OFF THE WIRE
By Jeanette Steele
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| Paul Mayerchak, 51, was 29 when he went into the U.S. Navy. He was a gas turbine mechanic. Since leaving the service, he has had a hard life on the streets. |
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| At the Neil Good Day Center for the Homeless, Brian Whittworth (left), a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman from 1981 to 1986, and Lorenzo Williams (right), a Navy sailor from 1993 to 1997, pass the day playing cards. |
From somewhere deep in his bundle of belongings, Paul Mayerchak brings out a picture of himself in better times.
The photo, kept safe in a plastic bag, is a formal portrait of Mayerchak at age 29. A crisp white sailor’s cap rests on his head; he wears the black Navy dress uniform.
Now 51, Mayerchak has been homeless for at least 20 years. His eyes are no longer the bright ones of the photo.
What would it take to get this former sailor, who’s been in and out of programs, off the streets for good?
“That’s a hard question to ask,” said Mayerchak, who stood in a downtown San Diego parking lot as night approached last week. “It depends on what kind of thing it was.”
As part of a landmark 2009 initiative to end homelessness among veterans by 2015, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is offering new programs and claims to have cut the number of veterans on the streets by almost half in two years.
In San Diego, however, the trend is going the other way.
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| Add Veteran Ed C. (as he wants to be known) has lived in his car for eight years. He would love to get off the streets but doesn't want to move to Escondido to do it. He says all the services he needs are in the downtown area.caption |
An estimated 2,200 veterans were homeless in San Diego County in 2010, about 400 more than two years before. VA officials expect that figure to jump again in future counts.
About a quarter of San Diego street people are veterans, experts say. In other cities, the rate is one in 10.
VA-San Diego officials attribute the increase to three factors: double-digit unemployment, the large number of service people discharged here — more than 28,000 recent veterans live in San Diego County, the highest count in the nation — and a change in the way the annual homeless census is conducted.
Still, nationally, the VA claims it is ahead of schedule.
In a March speech to the American Legion, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki projected that his department might meet its goal in 2014, a year early.
Two years ago there were about 131,000 homeless veterans on any given night in America; today, there are 76,000, Shinseki said. A VA official last week said the larger figure is from a 2008 count and the smaller is from a 2009 report, the most up-to-date data the VA says it has.
The department is devoting $800 million of its budget to the effort, and more in the future. VA-San Diego has tripled its homeless budget since 2008.
Perhaps the biggest change locally: 465 new housing vouchers for San Diego County veterans since 2008.
These vouchers, from the VA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, provide a veteran with an apartment and a case manager to watch his or her back. The VA secretary called them his “most flexible and responsive housing option” for the homeless.
The program follows the current vogue of homeless policy, which advocates “housing first.” Once the person has a roof overhead, advocates say, it’s easier to address medical and psychological problems.
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| John Dryden, 44, an Army veteran originally from Arizona, finds himself on the streets in San Diego. He said he would very much like to get into some kind of housing. |
This housing method isn’t popular with everyone in the field of assisting veterans.
The head of Veterans Village of San Diego — one of the trailblazers in care for broken vets, starting with Vietnam-era servicemen — sees it as not enough help.
“There’s no incentive to change your behavior. There’s no incentive to stop drinking or doing drugs. There’s no incentive to bring yourself to accept counseling for trauma issues,” said Phil Landis, Veterans Village chief executive.
“For the veterans we see on the street, at least 80 percent have these chronic issues of drug addiction, alcoholism and trauma.”
However, the housing vouchers are popular with San Diego vets.
The waiting list began at more than 1,000. The line is down to 800, but the wait is still at least two years.
So the tide continues to come in, as newly minted Marine and Navy veterans leave behind the steady paychecks of the military and hit the San Diego job scene, some still reeling from what they saw on the battlefield.
“What we found out very quickly in this process was that we really needed to focus on prevention,” said Clay King, chief of social work services at VA-San Diego.
“Because even though we were housing people, the influx of newly homeless — because of the economy, and because people are discharged in San Diego and they stay here for awhile — was increasing for us.”
The VA has two new programs that focus on post-Sept. 11, 2001, veterans. One that started last month provides rent and utility money for young veterans on the verge of losing their housing.
Another, slated to open in January 2012, will provide 40 beds for young veterans who would otherwise be on the streets. The VA is still negotiating for a downtown building to lease and refurbish for this “domiciliary” project.
But interviews with several longtime San Diego street people show that getting to zero homeless veterans by 2015 will be a tough battle for the VA.
Ed C., who is afraid the VA will withhold benefits if his last name is published, said he’d rather live in his car than in housing offered in Escondido or another far-flung suburb.
His friends are here. Offices for his social services are here.
Ed, a 53-year-old former Navy submariner, sits in his 1998 Nissan Sentra, parked on a side road in the Midway District. It’s been his home for eight years.
Yolanda Sidoti, supervisor of San Diego’s VA homeless health care programs, says she gets it.
“That’s what I think is different about the way we’re approaching this now,” Sidoti said.
“We have so many different options for the veteran — as opposed to a single transitional housing program, and ‘if you can’t fit into this model, well then you can’t fit in.’ It’s very different, what we’re doing now.”
jen.steele@uniontrib.com
(619) 293-1030
Twitter @jensteeley
VETERANS AFFAIRS HOMELESS BUDGET
National:
2011: $799 million
2012: $939 million (proposed)
VA-San Diego
2008: $4.8 million
2009: $5.5 million
2010: $14.2 million
New programs for the homeless
HUD-VA Supportive Housing vouchers: 465 added in San Diego since 2008.
VA Veteran Homeless Prevention Program: Provides rent and utility money for younger veterans in danger of becoming homeless; $2 million over 3 years.
VA Domiciliary: 40 beds for up six months for young homeless veterans; scheduled to open in downtown San Diego early 2012; one of five pilot projects in nation.
VA Recuperative Bed Program: 17 beds for ailing veterans for up to 90 days; fills gap in service for homeless veterans getting discharged from hospital.