Sometimes I have one of those human encounters that takes my breath away. I had just one of those encounters on Nov. 3 when I met Erick Gonzalez, a former Navy corpsman who served two tours with the Marines in Iraq. He now calls his car home.
I met Gonzalez at the Veterans Affairs Department's Homeless Veterans Summit at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in northwest Washington. The conference attracted 1,400 people, including VA employees and community organizations that help homeless veterans. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki kicked off the conference vowing to ensure there are no homeless veterans in five years.
He estimated that today there are 130,000 homeless veterans, and Gonzalez put a human face on that statistic. Before Gonzalez spoke, conference attendees had dealt with homeless veterans in the abstract.
During the last session of the day, Gonzalez, wearing a crisply pressed suit and a finely knotted tie, stood up, told the audience he was homeless, and asked for help. He said most of his benefits went to support his estranged spouse and three children, and he had taken to living in his car while attending Northern Virginia Community College.
Gonzalez epitomized the invisible homeless veteran that was discussed during the session: a student, well dressed, well spoken -- but unable to balance the financial demands of school, family and housing.
I asked Gonzalez why he came to the conference to make his pitch, and he replied, "I need help, found out about this conference, and figured out this was a good place to ask for help."
VA folks on the scene responded quickly and found Gonzalez temporary housing in Washington. When I talked to Gonzalez on Friday he expressed relief that he had a roof over his head. (A military blanket doesn't do much to keep freezing temperatures at bay.)
Gonzalez told me he needed a job, and had some experience in Web design through a past internship with Oracle. So, if you want to help and have a Web design gig, please get in touch with me, and I will connect you with Gonzalez. Together we can reduce the ranks of homeless veterans by one.
COMMENTS
Thank you for your efforts Mr. Brewin. We all can make a difference one day at a time.
John Q. Public 11/09/09 01:59 pm ET
Only 1,300 homeless veterans? Maybe in D.C....I don't know where those numbers come from, but the number is much, much higher. This from a publication this week in Tucson, AZ:
"ACCORDING TO THE 1998 UA STUDY, of the 3,200 homeless on the streets in Tucson on any given day (closer to 4,500 for all of Pima county, according to current state data), over 800 are homeless families consisting primarily of women with children...The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that 275,000 veterans go homeless on any given night in the U.S. And, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, VA services reach less than 10 percent of those homeless vets. A University of Arizona survey conducted among Tucson's homeless in 1998 reported that veterans make up 47 percent of this city's homeless men. "
That would mean that there are approximately 750 male homeless veterans in Tucson alone, and according to the number above, Tucson has about 1% of the national homeless population.
Carol 11/09/09 12:11 pm ET
Please send me your email more specificly get me the contact info for Mr. Gonzalez. I am the Veterans' and Special Emphasis Program Manager at the IRS for our IT workforce. I want to help this warrior in any way I can in connecting him to employment opportunities.
Chip Hollimon 11/09/09 11:14 am ET
God bless you! No veteran should be homeless, not ever! Legislators, please take notice of this sad situation affecting our American heroes and better yet, please do something for them......
Tony 11/09/09 10:02 am ET
We have a small part time job that might Erick may be interested in supporting out of an office in Rockville, MD.
Ed Savacool 11/09/09 06:01 am ET