Homeless female vets find few services

Homeless female vets find few services
By Kimberly Hefling

The Associated Press

Updated: 12/18/2009

Long Beach, Calif.
The $15,000 that former Army Pvt. Margaret Ortiz had in the bank when she left Iraq is long gone, spent on alcohol and cocaine.

By the time she found her way to a program run by the nonprofit U.S. Vets for homeless female veterans in this Southern California city, she had slept in San Diego on the beach or anywhere she could find after a night of partying. One morning, she woke up behind a trash bin, her pants torn, with no memory of what happened.

Instead of helping her forget her six months in Iraq, where she said she faced attacks on her compound and sexual harassment from fellow soldiers, the alcohol and drugs brought flashbacks and raging blackouts. She said she tried to kill herself.

"You knew something was wrong with you, but you didn't know what was wrong with you. Nobody knew, and so you couldn't really handle it," said Ortiz, 27, from atop her twin bed in a plain dorm-style room, a black 4th Infantry Division ball cap on her head.

Ortiz is one of the new faces among America's homeless veterans.

They're younger than homeless male veterans and more likely to bring children. Their number has doubled in the past decade, and there are an estimated 6,500 homeless female veterans on any given night -- about 5 percent of the total homeless veterans population.
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