Money will help homeless vets

Money will help homeless vets
Darryl E. Owens Sentinel Staff Writer
October 16, 2008
The Center for Drug-Free Living will provide more beds for recent homeless veterans battling mental issues and drugs thanks to two Department of Veterans Affairs grants.

The smaller grant, $120,486, funds a 10-bed supportive housing program (Operation Center Focus), while a $997,977 grant funds construction of a new 32-bed treatment facility.

Both grants were awards from the VA's Homeless Providers Grant and Per Diem Program, meant to help develop and make available housing or services to stabilize and rehabilitate veterans on the street because of drugs or mental issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The whole development has been part of the VA's efforts to increase services to veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and from the Persian Gulf War," said Todd Dixon, a center spokesman. The VA, he said, is "seeing more and more individuals in need of services. Similar to Vietnam, the additional issues veterans are dealing with are really making it difficult for them to readjust and reinsert into mainstream society."


Keri K. Griffin, a licensed clinical social worker who counsels substance abusers at the Orlando VA Medical Center, said she has treated recent returning service members who used stimulants to stay alert abroad and use alcohol to fall asleep when they come home.

"It's accessible to them," she said. "They look at alcohol as, 'oh, not a big problem. It's not heroin or cocaine,' but alcohol can be way worse than both. You think about all the Vietnam vets that came back, addicted to heroin and alcohol and things like that, and from what they're telling me, the [Iraq and Afghanistan] guys are going through the same things they did coming back."
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