What would be the advantage of distributing the same amount to everyone, with no strings attached? It seems counterintuitive, but associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego Matt Zwolinski explains how the universality would be an economic benefit:

When transfer systems provide benefits to some but not to others, people will inevitably spend a great deal of time and resources trying to get politicians to put them in the “some” category and not the “other” one. One of the virtues of a universal grant […] is that it severely reduces the incentive for this wasteful competition between interest groups.

Also, making it universal and unconditional would cut down on slothful and expensive bureaucracy. Administration does not have to gobble up a huge portion of every program. The idea of allocating a set amount, for basic needs, to everyone with no strings attached, sounds insane to some.

The basic philosophy is based on ideals different from, but equally as strong as, “everyone must work.” A quotation from Miranda Perry Fleischer and Daniel Hemel in Zwolinski’s piece capsulizes three of those foundational concepts:

Delivering benefits in cash, rather than in-kind, furthers autonomy by recognizing that all citizens — even poor ones — are the best judges of their needs. Decoupling such transfers from a work requirement acknowledges that the state lacks the ability to distinguish between work-capable and work-incapable individuals. Providing payments periodically, rather than through a once-in-a-lifetime lump sum grant, ensures that all individuals can receive a minimum level of support over lifespans of variable lengths…

In some circles, denying the government any chance to invade privacy is seen as a very desirable end, and so is minimizing the government’s opportunities to make mistakes. Zwolinski goes farther into why it is not good for officials to play God. He writes,

Distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving is difficult business and requires a variety of invasive, demoralizing, and degrading inspections into the intimate details of applicants’ lives.

We should guarantee a basic income for everybody not because everybody deserves a check but because some people deserve it as a matter of justice, and sorting out the deserving from the undeserving is an impossible and dangerous task.

Fleischer and Hemel add that demoralization, in and of itself, is a social cost, and that even the most flawlessly objective officials make mistakes. When that mistake involves allocating or denying the means to live, it’s kind of like handing out a death penalty, or not. You don’t want to mess up. But even if they genuinely care,

A separate concern is that officials charged with making these distinctions will inevitably bring their own biases and value judgments to the process.

They don’t have enough

In explaining “Why we should give free money to everyone,” the Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman points out that social welfare programs whose requirements are contingent on the labor market are bound to fail because the labor market does not create enough jobs, and more are being eliminated by automation every day — especially the kind that can be done by minimally educated and perhaps disabled people.

“Workfare” schemes ignore the fact that people crushed by circumstances, especially if they are disabled, have enough problems already. Transportation is a nightmare; employers don’t want to be giving low-level employees time off to go to medical appointments; their medication might cause side effects that cause even more complications. Bregman writes,

The trend from “welfare” to “workfare” is international, with obligatory job applications, reintegration trajectories, mandatory participation in “voluntary” work. The underlying message: Free money makes people lazy.

Except that it doesn’t.

He cites studies from many countries showing that free money correlates with decreases in infant mortality, malnutrition, teen pregnancy, truancy, and crime. Universal basic income also coincides with more equality between groups, better school completion numbers, and higher economic growth. And the long-term benefits in terms of health, income, and tax collection are said to be excellent. What’s not to like?

House the Homeless News

APRIL 15
If you want some inspiration to warm you up for protesting, check out “Tax Day: Make Them Pay,” a video that makes a number of good points in less than 10 minutes.

COME TO THE UNVEILING!
To welcome The Home Coming statues, please join us Saturday, May 18, at 9 a.m. at Community First! Village. The address is:

Community First! Village
9301 Hog Eye Road
Austin, TX 78724

Coffee and breakfast will be served. The bus from downtown Austin leaves at 6:58 and 7:58 a.m. Take the route 6 (East 12th) from 7th & Colorado.

Reactions?

Source: “Property Rights, Coercion, and the Welfare State,” Independent.org, Spring 2015
Source: “Why we should give free money to everyone,” TheCorrespondent.com, May 2009
Photo credit: laura0509 via Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

A hundred years ago, it was called shell shock because artillery shells were what landed in the trenches and exploded around the British troops. It was also called battle fatigue, and it could strike at any time, in the first firefight or after years of combat experience. The shell-shocked were said to have “lost their nerves.” Usually, the term wasn’t even pejorative, simply descriptive. And even back then, they called it cracking up.

The person might never stop shaking or, conversely, might turn into a living statue, staring blankly and unable to move. There might be memory loss. Or he might lose the ability to speak. If touched, or for no discernible reason at all, he might turn very violent. Or he might weep helplessly and cry out for his mother.

Given a choice, active duty troops said they would rather lose a finger or even a leg, than get shell shock. Determined to continue fighting for their country, or simply not wanting to be seen as cowards, some men worked very hard to hide the evidence of their deterioration.

