Vulture Landlords Taking Advantage of Homeless Veterans

Vulture landlords taking advantage of veterans instead of helping them! Yet one more case of reprehensible creeps taking what they can get from veterans while claiming to be taking care of them. It happens all the time because we don't really pay attention and the government isn't as this story clearly shows.

The confounding story of the disabled veterans who went weeks in winter without heat — and then were evicted
Washington Post
By Terrence McCoy
February 13, 2016

Amber Harding, a housing attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, said the resource center should scrutinize landlords to whom they refer homeless veterans. “There is a responsibility to make sure as close to 100 percent of these [sites] are safe and legitimate,” she said. “That’s basic good governance.”

Clarence Smith-Bey more booms than talks. An accident during a military exercise in 1973 damaged his hearing and left him with chronic headaches and post-traumatic stress disorder. Within a decade, Smith-Bey was addicted to drugs, unemployed and cycling in and out of homelessness.

That was all supposed to change in 2013. He’d been clean five years and enrolled in classes at Prince George’s Community College. He dropped by the Veterans Affairs Community Resource and Referral Center in Northeast Washington for help getting off the streets. Workers there told him about a local outfit named Peaceful Haven, which contracted with the District to care for the mentally ill and disabled. Peaceful Haven had a house 10 miles from the community college and would handle utilities, Smith-Bey said he was told.
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