From War to Sleeping on the Street

http://watchingamerica.com/News/240097/from-war-to-sleeping-on-the-street/



From War to Sleeping on the Street
El País, Spain
By Joan Faus
Translated By Laura L. Messer
2 June 2014
Edited by Gillian Palmer

On Friday afternoon, at two of the four corners at the intersection of 17th and K streets in downtown Washington, D.C., there was a street person asking for money. The two, both middle-aged men, one white and the other black, were war veterans, and declared so on posters and by calling out to some of the passersby. It is not a surprising vignette in the streets of the United States’ capital.

One of them is called Ben. He is around 40 years old and served eight years in the Army, split between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In general, he is evasive and has little desire to tell his life story and the tragic journey that brought him to asking for money in the street. “War is never a good experience, nobody gives a shit about you,”* he spits when questioned about his experience. With a vacant stare, Ben explains that he attempted to turn to economic aid that the Department of Veterans Affairs offers, but that he realized “it wasn’t worth it” due to the excessive bureaucratic red tape that he expected. He finishes, “Most of us veterans with PTSD don’t have the patience to do it.”*

PTSD is the English acronym for post-traumatic stress disorder. Fifty percent of homeless veterans in the United States suffer from serious mental illnesses, according to data from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV), some without having served in combat. Seventy percent have substance abuse problems, either alcohol or drugs. Former soldiers make up 12 percent of total homeless adults in the nation. Among the male population, they represent 20 percent, and their poverty levels are higher than the average among more populated family units.

Ben is a couple of blocks from the White House and the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and about seven blocks from the hotel where the NCHV closed its 17th annual meeting at noon on Friday. The star presenter that day was Eric Shinseki, who was still the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs in the Obama administration at 1 o’clock Friday when he spoke, but was no longer so upon turning in his resignation in a meeting with the American president a few hours later. Shinseki, a four-star general with 38 years of experience in the Army, resigned as a victim of the scandal [that involves] the presumed death of 40 ex-servicemen while they were waiting to be seen at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Arizona.