Stand Down begins tailoring services for female veterans
Lori Moss wasn’t sure what to expect when she arrived early Friday at Rainbow Lagoon Park in Long Beach.
A veteran of the Army Reserves, Moss, 30, has been living in transitional housing for months because she can’t find work. She hoped she might get job tips from some of the dozens of government agencies, nonprofits and veterans groups setting up booths for a relief effort known as Stand Down.
A few hours later, she was smiling as a stylist from the Career Academy of Beauty in Garden Grove primped and curled her hair. She thought she might stop by the USC School of Dentistry truck for a screening and check out some of the education programs represented at the event.
“Everything we need is right here,” Moss said, delighted. “And it’s free.”
For more than two decades, Stand Down has been offering homeless veterans around the country a few days of respite and help getting back on their feet. But Friday’s event was the first time a Stand Down has been organized in California specifically for women.
More women than ever are serving in the armed forces and a growing number of female veterans are ending up on the streets, in shelters or living out of their cars. Between 6,000 and 7,000 of them are homeless on any given night, a figure that has doubled in the last decade, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In Los Angeles County — excluding the cities of Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale — authorities counted 909 homeless female veterans earlier this year, a 51% increase from 2009. Women also make up a growing portion of the homeless veterans in San Diego, which is holding its 24th annual Stand Down this weekend.
“Women don’t traditionally go to Stand Downs,” said U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, whose department helped organize the women’s event with the United States Veterans Initiative, a nonprofit that has been assisting homeless veterans since 1993. “We need a setting where they feel more comfortable.”
Stephen Peck, president of the Veterans Initiative, said about 70% of the homeless women his organization works with have suffered sexual trauma — more than half of them while serving in the military.
“They are very uncomfortable going to a Stand Down where let’s say 95% of veterans are going to be men,” he said.
Some women don’t even identify themselves as veterans if they did not experience combat, he said.
Vicki Early, 52, one of more than 100 women who attended the Long Beach Stand Down, said she has struggled around large groups of men since she was raped while serving in the Navy. Anxiety attacks have made it difficult for her to hold down a job, and she has been living in transitional housing for two years.
“I wish there were more of these because some women do still have those scars,” Early, who served in the Navy from 1976 to 1989, said as she looked through racks of free clothing. “Men need services too, but there are a lot more of them than us and we just kind of get left out.”
The three-day event in San Diego, the country’s oldest and largest Stand Down, serves some 1,000 veterans, spouses and partners, but primarily attracts men who served during the Vietnam war. But the number of women participants has been growing in recent years, and the event is evolving to accommodate them.
This year in San Diego, VA officials brought a vehicle in which women could meet privately with counselors if they did not want to stand in line with the men. Lawyers were on hand to help women resolve child-support and custody disputes. Stylists from Mary Kay cosmetics were offering free facials. And a tent sponsored by Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss author Theodor Geisel, was stuffed with free toys for the children.
“With more women serving, and with the bad economy, we have to be prepared for more women veterans,” said Darcy Pavich, a former Navy chaplain who helps coordinate the San Diego Stand Down. “It used to be that women could look to their families or friends for help, but now everybody is having a tough time.”
Many of the veterans were spending the weekend in tents pitched by Marines in a grassy field behind San Diego High School. Meals and showers were offered, along with help with resolving myriad physical, psychological, spiritual and financial difficulties.
Deborah Kaylor, 51, on Friday was settling into a tent reserved for women. Her husband served in the Army and the couple spent time on the streets with their dog before moving into transitional housing.
“We’ve been at Stand Down before,” she said. “But this year, the volunteers are coming up to the women, not just the men, and asking ‘Can I help you?’ I like that.”
Yolanda Sidoti, healthcare coordinator for homeless veterans at the VA medical center in La Jolla, said it appears that veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are descending into homelessness at a faster rate than the Vietnam-era veterans did. The stress of multiple deployments and the nation’s sour economy are factors, she said.
That is a major concern in San Diego County, which is home to 30,000 veterans of the two conflicts, more than any other county in the nation.
“We’re finding people with no income or very little income,” Sidoti said.