But thousands of soldiers who lived through World War I, even the physically unwounded, came away with crippling disabilities. If they were officers, they likely had family homes to return to, or upper-class friends they could stay with or borrow a cottage from. Some isolated themselves, some killed themselves by quick or slow means. The lower-class veterans were not so lucky. Then as now, a lot of them ended up on the streets or worse.

Then and now

Many experts see shell shock and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as the same thing, though apparently in WWI the symptoms were more likely to be physical, whereas nowadays the psychological aspects have come to the fore. For the Smithsonian, Caroline Alexander wrote,

Early medical opinion took the common-sense view that the damage was “commotional,” or related to the severe concussive motion of the shaken brain in the soldier’s skull. Shell shock, then, was initially deemed to be a physical injury…

As the war dragged on, medical opinion increasingly came to reflect recent advances in psychiatry, and the majority of shell shock cases were perceived as emotional collapse… There was a convenient practical outcome to this assessment; if the disorder was nervous and not physical, the shellshocked soldier did not warrant a wound stripe, and if unwounded, could be returned to the front.

The medical establishment got over its first impression. Too many struggling veterans had not even been that close to being blown up, so their malfunctions could just be psychosomatic, which in many people’s minds is right next door to cowardice and even malingering. Both then and now, opinions have differed on whether these conditions exist because of physical damage to the brain, or not, and it might be that energy is wasted on that question that could be better used helping the victims.

Vietnam Veteran John Ketwig charges the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration with refusal to acknowledge “the existence of moral damage from war” or that “PTSD is an outpouring of the soldier’s intrinsic humanity.” He wrote:

Post-Traumatic Stress Damage is a normal and predictable reaction to the horrors of war, the heart and soul’s reaction to the unthinkable destruction of brick and mortar and life and limb… When they see modern combat, the horrible effects of modern weapons, and the brutality encouraged by today’s American way of waging war, far too many are mentally and emotionally scarred for life.

On the ground in Vietnam we said the fallen were “wasted.”

And there it is. Every combat death is a waste of life, a waste of all the love and care that the soldier’s parents put into raising a child, a waste of the taxpayers’ money that went into training the soldier, a waste of all the potential and the aspirations that once belonged to that person and that could have resulted in a full and happy life and unguessable contributions to humanity, had the war not intervened.

But it doesn’t take death to waste a life. When a person comes back mentally shattered, that life is on track to end up wasted, just as surely as if the death certificate had already been issued. Here are words from someone who veered close to the edge, Richard R. Troxell, President and co-founder of House the Homeless. His book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line, describes post-war confusion. Richard wrote,

We have veterans who have served our country well in Vietnam, Desert Storm, the Gulf War, Iraq and in Afghanistan killing in the name of God and Country, returning to their home only to find they have none. Others were so traumatized, like myself, that they vomited it all up and wandered the country aimlessly for years confused, in pain, and abandoned.

A major increase of homelessness began with the end of the Vietnam War due to a glut of returning soldiers. Most of these young men and women were too emotionally destabilized to work even if they could find it. Many were suffering PTSD.

Many vets and many other people experiencing homelessness have PTSD in addition to Traumatic Brain Injury, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. This is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and we will have more to say about it next time.

The Home Coming

Thanks to our supporters, the much-anticipated life-sized bronze statues will be introduced to the public at Austin’s Community First! Village in May 2019. We invite you to the unveiling ceremony, details below:

When: Saturday, May 18, 2019, 9 a.m.
Where: Community First! Village, 9301 Hog Eye Rd., Austin, TX 78724

Reactions?

Source: “Voices of the First World War: Shell Shock,” IWM.org, 06/06/18
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Source: “World War I: 100 Years Later,” SmithsonianMag.com, September 2010
Source: “Ketwig: More veterans commit suicide than were killed in Vietnam,” Roanoke.com, 11/10/17
Image by BIAUsa.org

At the intersection of homelessness and the criminal justice system, one of the most important legal documents the last two decades has been negated by a federal judge in Florida.

When some kind of pattern or practice of wrongdoing has been identified, a consent decree is a way of trying to keep officials honest. It is an agreement to allow oversight by the Department of Justice, and has been found useful in encouraging reform. In 1988, the ACLU tried to get one in Miami, FL, filing a class-action suit on behalf of 5,000 plaintiffs.

It took 10 years for the Pottinger Agreement to come into existence and bring partial relief to the city’s unhoused population. Now, the city intends to regress to its old practice of arresting people who have nowhere to go — which, to all intents and purposes, criminalizes homelessness, causes needless misery and expense, and swims against the tide of the larger national movement to defeat homelessness with housing, not handcuffs.

