It may be true that the number of jobs offered to military veterans have increased in the past few years and a lot of companies have started to realize the advantages of hiring veterans. This increase in awareness is because of the campaigns to support veterans’ organization.

The Homeless Veterans

However, it is also true that over the past few years the number of homeless veterans has also increased. According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, many veterans who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq have lost their homes or on the brink of losing their homes. In September 2012, it was recorded that around 26,600 veterans are in the previously described situation, and some of these veterans are living on the streets, temporary housing, and others are provided with federal vouchers just to pay for their apartment or house rent. This situation is alarming especially when in 2010, the number of homeless veterans has been just around 10,500.

Why do they become Homeless?

There is no single reason why a veteran becomes homeless. It is actually a combination of scarcity of reasonably priced housing, minimum veteran pay, and the lack of access to health care, drug addiction because of the trauma and sometimes due to the effect of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A Glimpse of Hope

This alarming situation has already been taken into consideration; President Barack Obama himself has started encouraging to support veterans organization and program from both government and private institutions to look into this situation. For the last few years, a number of support veterans organization has teamed up with the government in order to help military veterans regain their dignity, their lives, and their health and to once again reintegrate into the society. What does these support veterans organization and program do? In order to help these homeless veterans, the DA together with different support veteran organizations have come up with programs such as the following:

Safe Housing. In order to help veterans have their own houses, the DA is currently working together with the Housing and Urban Development department to allocate house and land to veterans. Aside from this, some private support veterans organization have also allocated a program like Acquired Property Sales for Homeless Providers Program to help homeless veterans own a house that can cost 50% less than the original price.

Health and Mental Care

Another type of program that has been established to help veterans get back on their feet is the Health Care for Homeless Veterans that aims to help veterans stay healthy while they try to get their lives back. Since mental health is an important aspect of a sound individual, the VA and other support veterans organization also focus their attention to taking care of the veteran's mental conditions.

Training and Employment

To help the veterans find a stable source of income, a lot of training, development and employment programs are offered for free. Most of these programs are through the help of a partner organization that would immediately hire the veteran after he or she completes the training.

Though the number of homeless veterans is comparatively few to the number of veterans who successfully reintegrated themselves into the society, the alarming rate of increasing numbers has caught the attention of support veterans organization. It is important to address this issue now so as to avoid a larger problem later on.