Returning soldiers now battling homelessness

When it happened to Vietnam veterans no one knew and few cared. With OEF and OIF veterans coming home and facing the same thing, everyone knows but not everyone cares. Think about all we've been told all these years later about what the DOD and the VA have been doing to counter Combat PTSD. Then think of how there is no excuse for any of this still happening. If you care, demand change and accountability because if no one is held accountable, nothing will change and our veterans will keep suffering.

US veterans: returning soldiers now battling homelessness
Channel 4
THURSDAY 17 APRIL 2014

Tens of thousands of US troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, but many are finding their return home is less than heroic, and the substantial number of veterans facing homelessness is on the rise. Sergeant Randy Vaccaro is what most Americans would describe as a hero.

As a US Marine, he did three combat tours in Iraq. During one, he said he was facing attack every day, small arms and Improvised Explosive Devices. He saw two of his closest friends die in front of him during one firefight in Fallujah.

But now, almost three years on from the US troop withdrawal from Iraq, Randy and tens of thousands of his comrades from that war and America’s other 21st century conflict – Afghanistan – find themselves home. But homeless.

An estimated 48,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were homeless in 2013, according to figures from the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Although homelessness among military veterans in general is in decline – down by a quarter in the last four years – the current generation of combat veterans are finding themselves homeless at a rising rate.

We met Randy Vaccaro at the Veterans Village of San Diego.

Yes, an entire village created in 1981 to serve the men and women who served their country, and now can’t find their place in it.
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