Miami, just to put things in context, is one of the top 10 most mercilessly expensive cities for renters, and has been for a long time. Nor is this the first attempt to terminate the agreement. It was tried back in 2013, when we quoted law professor Stephen Schnably:

Eviscerating the Pottinger protections — what the City is effectively seeking — would do nothing to make downtown more vibrant. All it would do is strip homeless people of the basic human and constitutional right not to be arrested or have their property destroyed just for being homeless.

One of the major purposes of the agreement was to keep people from being arrested for loitering. Even with the agreement in effect, life has not been smooth for the unhoused. Journalist Joey Flechas wrote,

Dozens of homeless people testified in court during multiple days of hearings that the city had discarded or destroyed their personal belongings during “cleanups” of sidewalks where they were living. Many said they lost identification, clothing and other personal papers.

Last year, the ACLU told the federal court that the city has been violating the agreement, and asked for it to be enforced. The motion demonstrated that police and city workers had been seizing and destroying the property of people experiencing homelessness in the city and banishing them from certain areas. It also showed that police had arrested individuals for engaging in “life sustaining misdemeanor conduct” without offering shelter or assistance, as required by the Pottinger Agreement.

Instead, Federal District Judge Federico Moreno decided to get rid of it. The affected personnel are city employees, especially police, firefighters, and Human Services workers. The city wants them freed from the constraints of decency, and enabled to go back to arresting people and destroying their property, just for being homeless.

City Manager Emilio Gonzalez claims that the city has “created a model for effective homeless services countywide.” (Dade County has almost 2.75 millio Miami more than 460,000 people; Dada County has almost 2.75 million.)

We are asked to believe that Miami’s continuum of care is unparalleled in the United States, and that the homeless count has decreased by 90 percent since the agreement was instituted. If things have been going so well, and the agreement has been accomplishing its mission, doesn’t that seem more like a reason to keep it going, than to end it?

Yet, with a stunningly byzantine collection of bizarre arguments, opponents of the Pottinger Agreement are trying to convince everyone that the end of that agreement is a victory for the homeless. And also for national security. Somehow, according to the city’s legal experts, there is a connection to 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing.

One person who wanted termination is Ron Book, chair of the Homeless Trust (don’t be fooled by the job title), who is of the opinion that, by making it easier for “shelter resistant” individuals to stay on the street, Pottinger was actually harmful.

Not long ago, House the Homeless mentioned Ron Book in another post, when he refused to spend any of what he characterized as the Homeless Trust’s “scarce resources” ($55 million) on public toilets. Not surprisingly, Book is also against making showers available to people experiencing homelessness, nor does he have any tolerance for people or groups who want to serve food to the hungry in public places.

According to Judge Moreno, his killing of the Pottinger Agreement is a victory for the ACLU and the Florida Justice Institute, even though both organizations protested it vigorously. Their side of the story, related by journalist Daniel Rivero, is that Miami authorities and power mongers want to…

[…] loosen the reins on policing to push homeless residents from a rapidly gentrifying downtown area. Last year, the City started clearing homeless encampments in the city, and the ACLU asked the court to find Miami in contempt of court.

 

In theory, according to the judge, both advocates and authorities agree that arresting the homeless is not a solution. Nevertheless, during protests against changing the status quo, two activists were arrested. One of them, Tabitha Bass, “spent three days in jail with limited access to medical care, which advocates alleged contributed to her death a few weeks later,” says the news report.

The Home Coming Sculpture News

The Home Coming will be unveiled on May 18 at 9 a.m. at Community First! Village. The address is 9301 Hog Eye Road, Austin, TX 78734. Check back with us for more details on the history of the statue’s conception and creation, and impressive information about Community First! Village.

Reactions?

Source: “ACLU of Florida Defends Historic Agreement,” ACLUFL.org, 10/23/13
Source: “Federal judge dissolves homeless protections from police harassment in Miami,” ChicagoTribune.com, 02/16/19
Source: “ACLU of Florida Statement,” ACLUFL.org, 02/19/19
Source: “Judge Terminates Miami’s Landmark Agreement On How To Police The Homeless,” WLRN.org, 02/15/19
Photo credit: Phillip Pessar on Visualhunt/CC BY

How about a quick update on events in Seattle and around Amazon since the most recent chapter of the cautionary tale.

In September, The Seattle Times looked into some of the ways in which people “exit to permanent housing,” or leave the condition of homelessness. If they are in an emergency shelter in King County, it will take about $14,200 to accomplish the exit. If they are in transitional housing, defined as “temporary stays in a subsidized project,” the tab will be around $12,000.

A third option, rapid rehousing, pays subsidies for renting on the private market, which puts money in the pockets of local landlords, so it’s not such a bad thing. The cost to remove a person from homelessness via that route is around $7,300.

