Last month I had the privilege of attending Salute!, a fundraiser hosted by The Servant Center in Greensboro to benefit its programs that serve homeless and at-risk veterans. It was a wonderful, fun evening with a World War II theme, complete with performers from the Piedmont Swing Dance Society and Letters From Home, an Andrews Sisters-style tribute group.

The Servant Center has long worked with some of the most vulnerable among us, assisting the disabled and extremely poor with anything from groceries to long-term housing. And recently the center held its eighth “stand down” event, which specifically reached out to veterans and their families.

Veterans are particularly vulnerable to poverty and homelessness for a number of reasons. So many of the risk factors that contribute to homelessness – physical or mental disability, lack of a support structure and substance abuse – disproportionally affect veterans. Then add on the very real difficulty of re-adjusting to civilian life, adapting job skills and coping with PTSD or physical wounds, and it’s frighteningly easy for a veteran to fall through the cracks.

This issue is particularly close to my heart because my step-father served in the Army during the Vietnam War, earning four Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star before he returned home on New Year’s Day of 1970. He’s said many times that, had he not had a stable family to come home to, he doesn’t know what would have become of him.

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans estimates that about 62,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. About 11,000 of them are veterans of the last decade’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And though the Veterans Administration has programs to identify and re-house homeless veterans, this is too big for one agency to fix. The VA tries to work closely with agencies in individual communities to provide all of the services needed to end temporary and chronic homelessness among veterans.

That’s why I was very interested to read recently that Guilford County Commissioner Bruce Davis wants to lease two county-owned properties “for low or no cost to nonprofit organizations that help military veterans adjust to civilian life, learn job skills and find homes.”

Davis’ vision is that each center could provide a base for all of the agencies and non-profits that serve the homeless population to operate in the same place. Since homelessness is a multi-dimensional problem, coordinating efforts of so many different groups is critical. Anything that makes that coordination easier is a good thing.

This idea is also interesting to me because it represents a smart partnership between the local government, other public agencies and privately operated non-profits. When I say that homelessness is a multi-dimensional issue, I mean that solving it isn’t just a matter of putting a roof over someone’s head. In my short time with the Power of One Fund, I’ve already met people who became homeless because they were victims of domestic abuse, or battled alcoholism, or aged out of the foster care system had just didn’t have anywhere to go. And yes, I’ve met homeless veterans, including one man who just returned from a deployment last year. If you have different groups that address and can help with these specific problems, it makes sense to get as many of them as possible into the same place so they can better serve the people they’re trying to reach.

NEWS & RECORD COVERAGE