Home from wars, yet homeless
BEDFORD -- John McCarthy hails from a proud military family. He was named after a great-uncle gassed by the Germans in World War I. Both his grandfather and father fought in World War II.
McCarthy spent six years in the Navy as a petty officer first class in a fast-attack nuclear submarine.
But recently the 46-year-old found himself homeless, with little to show for his military career.
"I'm trying to get totally back on my feet and back into the swing of things -- which is easier said than done when you're starting from scratch and have no resources," said McCarthy, when he was enrolled last month in a 40-bed shelter for homeless veterans at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford.
McCarthy is one of a significant number of homeless veterans living in shadows in the suburbs, navigating a revolving door between shelters, temporary homes, and the street. Some advocates say the ranks of homeless vets may soon grow with troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious health and mental health problems needing care not available.
"Basically, we're very concerned that the condition is going to get worse," said Raymond O'Brien of Stoneham, national chairman of the Veterans of Foreign Wars' Homeless Veterans and Rehabilitation Committee and on the new Governor's Advisory Council on Veterans' Services.
O'Brien is among those attempting to address the issue now. He said the council will work with the Legislature's Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs in coming months to try to ensure that a safety net is in place in time.
Federal government surveys show that one-third of adult homeless men and nearly one-quarter of all homeless adults across the country have served in the armed forces. The ratio of veterans among the homeless is the same in Massachusetts, according to research by the joint legislative committee. The Bedford center is one of only two in the state run by the federal government for veterans; the other is in Brockton. Other homeless shelters -- some exclusively for veterans, others not -- are run privately or by the state.
While the extent of the problem in the area cannot be quantified, local officials and homeless shelter operators say veterans drift in and out of their programs.
Lowell veterans agent Eric Lamarche said that since he began working there last September, he has sent about a half-dozen homeless veterans to a shelter.
At the 90-bed Lowell Transitional Living Center, where clients sit outside at makeshift tables in a gritty concrete pen surrounded by chain-link fence, executive director Joseph Tucker says the facility has taken in veterans. He says he cannot give firm numbers because clients do not always identify themselves as former military.
Such veterans become homeless for many reasons, said Deborah Outing, a spokeswoman for the Bedford veterans hospital. Many have drug- and alcohol-abuse, marital, or unemployment problems. Others suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder -- a belated reaction to combat causing behavioral problems, making it impossible to hold a job. The syndrome can take years -- to develop.
A Department of Veterans Affairs report in 2006 shows about half of homeless US veterans suffer from mental illness; two-thirds from alcohol or drug abuse; and nearly 40 percent from both.
