Veteran denied VA Mortgage because of job...in legal cannabis company

update A Revere veteran’s legal marijuana job cost him a VA loan. Now, Congress is stepping in

On Friday, it passed a measure banning the VA from considering veterans’ income from state-approved cannabis industries as a reason to deny them their benefit of a low-rate home loan guarantee with no money down.

VA denies Mass. veteran home loan over his legal marijuana job

Boston Globe
By Naomi Martin Globe Staff
June 3, 2019

Veterans who work in the marijuana industry face financial consequences. Retired Army Major Tye Reedy, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, lost his military pension for working as director of operations at Acreage Holdings, one of the nation’s largest cannabis companies, according to a Barron’s report.

Parade participants march through town during the annual Memorial Day Parade in Naugatuck, Conn., on May 27.(SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES)

The couple, crammed in a tiny Revere apartment with two kids and a third on the way, had spent months searching for a house they could afford.

It wasn’t easy in Massachusetts’ pricey market. But the man, a disabled Army veteran, had one advantage — a military benefit, a loan guarantee, that would provide a low-rate mortgage with no money down.

Finally, in November, they found a yellow split-level ranch in Dracut they loved — it had a giant living room, a two-car garage, and a nice yard for the kids. The veteran filed his Army paperwork.
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Pot in Colorado Added Homeless Veterans on the Streets?

Colorado shows nation’s largest spike in the number of homeless veterans
AMERIFORCE
By Kirk Mitchell
November 18, 2016

Colorado’s overall homeless population increased by 721, or 13 percent, from 2015 to 2016, the report says. HUD volunteers conducted a statewide survey one night in January and counted 10,555 homeless people. Of those, 7,611 were living in emergency shelters or transitional housing and 2,939 were on the streets.

Alfred Zabawa joined hundreds of military veterans streaming into Colorado last year for legal pot or to find a job in a state with a thriving economy, only to find themselves living on the streets and contributing to the highest rise in the number of homeless veterans in the nation.

Zabawa, 61, arrived in Colorado an able-bodied man. On Friday, he pulled up his pajama bottoms to reveal an aluminum prosthetic leg as he sat in a wheelchair waiting in line for free groceries in a parking lot outside Denver’s VA Hospital.

While most states saw their homeless veteran populations drop an average of 17 percent in the past year to a total of 39,471, Colorado was one of only eight states going in the opposite direction with increasing numbers, according to the the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual report on homelessness, which was released Thursday.

Colorado had the biggest gain of any state with an increase of 231 homeless veterans, a 24 percent rise. Colorado’s homeless veteran population of 1,181 is now nearly as high as the state of New York, which has 1,248 homeless veterans, the HUD report says.
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Native American Church Fights for Sacramental Marijuana?

After Kenwood drug bust, branch of Oklevueha Native American Church seeks court ruling on pot use
PRESS DEMOCRAT
Clark Masonthe
January 15, 2016

A sign at the entrance to the property on Lawndale Drive in Kenwood for

a branch of the Oklevueha Native American Church. (Courtesy photo)

In what could be a test case to create a legal category of “sacramental marijuana,” a Kenwood branch of a church co-founded by a man claiming Native American heritage is suing Sonoma County, contending that the branch’s cannabis was wrongfully seized by deputies because its members are entitled to it for religious purposes, similar to exemptions made for peyote and ayahuasca use by some native groups.

Mooney is a medicine man descended from Seminole Indians in Florida and his church serves the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge South Dakota, according to the church’s court filings in the San Francisco case.
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