Imagine trying to keep your home or your family. Most homeless veterans live alone, afraid to trust anyone. If you don't look for PTSD, you won't find it. Access to homeless veterans begins with trust and they find it hard to trust anyone who doesn't understand where they've been and how they got where they are now. The everyday world seems shallow and false.
Arrogance is often a defense against the terror of being alone in hostile territory.
For such men, panhandling is not easy work. They will trust other veterans and because of program staff's deep personal commitment, are on the threshold of reaching out to and assisting those who are ready to make a change in their life. Over that past several years, we have proposed to the federal government that it needs to fundamentally recognize that homeless veterans are a distinct special needs group. The failure to identify and assist homeless veterans is a costly one. It means that otherwise well-constructed efforts and messages are meaningless to a third or more of those that they are intended to reach.