Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona - NYTimes.com

In 2011, by a city count, there were 222 chronically homeless veterans here, a vulnerable, hard-to-reach population of mostly middle-age men, virtually all battling some type of physical or mental ailment along with substance abuse. Federal and city officials acknowledged that was not an exact number, but it is widely regarded as the best measure of the veteran population.

Last month, the last 41 members of that group were placed in temporary housing. Shane Groen, a director at the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness, one of the city’s partners in the program, said the goal was to have them all in permanent housing by Feb. 14.

[,,,]
“We do think we can get to the point where we can say there are no more homeless veterans in the country,” Laura Zeilinger, deputy director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness, said in an interview. “And if we do this for veterans, it’s something that as a nation, if we set our mind to, we can achieve for other populations as well.”

Arizona has more homeless veterans than most other states — roughly one in five homeless adults, according to statistics from the state’s Department of Veterans’ Services. In an interview, Greg Stanton, the mayor of Phoenix and a longtime proponent of increasing investment and partnerships on homeless outreach, characterized the recent achievement as “important because we’re helping people in need, but also important because it helps our economy.”

[,,,]
Across the country, the strategy is centered on an approach called Housing First, through which a home is not treated as a reward for good behavior. As Ms. Zeilinger put it, it is instead “the platform of stability that lets previously homeless people work on the other issues they’re facing,” like mental illness and addiction, which are particularly common among the chronically homeless. The term is defined as those who have continuously lived on the streets for a year or have done so at least four times over three years.

Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona - NYTimes.com

From the Pentagon to life in a van - Philly.com

This is,,, I was going to say wrong, but."He receives an annual pension from the military of more than $40,000." So why is he homeless,,,

"His struggle to find a job after retiring from the Air Force collided with the end of his marriage nearly two years ago. Unable to return to the home he shared with his estranged wife, and faced with expenses including bills for two sons in college and debts that mounted when he maintained a nicer lifestyle, he took up a nomadic existence."

Despite my reservations concerning this particular story, this should not be happening to our veterans: "As of January 2012, more than 60,000 veterans were homeless, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Reducing that number has been a priority for the Obama administration - and the number of homeless veterans dropped 24 percent nationwide from 2009 to 2013. In Pennsylvania, however, it jumped 46 percent, to more than 1,400."
__________

After a 30-year military career in which he earned three graduate degrees, rose to the rank of colonel, and served as an aide to Pentagon brass, Robert Freniere can guess what people might say when they learn he's unemployed and lives out of his van:

Why doesn't this guy get a job as a janitor?

Freniere answers his own question: "Well, I've tried that."

Freniere, 59, says that his plea for help, to a janitor he once praised when the man was mopping the floors of his Washington office, went unfulfilled. So have dozens of job applications, he says, the ones he has filled out six hours a day, day after day, on public library computers.

So Freniere, a man who braved multiple combat zones and was hailed as "a leading light" by an admiral, is now fighting a new battle: homelessness.

From the Pentagon to life in a van - Philly.com

SNAP Benefit Cuts Will Affect Thousands of Veterans in Every State — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Thousands of veterans in every state will be among the nearly 48 million people who now participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and who will experience a benefit cut as the 2009 Recovery Act’s temporary benefit boost ends on November 1, according to a new Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis.[1]

The new analysis, which uses data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, finds thousands of veterans lived in SNAP households in every state between 2009 and 2011. For instance, more than 100,000 veterans lived in SNAP households in two states: Florida (109,500) and Texas (105,700). North Dakota had the fewest such veterans (2,200). (See Table 1.)

Nationwide, in any given month, a total of 900,000 veterans nationwide lived in households that relied on SNAP to provide food for their families in 2011, a previous analysis of Census data estimated.[2]

SNAP Benefit Cuts Will Affect Thousands of Veterans in Every State — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Disabled veteran Nick Spagnolo told service dog is violation of POA regulations | Treasure Coast News - WPBF Home

Have been holding off on posting this.  Waiting to see if by chance any new information came to light, ie, the POA losing their stupidity. Nothing as of yet. Spagnolo is covered not only under the ADA, Title 28, parts 35 & 36 but the Fair Housing Act as well. As for Scarlett, this is how the ADA defines a service animal:

"Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets."

Nick Spagnolo loves spending time with his pit bull mix, Scarlett. But he's quick to point out Scarlett is not his pet. She's his service dog.

"She's very good as far as emotional support," Spagnolo said. "She'll help me to wake up in the morning."

Spagnolo is a Navy veteran. He served in Kuwait City and Somalia in the early 1990s. He is now disabled and said he needs Scarlett.

"I've got some medical issues, and Scarlett kind of alleviates a lot of those," he said.

Spagnolo got Scarlett last November. Shortly after, his Property Owners Association told Spagnolo the dog cannot stay.

The Jamestown Property Owners Association has sent Spagnolo numerous letters telling him Scarlett is a violation of the POA regulations.

Regulations limit pets to a maximum of 20 pounds. Scarlett weighs 40 pounds.

Spagnolo, though, said those regulations don't apply here because Scarlett is not a pet. She's a service dog.

Disabled veteran Nick Spagnolo told service dog is violation of POA regulations | Treasure Coast News - WPBF Home

Rachel Maddow 'Pissed' About Treatment of Veterans: Talks of 'Special Place in Hell' | Liberals Unite

 Emotional squee!!  Got to love Rachael, she is not afraid to let her passion show,,,

Rachel Maddow 'Pissed' About Treatment of Veterans: Talks of 'Special Place in Hell' | Liberals Unite

I Dare You Watch This Clip From A Dying Veteran | Liberals Unite

I am currently subscribed to 378 various news feeds (liberal, progressive, dem, repub,  yada yada),,368 carried this video, only 10 did not,,,can you guess what side of the isle those 10 sites lean??

I Dare You Watch This Clip From A Dying Veteran | Liberals Unite