VA Being Pressed to Aid Legions of Homeless Veterans

His cap and jacket are Army green, his eyes piercing, icy blue. His home for the last three years has been a shabby, ocher-tinged cellblock a few blocks from the Capitol, a shelter for 1,000 men and women seeking a refuge from life on the streets.

Ben Littlejohn, 35, thinks his country owes him better than this. He served two tours in Vietnam, building roads and bridges, and he hasn’t been the same since. His memory is shot. He can’t keep a job. He’s angry. He scares people.

“ ‘My country ‘tis of thee,’ ” he says, spitting out the words. “ ‘Tis of who?”

Littlejohn is a foot soldier in a ragtag army whose forlorn companies parade the alleys and Skid Rows of every American city. Of the 350,000 people who are homeless in America on any night, one-third are veterans, according to federal government researchers. Of the 2 million on the streets sometime during the year, as many as 700,000 have served in the armed forces.

Growing recognition of the huge numbers of veterans among the homeless--like the emergence of homeless families and children--is helping change the perception of the homelessness problem, activists and government officials say.

Building a Constituency

Advocates for the homeless are arguing that homeless veterans are entitled to government services. They are aligning themselves with powerful veterans’ organizations, building a constituency of well-connected power brokers to lobby on homelessness issues. They are pushing aside the perception of the homeless as mere bums and building an image of them as people who, in many cases, made sacrifices for their country and deserve some consideration in return.

“The United States knew how to find these young men and women when it wanted to put uniforms on their backs,” New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin, a vigorous campaigner for homeless veterans, told a congressional panel last year. “It has a responsibility to exert the same effort to locate and help veterans who wander aimlessly, often broken in body and spirit, on the streets of America.”

The federal government is slowly awakening to the challenge:

--In Congress, Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston of California last month introduced legislation that would provide for converting unsaleable homes foreclosed by the Veterans Administration into shelters for the homeless.

Rehabilitation Centers

--In its budget recommendations for the next fiscal year, the House Veterans Affairs Committee has proposed $15 million for turning unused buildings at VA hospitals in 10 cities into rehabilitation centers for homeless veterans.

--The Labor Department this month is starting a campaign in 10 cities--including Los Angeles--to find homeless veterans, enroll them in treatment programs and find jobs for those who are rehabilitated.

Critics say that the efforts are sporadic and half-hearted. The National Coalition for the Homeless and the Vietnam Veterans of America filed a suit last month in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking to force the VA to implement a nationwide project to inform homeless veterans of available services and benefits. In Los Angeles, the suit noted, a 1985 study found that only 2% of homeless veterans were receiving veterans’ benefits, although many would qualify if they applied.

Programs Unused

The suit is one front in a “concerted effort to get the federal government to start taking responsibility for what’s become a national problem,” said Maria Foscarinis, a coalition attorney. “One of the more obvious places to start is with veterans. Because, first, they are such a large segment of the population and, secondly, there are all these programs there which ought to be helping them but they’re not.”

The American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans and the Vietnam Veterans of America have joined the campaign, testifying for homeless aid on Capitol Hill and encouraging their local and national offices to explore programs for the homeless.

“They’ve had to become involved, because this issue is now coming to affect their members,” Foscarinis said. “Obviously, the broader the constituency is, the greater the chance we have of effecting change.”

For its part, the Veterans Administration insists that it has done a good job of getting the word out to veterans about the assistance available to them. But many homeless veterans do not qualify for the carefully tailored pensions and health programs offered by the VA, said Grady Horton, deputy chief director of the agency’s benefits division. Free emergency care is available at VA hospitals, but there are long waiting lists for treatment for the chronic, non-service-connected ailments that afflict many of the homeless veterans.

‘A Bad Rap’

“I think we’re getting a bad rap on the outreach business,” Horton said. “If you doubled the outreach effort, I don’t think you’d cut in half the number of homeless.”

Thomas K. Turnage, VA administrator, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last month that the VA could be most effective by accepting referrals from local groups and agencies to its existing programs.

“The plight of the homeless veteran will never be resolved by the Veterans Administration alone,” Turnage said.

In the past, destitute, disgruntled veterans have started their own crusades for assistance.

The most dramatic such episode occurred in 1932, at the height of the Depression. More than 20,000 unemployed World War I veterans converged on Washington, demanding early payment of their war bonuses. When they refused to abandon their camps on the Anacostia River Flats, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, under orders from President Herbert Hoover, sent troops to storm the “Hoovervilles” and drive the “Bonus Marchers” from the capital.

Comparatively, veterans of World War II and the Korean War have fared better after returning home, sustained by the GI Bill and the growth economy of the 1950s.

Faced a Hostile Nation

But Vietnam veterans--who surveys show make up the largest share of currently homeless veterans--came home to scaled-back GI educational benefits, a stagnant economy and an often hostile nation.

Researchers say that more studies need to be conducted before firm conclusions can be drawn about the connection between veterans’ military service and their homelessness. But, for many veterans, the link is clear, advocates and experts say.

A substantial number of Vietnam veterans continue to suffer from stress disorders and other mental illnesses relating to combat service, Paul Egan, a lobbyist for the American Legion, said. Too many of these mentally ill veterans are discharged prematurely from VA medical centers with no effort by the VA to follow up on their progress, Egan complained in testimony before a House subcommittee in January.

Cuts in the number of VA benefit counselors have made it harder than ever for the agency to reach out to homeless veterans, who are alienated from the federal bureaucracy to begin with, Veterans of Foreign Wars lobbyist Gordon Thorson said at the hearing in January.

‘Battered . . . Frightened’

“That population out on the streets is so battered, so frightened and in many ways so paranoid--rebuffed year after year in confronting the government people who provide services--that they’re very loathe to come out and access the system,” said Daniel R. Cloutier, a Labor Department consultant who designed the agency’s new Jobs for Homeless Veterans program.

Outreach is the centerpiece of the Labor Department project. With a minimal financial commitment--a $25,000 grant in each of the 10 pilot cities--the program will pay for a few counselors, many of them former homeless veterans, to scour street corners and shelters for destitute veterans.

A comparable program in New York City, begun in 1983, helped 275 veterans obtain new benefits in its first full year of operation, according to Goldin’s office.

More Employable

But analysts say that the problem dwarfs the efforts to contain it. In addition to their great numbers, the veterans have more problems with alcoholism than other homeless people, Cloutier said, although as a group they are younger and more likely to be employable.

More than many in the Capitol Hill shelter run by the Community for Creative Non-Violence, 38-year-old Jesse Moses is ready to go to work and resume a more normal life. The 10-year military veteran, who spent 22 months in an Army hospital after a Vietnam combat injury, became homeless last fall after being hurt at work and losing his construction job.

His plea is simple.

“The government in this country is obligated to the veterans of this country, whether it’s housing assistance, medical care or whatever,” Moses said. “I’m sure, in my case and most veterans’ cases, they’re not asking for a handout. But, if I’m in a dilemma, assist me till I’m straight.”