In the same month, several businesses made the news by complaining that people had been trespassing on exterior water sources and using their hoses for impromptu showers. They filled their drinking water bottles! Some had the nerve to shave or brush their teeth! A store manager said that the homeless people broke his spigot. (Why would they? They are the ones who are so desperate for water.)

Toward the end of the month, a long-established encampment “that included many wood frame structures” — in other words, a town — disappeared as heavy machinery cleared 25 acres. Journalist Matt Markovich said the inhabitants had plenty of warning, and “By city policy, no clean up can begin until there is shelter space for all residents, even if they don’t accept.”

Apparently, the city had been picking up garbage from the camp, which inspired the solid citizens of Seattle to bring their garbage, construction trash, and abandoned vehicles to the site, resulting in a rotten deal all the way round. The land may be repurposed as a dog park, the irony of which has not escaped the former residents.

Sara Rankin of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project has compared these activities with flushing money down the toilet. People are not helped in any substantial way; the underlying causes of homelessness are not addressed; and what Seattle needs is a whole lot more affordable housing. Of the passion for camp-clearing, Rankin says,

It’s moving people around to create the illusion that homelessness has been fixed when it hasn’t.

At the same time, there was some kind of trouble with the agencies assigned by the city to deal with homeless matters. Also, a group called Safe Seattle, which touts its mission as “public safety,” would like to see part of the public live unsafely in tents and dumpsters, rather than in miniature structures with heating, and access to showers and bathrooms. The group sued the city in an effort to get rid of the tiny house villages.

Meanwhile, over the past five years Seattle rents rose by close to 40 percent. With 54 people experiencing homelessness per each 10,000 residents, the city’s rate of homelessness is greater than that of New York or Los Angeles. On the other hand, Amazon did start a training program for low-income people to work in its food facilities, and allowed the nonprofit Mary’s Place temporary occupancy of an unused building.

Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, told the press,

There is not a straight line between Amazon coming and homelessness. But what I want to be clear about is that Amazon certainly contributed to the affordable housing crisis in Seattle, and the affordable housing shortage in turn absolutely contributed to the homelessness crisis in our community.

In an article for BoingBoing.net, Editor Cory Doctorow explains why some Seattle residents are now saying, “See? We told you. Never give in to bullying, it leads to nowhere good.” He writes,

Seattle’s immensely popular business tax was designed to do something about the city’s epidemic of desperate homelessness, but then Amazon threw its muscle around to get the tax canceled, mostly by threatening not to occupy its new offices in Ranier Square, a 30-story building currently under construction that Amazon was to be sole tenant of… Now, Ranier Square is advertising for new tenants to fill its 722,000 square feet, because Amazon has canceled its plans.

Amazon had been busy for a year, thinking about where to establish two new headquarters, and inviting bribes. They picked Long Island City (Queens, NY) and Virginia. Immediately, both places were drastically affected. Housing prices went up and inventory went down. Experts reported that…

[…] overall, the number of homes on the market in January in Arlington County was down 38 percent from a year ago, and the median price of what closed in Arlington last month was up 10 percent from a year ago, at $607,500… a reflection of properties that were purchased due to the Amazon effect in December.

 

In Long Island City, reporter Corey Kilgannon learned that the price had already been raised by at least $30,000 each, on apartments that did not yet have walls or bathtubs:

Asking prices jumped. Buyers rushed to make deals. Inactive listings turned into bidding wars. Brokers are taking bids via text message. And the rush has fueled concerns that a gentrifying neighborhood will become even less affordable, as “tech bros” push out the working class.

For three months, the real estate business boomed, until… It’s not clear who broke up with whom, but the New York engagement is off. Amazon backed out, or maybe the city rejected Amazon; some speculators got stuck with pricey properties; and nobody knows what will happen next.

The Home Coming Updates

Watch this space for news of The Home Coming, the sculpture whose figures represent several kinds of people experiencing homelessness — a veteran, a child, and an elderly woman of color. The fulfillment of years of dedicated work, The Home Coming is coming home to Austin soon!

Reactions?

Source: “What would it cost to house and provide treatment for Seattle’s homeless?,” SeattleTimes.com, 09/17/18
Source: “Seattle business claims homeless people trespassing on property to steal water,” KOMONews.com, 09/05/18
Source: “Seattle begins clean-up of one of city’s longest running homeless encampments,” KOMONews.com, 09/24/18
Source: “Seattle increasing removals of homeless encampments,” SeattleTimes.com, 08/21/18
Source: “Lawsuit aims to shut down city’s tiny home villages,” MyNorthwest.com, 12/07/18
Source: “Amazon HQ2 could push 800 people into homelessness, economist says,” MarketWatch.com, 11/19/18
Source: “Amazon killed Seattle’s homelessness-relief tax…,” BoingBoing.net, 02/28/19
Source: “Amazon speculators gobbled up Arlington housing market,” WTop.com, 02/25/19
Source: “An ‘Amazon Effect’ on Queens Real Estate? Here’s Why Brokers Say It’s Real,” NYTimes.com, 12/27/18
Photo credit: Wonderlane on Visualhunt/CC BY

We recommend The Universal Living Wage Whitepaper, the comprehensive guide to an idea whose time has come, written by House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell, which can be read online or downloaded. There is a lot to absorb, but the basic ideas are easily graspable.

