About a third of the adult homeless population has served their country in the armed services. On any given night, as many as 250,000 veterans are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness over the course of a year. Many other veterans are considered at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and precarious living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans conservatively estimate that approximately one-third of America's homeless are veterans.
Homeless veterans tend to be older and more educated than homeless non-veterans.
Their life was changed when as mere boys they were transformed into soldiers. They went to war. And when that living, maiming and dying nightmare was over they were abruptly brought back into America's main-stream society to resume the life that they had begun. Once, at a certain moment while in Vietnam, or France or Okinawa, their mind and thinking processes evolved into a bestial survival mode. This is how they made it through every moment, every day until their tour of duty was over.