Aging, homeless veterans growing in Rhode Island

For six years, homelessness was a way of life for U.S. Air Force veteran Colleen Curato, until last October, when she found transitional housing through Operation Stand Down Rhode Island.
“This is the first time I found housing,” said Curato, who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. “I just kind of bounced around. I stayed with friends. There were a couple of times I did sleep in a tent.”
Only when she connected with Operation Stand Down did Curato find resources, including military disability income, that enable her to search realistically for an apartment, she said. She lives in the Lance Corporal Holly Charette House in Johnston, a transitional house for homeless female veterans.
Though just shy of 50 (her birthday is Nov. 19), Curato is a part of the homeless-veterans population in Rhode Island that is increasing, particularly those aged 50 and older.
According to Eric Hirsch, a sociology professor at Providence College and vice president of the board of directors for the Rhode Island Coalition for Homelessness, statistics culled from the state’s Homeless Management Information System R.I. show increases from 2010 to 2012 in the number of veterans who are homeless, the number of veterans who are 50 or older, and the number of veterans at age 50 who have become homeless for the first time.
Between 2010 and 2012 the general increase in homelessness for people over 50 rose 34 percent, from 632 to 845, according to a report on the aging homeless population released on Nov. 4 by Crossroads Rhode Island.
The overall increase for the 50 and older population – along with the increase among homeless veterans – gives the incidence of homelessness added urgency, Hirsch said.
“We definitely have seen more veterans eating [at shelters] here,” added Eileen Hayes, CEO of Amos House, a Providence-based social-services organization.
Between 2 percent and 5 percent of the 200 men who use Amos House’s 90-day program, which has 35 beds for men and women, are veterans, Hayes said. Amos House has 12 buildings that can house as many as 130 people, including veterans, as well as those in the 90-day program, she said. A third program helps mothers and children. Erik B. Wallin, executive director and general counsel for Operation Stand Down, says Hirsch’s statistics at best underestimate the number of homeless veterans.
“The number is low,” Wallin said. “It doesn’t identify the people you and I would consider homeless, who are staying with family or friends. Veterans are reluctant to identify themselves and a lot of it is out of pride. And they’re more likely to be in a car or wooded area, because veterans don’t typically like to go to shelters.”
With a capacity of 50 housing units, Operation Stand Down connected 404 veterans who either are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless to various supportive services at its annual Stand Down Weekend in September. A few of those people are from Massachusetts, but most are Rhode Islanders, Wallin said.
The problem of homelessness, in Rhode Island and nationally, for veterans and others is, in part, exacerbated by diminishing resources, said Hirsch.
This year, a proposed $3 million in rental subsidies was pared down to $750,000 in Rhode Island, he said.
“There are many people on waiting lists that we would immediately put into housing if we had the subsidies,” said Hirsch.
“We need more money in the Neighborhood Opportunity Program,” which provides funding for affordable housing, added Hayes. “If we don’t have NOP funding, then we’re not building housing that’s affordable.”
The other major factor underlying the increase in homelessness is an increasingly large group of baby boomers who experienced hardships that left them without housing, say Hirsch and Dennis Culhane, a national expert on homelessness.
Culhane is professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of research for the National Center on Homelessness among Veterans at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“The second half of the baby boom generation produced excess labor supply … when the labor market [was] saturated,” said Culhane in a phone interview. “You will have high unemployment. They will not get into the labor market and will have long-term trouble. Our biggest fear is, we are quite possibly in the midst of reproducing these conditions” with the new generation of workers. •

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