SoSara

Homeless women veterans need your help

BALLSTON SPA (Nov. 11) — Today is the day when people go out of their way to thank veterans. And while they are all deserving of thanks, there is one group of veterans who deserves a lot more: those veterans who find themselves homeless.

It’s a bigger group than you can imagine. On any given night in the United States, 131,000 veterans are homeless, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. And a growing number of them are women.

“Women veterans are 4 times more likely to become homeless than their civilian counterparts,” said A.C. “Budd” Mazurek, executive director of the Saratoga County Rural Preservation Company. “We know of cases where women are sleeping in their cars.”

This Iraq War veteran attends a stand down in San Diego after finding herself homeless after her return to the United States. (Photo courtesy Crystal Pyramid Productions, producers of The Invisible Ones: Homeless Combat Veterans)

SCRPC already runs a shelter for homeless male veterans in Ballston Spa. Now it is raising money to built the state’s first homeless shelter for female veterans.

“We want to be up and running by the first quarter of next year,” Mazurek said. “I don’t want to wait another 2 years. The problem exists now and needs to be addressed now.”

SCRPC does more than provide shelter. It helps the veterans rebuild their lives. Case workers help the veterans apply for any aid they are due — including health care from the VA. The veterans work to overcome their challenges — including things such as substance abuse or other addictions, medical issues, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and IRS problems.

“It’s the food, clothing, shelter piece we take care of immediately,” Mazurek said. “Then we work out a plan to get you from this point to your objective.”

That includes finding meaningful employment — “and working for $8.50 an hour at a fast-food place is not meaningful employment,” Mazurek said — and moving into permanent housing.

“That’s the road we take, and we have been very successful,” Mazurek said.

One of the success stories is Michael Brown, who is now the organization’s IT/grant specialist. Brown found himself homeless after a back problem cost him his job with GE Research. He never expected to find himself needing this sort of help.

“I had worked for 20-some years,” he said. “Up until my back problem I always was employed.”

Despite 3 campaign ribbons from his time in the Navy, he isn’t eligible for the Veterans Administration’s non-service-related injury medical assistance because of a quirk in the law.

“When I was living here, I said, ‘I can’t believe you guys don’t have a website,’” Brown said. “They replied, ‘Well, can you put one together?’ Two months later, it was done.”

Now he takes care of the group’s website, its computers and its network — and he also does research on grants the organization can apply for. And he looks for opportunities to help the shelter. Recently he used his new Photoshop skills to create mockup photos of vans sporting sponsorship slogans for car dealerships. New Country Toyota was impressed enough to offer a van to replace the rundown one the group currently uses.

“These are not bums. Some of them just find themselves there,” said Patty Mooney, who with her husband, Mark Schulze, created the award-winning documentary “The Invisible Ones: Homeless Combat Veterans.” “A lot of them are so very intelligent.”

Mooney said during the making of the documentary she and her husband heard horror stories about what veterans dealt with living on the streets.

“I was talking to a couple who said one time they were sleeping and they felt like they were on fire,” Mooney said. “Someone had lit their blanket on fire and was yelling, ‘Get up, you lazy bums, and get a job.’ They said people would kick them when they were sleeping.”

Mark Horvath, who travelled across the country doing a video blog on the plight of the homeless, said he met many veterans on his journey. That’s not surprising because 1 in 4 members of the homeless community is a veteran.

“You run into veterans all the time,” said Horvath, who has a unique perspective on homelessness after having being on the streets 15 years ago when he lost his job as a television executive. “It breaks my heart when I meet someone who served in the armed services sleeping on a park bench.”

With your help, that doesn’t have to happen. SCRPC welcomes any donations toward the Guardian House, its new shelter for female veterans, and will put them into a dedicated fund supporting the cause.

“The more people become aware the more they want to help,” Mooney said. “It’s up to every citizen in these United States to do what they can.”

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