This Veteran's Day should come with remembering the homeless veterans

This Veteran's Day, as we honor our veterans, it would be really nice to stop and think about how many of them are homeless and how many of them are females as well. One thing that is often forgotten about with female homeless veterans, is a lot of them come with children!

Not enough housing for homeless female veterans

By James Hannah - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 9, 2008 13:36:03 EST

DAYTON, Ohio — When Carisa Dogen looks back on her life of 38 years, it’s easy to see where she lost her way: She left her hometown of Dayton at 15 and moved to Kentucky, where she graduated from high school and enrolled in electronics school. But drugs beckoned, and she didn’t finish.

She joined the military, but fate intervened and she later found herself homeless — forced to sleep in parks on some nights when it was bitterly cold and rainy, and scavenge for food in trash cans.

“I got accosted a couple of times by males. Walking the streets and stuff, it’s hard and it’s scary,” she said in the comfort of The Other Place, a homeless shelter in Dayton that helped put her into new housing where she will receive treatment and job training.

Particularly bewildering for Dogen, she is an Army veteran. Her life should never have come to this.

Of the 1.8 million female military veterans, Dogen was among the 7,000 to 8,000 who are homeless, as estimated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. She is among the few who have benefited from new housing specifically for female veterans, an initiative homeless advocates say falls far short of what is needed.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/11/ap_homeless_veterans_110908/