Here is Richard’s recap of how he laid out the basic ideas to those present at a breakout session at the White House Summit on Working Families in the summer of 2014:

The Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) uses existing government guidelines that ensure that if a person works 40 hours in a week (be it from one job or more), he or she would be able to afford basic food, clothing, shelter (including utilities), public transportation, and access to emergency rooms, wherever that work is done throughout the nation. This will end homelessness for over 1 million people, and prevent economic homelessness for all 20 million minimum-wage workers. It will stimulate the national housing economy, save billions in taxes, and stabilize small businesses across America.

The Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) intends to adjust the federal minimum wage and index it to the local cost of housing in any area. When properly adjusted, the Universal Living Wage – ULW (National Locality Wage – NLW) should ensure that anyone who works a 40-hour week can afford basic rental housing, and that means safe and decent as well as affordable.

Speakers at the exciting event included former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Gloria Steinem. Amongst talk of paid paternity leave, flexible work hours, wage equality and comprehensive health care and child care, attendees were astonished to learn such gritty realities as the fact that in three states, the cost of child daycare had surpassed the cost of state college tuition.

Another Troxell contribution is the Open Letter to Barack Obama. Then, the curious reader might want to proceed to the Universal Living Wage website and focus on such details as the Wage Calculator.

We also recommend the past House the Homeless posts, like the one that discusses a strange and seemingly intractable paradox. The super-wealthy who run everything really don’t want anyone to pay the workers a living wage. On the one hand, they themselves have no intention of paying workers enough to live on. On the other hand, they certainly do not want the government involved in anything that resembles a guaranteed income, because the government can only acquire the funds to supply a guaranteed income by taxing the super-wealthy. That would be socialism, a word that scares them more than Satan.

They will stand for nothing that smacks of the redistribution of wealth, like for instance the program colloquially called “food stamps.” They need workers, but pay their workers so little they have no choice but to apply for food stamps. And then the super-rich who own everything cry and whine because they suspect that money is coming from their pockets — which there is very little chance of, since their expert lawyers will help avoid any taxation of either their giant corporations or their personal wealth. The people who own the factories and stores don’t want to pay their employees enough to live on — nor do they want to pay taxes that would filter the money through the government, and supply the employees enough to live on.

They reject both answers as unsatisfactory. To put it simply, they just plain don’t want workers to make enough to live on! At one point, McDonald’s added insult to injury by unveiling a plan that would help their employees budget their money properly. Just get a second job and apply for food stamps, and all will be well.

The plan allowed $600 per month for rent, which is laughable almost anywhere; nothing for heat; nothing for clothing. It allotted $20 a month for health care.

As just one example of the unreality, research commissioned by the American Diabetes Association showed how ridiculous that number is, especially for dependent child insulin users. For many people, the cost of insulin runs into the hundreds of dollars each month. In the most basic possible meaning of “trying to make a living,” people have actually died from attempting to nurse their insulin supplies, hoping to make them last longer.

The Home Coming Updates

Watch this space for news of The Home Coming, the sculpture whose figures represent several kinds of people experiencing homelessness — a veteran, a child, and an elderly woman of color. The fulfillment of years of dedicated work, The Home Coming is coming home to Austin soon!

Reactions?

Image source: Internet meme, author unknown

Unfortunately, more still needs to be said about military servicemembers and suicide. The whole subject is fraught with political and emotional minefields. We discussed the “won’t accept help” trope, and the terrible barrier created by “bad paper” discharges that prevent wounded vets from getting the help they need. When you get right down to the real nitty-gritty, none of this stuff is the least bit pretty.

House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell published Looking Up at the Bottom Line, a book that contains these words:

A major increase of homelessness began with the end of the Vietnam War due to a glut of returning soldiers… Veterans of World War II scorned Vietnam veterans. Even though there was a Department of Veterans Affairs, it was comprised of WWII veterans and there was no outreach and no welcome mat for Korean and Vietnam veterans.

It was a senseless war in which soldiers, myself included, were left unsupported at every turn in Vietnam and again when we returned home. The ones that it did not maim or kill, it made crazy and homeless for many years. Some are still that way.

