Neat story from my weekly American Legion newsletter...A Marine Corps veteran named David Whittaker is crossing the U.S. in his wheelchair to raise awareness for homeless veterans. I like anything having to do with crossing the U.S. and helping veterans.
He has a website here. You can even go there and track exactly where he is in real time, courtesy of Brickhouse Security's Lighting GPS service.
So why are homeless veterans such a big deal? A disproportionate number of homeless people are veterans. Estimates range from 23 to 40 percent of homeless people are veterans. Only about 9 percent of the general population are veterans. As many as 200,000 veterans are homeless.
That's just embarrassing. It's bad enough that the most powerful country in the world has so many homeless people but to allow so many veterans to sleep on the streets is horrible.
A lot of the veterans living on the street have issues like PTSD that need to be dealt with. They need help from people like the Veterans Administration (who coincidentally turns down 4 out of 5 veterans for medical treatment).
Let's hope President Obama can get this turned around.
But speaking of veteran statistics... On the bright side, only 5.7 percent of veterans live in poverty compared to 12 percent of non-veterans. That's some good news.
It is a sad deal we let healthy welfare bums suck up tax money when we can give it to some one who earned it. Vets deserve a break and a hand for sure.
ReplyDelete