Veterans Who Are Homeless

It is not a simple task to figure out who is homeless. First of all, it is not like the census,--you can;t go door to door. That is the whole problem. The homeless lack a fixed address. So you cab start with shelters and temporary housing, but then you miss all the people who are living off the grid--the people who live in tents and under overpasses. And you also miss the group who are essentially homeless but who haven't burned all their bridges yet--people who are sleeping on friend's couches and in parent's basements.
So not an easy number to arrive at, the total homeless population. We do know that as the economy has remained tanked, there are more homeless. Ironic, because owning a home has never been cheaper, but with unemployment at a steady 9% and mortgages harder than ever to get (talk about closing the barn door after the horse has escaped...), more people are without a reliable roof over their heads. And a full 25% of them are veterans, people who have served their country, many of them in the most recent wars that are still going on. A veteran of the current war has often been in combat more than any American soldier since the Revolutionary War. Whether or not the stress of combat directly or indirectly leads to homelessness, the fact is there are a lot of veterans from this conflict either at risk to become homeless or actually without shelter. It is time to do better. To create a culture where everyone pays their share, and everyone has a roof over their heads.