Author John Ketwig has a theory that, up until now, as many as 200,000 Vietnam vets may have committed suicide. Sounds like an outrageous number, doesn’t it? Until you consider that an astonishing 9,087,000 American servicemembers served in all capacities during the Southeast Asia conflict, of whom 2,709,918 were actually in Vietnam. That’s a total of almost 10 million during the entire era, including almost three million in-country, so maybe the projected suicide total is not so unlikely after all.

We learned that women veterans are more likely than men to self-destruct, and that the number of married suicidal veterans is disproportionately high. Regarding current active duty servicemembers about to be discharged, here is something else to watch out for: During the first year after leaving the military, the person’s likelihood of committing suicide goes way up.

Between 2005 and 2011, veterans killed themselves at more than twice the civilian rate. After the Veterans Crisis Line was activated in 2007, the volume of calls increased yearly. It is said by some that in recent years, more active-duty troops have died from suicide than from enemy action. One interesting breakdown isolates only post-9/11 veterans:

A 2012 report from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) showed that between 2002 and 2005, 144 veterans of post-9/11 wars committed suicide out of total veteran population of 490,346. In 2009, 98 men and women from post-9/11 wars took their own lives.

These post-9/11 deaths account for the veteran suicide rate rising 35 percent since 2001, the year of the New York attack. The dire statistics can be expressed in several different ways, depending on the chosen starting point. For instance, with a count starting from 2005, that’s around 78,000 suicides.

Returning to Looking Up at the Bottom Line, one school of thought holds that the best gift anyone can give the world is an honest accounting of his or her own experience, and the book certainly does that and more. Of course, House the Homeless assists all kinds of people experiencing homelessness. Still, it is only natural that Richard feels boundless solidarity with veterans. Not surprisingly, his acquaintance with homelessness is also “up close and personal.”

Being there lends a strong impetus toward the growth of a person’s social awareness, no matter how much of it they started with. The saga of Richard’s work against Austin’s No Camping Ordinance is inspiring, as are his persistence, patience, originality, and accomplishments in creating better alternatives.

The Home Coming Updates

Watch this space for news of The Home Coming, the sculpture whose figures represent several kinds of people experiencing homelessness — a veteran, a child, and an elderly woman of color. The fulfillment of years of dedicated work, The Home Coming is coming home to Austin soon!

Reactions?

Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Source: “Ketwig: More veterans commit suicide than were killed in Vietnam,” Roanoke.com, 11/10/17
Source: “Why so many veterans commit suicide,” ChicagoTribune.com, 04/05/18
Source: “Veteran Suicides Twice as High as Civilian Rates,” News21.com, 08/24/13
Source: “We Lose Too Many Vietnam Veterans to Suicide: Here’s How You Can Help,” PsychologyBenefits.org, 03/29/17
Photo credit: Ed Schipul on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

In the previous post, we learned that the servicemember suicide rate is not quite as high as what people go around saying. Forget about the frequently and erroneously cited 22 suicides per day — it’s “only” 20.6 per day. That is also an upsetting statistic, especially when we consider the enormous number who are not counted — the slow suicides who are trapped in a cycle of homelessness, self-neglect, addiction, rejection, and hopelessness.

Of course, some politicians are well aware of the problem’s dimensions, such as U.S. Congressman Steny Hoyer, who represents Maryland’s 5th Congressional District. He has worked on veterans’ issues, particularly suicide, and on our most recent Veterans Day he made this statement:

We must stand with our veterans and their families, not just in words but in taking action to improve veterans’ access to quality health care, combat the alarming rate of veteran suicide, ensure that those returning from service can find good jobs that ease the transition back into civilian life, and make certain no veteran is homeless and living on the streets.

Every now and then, a really catchy title shows up in a list of references, and demands to be followed up on. In this case, the 24-year-old article appears to still be beyond a paywall. Its intriguing title is “A theory-based nursing intervention to instill hope in homeless veterans.”

The authors are Jane H. Tollett, who at the time was serving as Chief of Homeless Veterans Service in Anchorage, Alaska, and Sandra P. Thomas, who at the time directed the Ph.D. Program at the College of Nursing, University of Tennesee. The Abstract says,

This quasi-experimental study sought to determine if a specific nursing intervention to instill hope would positively influence levels of hope, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and depression in homeless veterans. Miller’s Model of Patient Power Resources served as the conceptual framework from which a middle-range theory of homelessness-hopelessness was derived to guide the study… Support for the theory was seen in the increased levels of hope and self-esteem and decreased depression in veterans who received the nursing intervention.

In a review of this study published by Advances in Nursing Science, Bonnie K. Fahey, BSN, RN, wrote:

Often the hospitalization of the homeless veteran is little more than a reprieve from the stressful life on the street. The authors demonstrated through their research that homeless veterans can overcome hopelessness by taking an active part in treatment.

The homelessness-hopelessness theory and its implications have given me a clearer picture of the dynamics involved in the predicament of homeless veterans. The prospect of breaking the cycle of despair in this underserved population is both encouraging and exciting.

