Returning vets face new struggle of homelessness

Marine veteran Michael Leahy, 40, stands in his room in the Vet House, a shelter for homeless veterans, in Albany. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

SAFETY NET GONE

Many homeless veterans have chronic mental health and addiction problems, have lost contact with family or have exhausted their support system, Gilbert said.

Returning vets face new struggle
Increasing number of soldiers returning from Iraq, Afghanistan are falling into homelessness upon discharge

By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer
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First published: Sunday, April 13, 2008

BALLSTON SPA -- Army Spc. Timothy Martin sustained a triad of misery -- severe injury, mental illness and substance abuse -- stemming from his 2003 tour in Iraq. Then, the shaky 25-year-old has fallen into a category he never imagined for himself: homeless veteran.

Medically discharged from the military, Martin's tough travels led him to near-alcoholic ruin on the streets of Albany before he realized he was eligible for care at Veterans Affairs hospitals.

The VA referred him to a homeless shelter in Ballston Spa, where Martin writes poetry in an upstairs bedroom he shares with two other vets. He works on a desk with the Bible and Quran on it. Above his modest bed is an outstretched American flag and a poster of a soaring eagle.

He now speaks best through his poems.

"I just got mixed up, made wrong choices to forget things, and it progressed into something worse," said Martin, who still looks and sounds like the young man from Wisconsin he was when he deployed to Iraq with the Army's 567th Cargo Transfer Company, 24th Battalion. He helped transport cargo to the front lines.

Martin is now part of a new wave of veterans turning up homeless.

As America enters its sixth year in Iraq, the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking help from the VA for homelessness has leaped 600 percent -- 300 to 1,800 -- just from 2007, according to the latest department findings.

"I think we'll see a new generation of homeless vets," said Glenn Gilbert, who oversees all mental health programs at the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany. At least 103 of almost 120 beds for homeless veterans in Albany, Ballston Spa and Glens Falls were filled in March, Gilbert said. And, throughout last year, the agency helped about 357.

Compare that with the VA's national statistics that show members of the armed forces make up about a third of homeless adults, who are defined by the VA as lacking a fixed, adequate nighttime residence.

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