Bill O'Reilly needs a wake up call on homeless veterans

Fox Attacks Homeless Vets: O'Reilly Says They're "Non-Existent" [VIDEO]
Post by DJK
Video: Meet some of the so-called "non-existent" vets and sign a petition demanding that Bill O'Reilly personally apologize to them. More »

Fox Attacks Homeless Vets: O'Reilly Says They're "Non-Existent" [VIDEO]Posted by DJK , Brave New Films on January 18, 2008 at 11:12 AM.
Sign the letter to Bill O'Reilly demanding he apologize to the "non-existent" homeless vets here.


To Bill O'Reilly: Homeless veterans exist. I met some.
In a previous post, I wrote about Bill O'Reilly's bizarre assertion that there are no homeless veterans in America. He made this claim on January 4, 2008 while talking about a speech by John Edwards where Edwards said that 200,000 vets are homeless on any given night in America. BOR continued to deny the existence of homeless veterans on January 16, 2008 during an interview with radio host Ed Schultz. This time, he added a caveat that if there are homeless veterans, "there aren't many of them out there". You can see both clips for yourself and read transcripts here, since I'm sure you'll soon be hearing BOR complain, as he always does when he's criticized for something he said, that he has been "taken out of context." The context of these unedited clips is quite clear.

On both occasions, BOR was either ignorant to or consciously ignoring a recent study from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (using data from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau) that found:

In 2006, approximately 195,827 veterans were homeless on a given night -- an increase of 0.8 percent from 194,254 in 2005. More veterans experience homelessness over the course of the year. We estimate that 336,627 were homeless in 2006.

Either that or BOR believes that 195,827 homeless veterans (and that number is surely low) is a small enough number of homeless veterans as to be insignificant. I have no idea what number of homeless veterans BOR considers to be "many" -- 195,827 homeless veterans certainly seems like a lot to me.

BOR said that he couldn't find any homeless veterans. Maybe he wasn't looking in the right places. It took me less than a day to find several hundred.

I went to U.S. Vets in Inglewood, California. US Vets is the largest non-profit organization in the US dedicated to helping homeless and at-risk veterans with temporary housing, counseling, and employment assistance. The facility currently houses up to 500 homeless veterans.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

sign the letter and let him know this is not acceptable to you and should not be to any American. Two words that should never be linked together is Homeless and Veteran. If we can't take care of them, what chance does regular people have when they have fallen through the cracks?
http://foxattacks.com/vets

I just did a search on homeless veterans here in the Orlando area. This report has been posted here before but it was also on the local FOX STATION'S WEB SITE WHICH O'REILLY MUST NOT BELIEVE EITHER!!!!!!!

Housing Glut Could Help War Wounded

Last Edited: Friday, 04 Jan 2008, 7:21 AM EST
Created: Friday, 04 Jan 2008, 7:21 AM EST
By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer


CIBOLO, Texas -- The glut of unsold houses pocking the nation's newer neighborhoods may be just what the doctor ordered for thousands of wounded servicemembers facing homelessness and serious financial hardships since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, advocates say.

Operation Homefront, a nonprofit that aids the families of deployed and wounded servicemembers, has launched what it says is a first of its kind effort to match wounded soldiers with lenders and homebuilders to help them buy homes at prices they can afford in communities near Veterans Administration medical facilities.

"Especially with so much inventory, it seems like the perfect match," said Meredith Leyva, co-founder of Operation Homefront.

The physical wounds suffered by the more than 30,000 servicemembers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan are often followed by financial chaos as the families absorb extra travel and living expenses, forgo combat pay and transition to civilian life with a disability, Leyva said.

Her group, which helped 1,700 injured servicemembers' families pay utility bills or other living expenses last year, is seeing more families fall into bankruptcy and the threat of homelessness, she said.

A servicemember who is injured and decides to leave the military usually qualifies for disability payments. But often, it can take 18 months to get military, Veterans Administration and Social Security benefits determined, Leyva said.

Meanwhile, families -- many of which have little savings -- fall behind on bills at a time when travel expenses for medical treatment are climbing and they are least able to work, she said. Their credit is badly damaged, and they must move out of base housing when the servicemember is discharged from the military.

Veterans have access to VA loan guarantees. But the limits mean they don't offer much help in many housing markets, and in any event, lenders still apply typical creditworthiness requirements to mortgages, Leyva said.

On average, it takes six months for the VA to determine disability payments, and the lag can get longer if a veteran appeals to get a larger amount, VA spokesman Jim Benson said.

"That's a tough amount of time to wait," he acknowledged.

The agency has been working to decrease the wait, but the workload and paperwork requirements often bog down processing, he said.

The VA, which is primarily concerned with medical care and disability, doesn't track bankruptcy among wounded veterans but has estimated that 195,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. As many as twice that number have been homeless within the last year, the agency says. Many of the homeless are Vietnam-era veterans.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=FB37C6C134966D7A39CEBEB6FC3EB52A?contentId=5390704&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1