“Suicide is painless/It brings on many changes.” To a previous generation, that line written by Mike Altman was intimately familiar as the M*A*S*H theme song. The TV series about the Korean war was really about the Vietnam war, and incidentally, what were the active duty and veteran suicide rates during the Vietnam war? Hard to say.

Last year, the PBS documentary “The Vietnam War” stirred up a lot of feelings, some of which are expressed by John Ketwig, lifetime member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, an organization that is still very active. To his mind, there may have been between 150,000 and 200,000 Vietnam veteran suicides.

Those numbers are guesswork, and maybe as good as anyone else’s guess, including the official record-keepers, and here is why:

There are no reliable statistics about veteran suicides. Most states and localities do not submit suicide reports to the VA, and in many cases the local examiners are not sure if the death was indeed self-inflicted…

The statistics that might clearly define the scope of the problem simply don’t exist, and we are only seeing a fraction of the problem. Realistic numbers will never become available from the government or military because of the negative impact they would have on the costs of VA health care, or on the recruiting efforts so vital to the all-volunteer military.

An article by Meg Lacy from the website Psychology Benefits Society, only two years old, highlights the hazards that may face surviving Vietnam-era vets today:

Despite the fact that the Vietnam war occurred approximately 40 years ago, the moral injuries sustained are still felt by many who served our country. It is not unusual for Vietnam Veterans to have coped with difficult times by staying busy at home or at work. As retirement looms, it is not unusual for Vietnam era veterans to experience additional age-related risks such as social isolation, a feeling of burdensomeness, and changes in health status.

Lacy’s message is that coping strategies that have held a person together for decades may fail at this crucial juncture. It also suggests that friends and family members might be extra vigilant, and that veterans themselves take a step toward self-preservation by acknowledging their own vulnerability at this transitional life stage.

It’s easy to advise, “Get help from the VA,” but the Veterans Administration is not always the most efficiently run or speedily responsive organization. Furthermore, some civilians have an unusual attitude, as demonstrated by an ABC News headline, “Suicide Rate Spikes in Vietnam Vets Who Won’t Seek Help.”

The story quotes Rudi Gresham, who was a combat soldier in Vietnam, and who went on to become a senior advisor to the Department of Veterans Affairs in the George W. Bush era:

These guys were the first generation not to trust the guys in the white coats, and they didn’t trust the government… A lot of the Viet vets with PTSD held it in… They didn’t want to let their family know their dark secret. They wanted to be in the workforce and be productive like the generation of World War II, but they were not respected by society.

In the following quotation, Michael De Yoanna points out the fallacy inherent in the “won’t get help” trope, as it applies to vets who served more recently, but maybe nobody ever got around to saying it about the veterans of previous conflicts:

The Government Accountability Office, found that 57,000 Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines troops discharged between 2011 and 2015 for misconduct had post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injuries and other conditions, like adjustment, anxiety and depressive disorders. Of these troops, more than 20 percent, or about 13,000 of them, received “other than honorable” discharges, which made them potentially ineligible for veterans benefits, including access to health care for their conditions… Those troops, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had mental health disorders and brain injuries. Misbehavior among troops — and thoughts of self-harm — can be symptomatic of those kinds of wounds.

So, there’s another thing to worry about. The entire topic of “bad paper” discharges is currently appearing in courtrooms across the country.

The Home Coming Statues Updates

Watch this space for news of The Home Coming, the sculpture whose figures include a veteran. The Home Coming, the fulfillment of years of dedicated work, is coming home to Austin. And get the story of one Vietnam veteran, Richard R. Troxell, co-founder of House the Homeless.
Reactions?

Source: “Hoyer Statement on Veterans Day,” MajorityLeader.gov, 11/09/18
Source: “A theory-based nursing intervention to instill hope in homeless veterans,” Ovid.com, 12/01/95
Source: “To the Editor,” NursingCenter.com, December 1996
Source: “Ketwig: More veterans commit suicide than were killed in Vietnam,” Roanoke.com, 11/10/17
Source: “We Lose Too Many Vietnam Veterans to Suicide: Here’s How You Can Help,” PsychologyBenefits.org, 03/29/17
Source: “Suicide Rate Spikes in Vietnam Vets Who Won’t Seek Help,” ABCNews.go.com, 05/03/13
Source: “Some 78,000 Veterans And Troops Lost To Suicide Since 2005,” KUNC.org, 06/29/18
Photo credit: on Visualhunt/CC BY

Last time we talked about some of the incidents described in Richard R. Troxell’s book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line. Back in 1989, there was talk of decommissioning Bergstrom Air Force Base, right outside Austin. Richard set out to gather support for the idea of turning the facility into a center for substance abuse treatment and job training.

