“You sometimes hear people say that these folks are on the street because they're 'service resistant,'” Hunter said. “I'm hoping for a miracle,” one told the researchers. Many of the veterans had resigned themselves to staying on the streets. But housing vouchers were hard to find, and getting a landlord to accept them was harder still. Most of the veterans in the study said finding a place to live was one of their top life goals. "Jocelyn," an Army veteran, stands by the car she uses as her home in Venice, California, January 2022 Community outreach workers who could help connect them to services were too often overworked and under-resourced, bailing out a ship that was already underwater. But some didn't know how to access those benefits, and others had given up trying. That made them eligible for an array of health care, housing, and employment services. She had received an honorable discharge from the military-as had two-thirds of the veterans in RAND's study. Look into my mirror, and all will be well. What do you see? Do you see the person you wanted to be? Are you happy with the you, you are right now or could you change your life somehow? We can all improve some facet of ourselves. Now she was selling poems she had burned into pieces of wood with sunlight through a magnifying glass: A former Army clerk, she had fled a series of abusive relationships, moving from city to city, from a friend's couch to a church basement to the streets, never quite getting her feet back under her. They walked up and down the Venice Beach boardwalk as well-where they could have seen Jocelyn hustling for food money. Hunter and other researchers recruited veterans for the study at city parks and libraries, at food lines and VA outreach events, and outside the flag-draped tents of Veterans Row. The Daniel Epstein Family Foundation funded the project with a $1 million gift. For one year, they would follow veterans trying to survive on the streets of Los Angeles, checking in at least once a month to see how they were doing, where they were sleeping, and what they needed to get by. She wrote out a proposal and teamed up with researchers from the University of Southern California to make it happen. Hunter directs the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles. If there was a place that could symbolize America's broken promise to its veterans, Veterans Row was it. She would bike past it and see the cluster of tents that locals called Veterans Row, spread across the sidewalk just outside the main gates. Sarah Hunter lives not far from one of the largest VA centers in America, a sprawling campus set aside more than 100 years ago for needy veterans. The latest count found more than 37,000 veterans living in their cars, in temporary shelters, or in makeshift camps. Everybody wants to spit on you when you're down.” It's mentally, emotionally, and spiritually degrading. That's the worst part about being homeless. “It's like you're not a human being anymore. Her name has been changed to protect her identity. “The way people treat you when you're homeless gets exhausting,” she said. She had spent years living on the streets, and she was ready for a break to go her way. Jocelyn could feel that struggle in her bones. Of the 26 veterans in the study, only three managed to find a permanent place to live. It found missed opportunities and needless barriers to helping veterans in need, all of it summed up in one glaring statistic. Their study provides a window into what it means to experience homelessness in the middle of a global pandemic. Researchers followed 26 of them for one year to see how they live and what keeps them on the streets. “Those who have served this nation,” Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki said at the time, “should never find themselves on the streets, living without care and without hope.” The numbers have fallen by nearly half since then-but the latest count still found more than 37,000 veterans living in their cars, in temporary shelters, or in makeshift camps. The United States pledged more than a decade ago to end veteran homelessness. The closest thing she has to a bed at night is the front seat of a broken-down Mercury Mountaineer. It's been a long and bitter journey from there to the streets of Los Angeles, where she scratches out a living selling handicrafts on the Venice Beach boardwalk. Army with dreams of putting herself through college and becoming a lawyer.
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