The Sunnyvale Sun
News
Veterans 'stand down' in fight with homelessness
By Cody Kraatz
"I haven't slept in a park yet," says Keith Adams, 50, an Air Force veteran who has been homeless for more than a year.
Fortunately he's found the resources he needs. Others were doing the same at South Bay Stand Down, a weekend-long Veterans Affairs event in Boulder Creek.
A military term, Stand Down refers to a chance for battle-weary troops to retreat for rest and safety before returning to combat. This one, the first in the South Bay, gave veterans safety and services such as food, shelter, clothing, health care and legal assistance. It drew 130 participants.
The next will be in 2009 and every odd year after that, says Kate Severin, VA outreach coordinator.
Veterans make up about 16 percent of Santa Clara County's 7,200 homeless people and about 23 percent nationwide, according to a recent countywide homeless census and VA estimates. They are an important but challenging population for the VA to serve, especially given attitudes towards the government that prevail among Vietnam veterans, a big chunk of that population.
"That's part of our goal: to make the VA more friendly and more accessible," says Severin.
Adams now lives in the Cupertino Community Services rotating shelter, which alternates among 11 churches and one synagogue and includes job assistance.
"When I got out of the service, I got married and had two kids. I worked, but the economy made me lose my job, my wife left me and the depression made me drink," he says. "As a result of my alcoholism problem, I became socially misfitted."
Many of the veterans at Stand Down have similar stories. They said they appreciated the chance to be with other veterans, each of whom has experienced homelessness in his own way.
"I'm just going to try and get some camaraderie," says Adams.
Adams waits on a cool Saturday morning in the empty Sunnyvale Employment Development Department parking lot with two other homeless veterans, Victor Bouchard, 58, and Bill Johnson, 65, waiting for a bus to take them to Boulder Creek.
Younger vets
There were also a number of younger faces at Stand Down, where the energetic volunteer force and a warm mountain day created a recreational feel and many smiles on faces that are likely serious at other times.
Antonio Carter, 23, spoke freely about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. He lives at the Menlo Park VA, trying to get over problems he says arose when he joined the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army before he turned 18, went to Afghanistan and couldn't handle it. The East Bay native went absent without leave to get out of the Army and started down a dark path.
"I didn't know who I was. I've had three or four suicide attempts I'm not too proud of. I started to hate myself," he says, displaying a thick scar across one wrist and describing his mother calling the police as he poured gasoline on himself and his Cadillac and chain-smoked cigarettes inside.
Carter was diagnosed with PTSD earlier this year, after an earlier bipolar misdiagnosis at a Berkeley psychological facility. Now he's trying to get over his social anxiety by proving he's clean and behaving well so he can get into PTSD therapy groups.
He and other veterans got a lot of help from meeting with judges who quickly resolved minor issues that would otherwise take months or years. Carter, who hopes to get back into graphic design and art classes, was recently in jail for driving under the influence, but is going through VA programs instead of jail and was hoping a judge would write a letter attesting to his efforts.
"I like being around other vets because you don't have to worry about people making fun of you, because everybody's got problems," he says. "I feel more security."
