but there were not enough resources to provide psychological support.

While the country had many programs and support services to help veterans settle down, that Congress seating found that most of the methods employed were ineffective. Therefore, most of such methods of service delivery had to be revised. Government's funding towards support services, assistance, and every other homeless veteran-related service, as that Congress meeting discovered, were mostly unaccounted for. Therefore, it was necessary that all the offices in charge be held accountable for every single cent raised for support services.

Administrative issues were also culpable of causing homelessness of veterans. Government bodies, agencies, community-based organizations, non-profit organizations were not in sync as regards solving the veteran homelessness menace. Additionally, the budget for assisting veterans was adjusted so that 50 million dollars were set for yearly reintegration programs. Per Diem payments were also adjusted to 60 million dollars for the year after enactment of the law, and then 75 million for the subsequent years (Civic Impulse, 2018).

References

An Act. (2001). H.R. 2716- 107th Congress: Homeless Veterans Comprehensive Assistance Act of 2001. Retrieved from https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pl_107-95_hr_2716_-_homeless_veterans_comprehensive_assistance_act_of_2001.pdf

Civic Impulse. (2018). H.R. 2716 - 107th Congress: Homeless Veterans Comprehensive Assistance Act of 2001. Retrieved from https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/107/hr2716