It made sense, because a lot of the people experiencing homelessness who needed these services also happened to be veterans. But it was not to be. Richard wrote,

The city, in its wisdom, hired a consultant who said due to noise consideration that the airport would not be the most conducive place to conduct rehabilitation and job training for the homeless community. Apparently, it was good enough for thousands of veterans and all the mothers who gave birth at the base hospital, but it isn’t good enough for the homeless population?

The homeless are somehow perceived to be better off living on the street, in our parks, eating out of garbage cans, and now subject to arrest for sleeping in public!

This mindset is all too prevalent among people without a scrap of human empathy, who speak with a forked tongue. They give lip service to the idea of helping, but when a reasonable proposal appears on the horizon, all of a sudden it’s, “Oh, no, we can’t put our homeless veterans into a repurposed building.” More than likely, there isn’t as much profit in it for builders, either.

The same kind of thinking wants to tear down every makeshift lean-to and take away every packing crate because they are hazardous places to sleep, and not fit for human habitation. Some folks actually go so far as to piously assert that it is less dangerous for people to have no habitation at all. So the chorus is, “No, the homeless vets are much better off as they are, while we apply for federal funds and hire some contractors to make them a nice new building at some point in the future.”

The “s” word

It has become a trope or an urban legend that, on an average day, 22 American military veterans end their own lives. Not long ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs publicized the fact that the statistics from its first National Suicide Data Report have been misreported and misinterpreted, and the number is actually 20.6 per day. On learning that things have not been quite as bad as we thought, what else can we do but rejoice?

The first Suicide Report, issued in 2012, covered the years from 2005 to 2015, was misconstrued because people did not realize that the numbers included suicides not only of veterans but of active-duty servicemembers including National Guard and Reserve units. As Meaghan Mobbs phrased it in Psychology Today,

The failure to contextualize that figure, or any figure, results in a narrow focus on the number itself with a blind eye toward both its complexity and limitations.

Also, there has apparently been some misunderstanding about what exactly constitutes a veteran. “A common source of confusion” are the words used, although it would seem that the military would have had plenty of time, over the decades, to nail down that definition.

This brings up another point. Suicide is still attended by a great amount of stigma. For religious reasons, or for family loyalty reasons, people want to avoid filling in “suicide” on official forms, and it is still possible to fudge the paperwork. Although sometimes the cause is quite obvious, there must be many ambiguous deaths. Did someone drive off the road and over a cliff because they were surprised by a wild animal, or…? Also, these numbers do not include the thousands who commit slow suicide over time.

There is another layer of baffling complexity. Not only have the totals been misinterpreted, they may have been inaccurately reported. The record-keeping has certainly been incomplete. These stats are based on data from less than half of the states, and some of the non-reporting ones included gigantic veteran populations.

In an effort to grasp the essential numbers, the Veterans Administration consults state-generated death certificates, where a box can be checked if the deceased person ever served in the military. For states that do not submit their information, the numbers are extrapolated.

One valid question is, why does it take so long to pull all this data together and analyze it? We have computers now.

Last fall the updated VA National Suicide Data Report 2005-2016 was published. It says,

Veterans who use VHA have physical and mental health care needs and are actively seeking care because those condition s are causing disruption in their lives. Many of these conditions — such as mental health challenges, substance use disorders, chronic medical conditions, and chronic pain — are associated with an increased risk for suicide.

Interesting details

The veteran suicide rate is higher than that of the general public, particularly among women. As for methodology, firearms play a role more frequently in veteran suicides than among the general public. Out of every 20.6 suicides (the daily average), six of those individuals had recently used VA health care services and 11 had not. (Active duty personnel accounted for four a day.)

Counterintuitively, married veterans are at greater risk for suicide — possibly, very ill vets who are not getting all the medical support they need, and don’t want to be a burden on their spouses. Meaghan Mobbs wrote:

While rates of suicide were highest among younger veterans (ages 18-34) and lowest among older veterans (ages 55 and older), veterans ages 55 and older accounted for 58.1 percent of all veteran suicide deaths in 2015.

She went on to bring up very worrying possibility:

Furthermore, there is a strong body of evidence to suggest that suicide is contagious… With more social media use correlated with more depression, there is very real risk that veterans might feel they are not living up to their former lives, lives of their former teammates/buddies still in the fight, or the general idealized portraits that people tend to portray.

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Watch this space for news of The Homecoming, the sculpture whose figures include a veteran.

Reactions?

Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Source: “VA reveals its veteran suicide statistic included active-duty troops,” Stripes.com, 06/20/18
Source: “VA National Suicide Data Report 2005–2016,” VA.gov, September 2018
Source: “The VA Releases Second National Suicide Data Report,” PsychologyToday.com, 08/28/18
Photo credit: Toronto Public Library Special Collections on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA