As winter descends upon the Pacific Northwest, the homeless and transient often take to temporary shelter services to stay out of what in some instances could be life-threatening weather. But, the shelters don’t always solve the problems.
Despite the success of programs like St. Vincent de Paul’s Grant and Per Diem and Vet LIFT, many of the state’s homeless veterans never make the transition back to normalcy due to years of substance abuse, post traumatic stress disorder and other issues of mental illness, according to state reports and experts. Issues like these have become even more exacerbated by a homeless veteran population that has liberal numbers of baby boomers and as a result will be beginning to experience health issues in upcoming years.
Social programs have sought to address some of these concerns through a variety of approaches, but insist that there are large groups of homeless veterans still living outdoors in the wilderness areas of the Cascade Mountain Range. Perhaps of an increasing concern, at least one group, the Bend-based Central Oregon
Veterans Outreach, said that a new generation of post-Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans in need of financial and housing assistance may soon be having difficulty re-entering and adjusting to society, much like large portions of their predecessors did in the years following the Vietnam War.
COVO volunteer Chuck Hemingway said that although his organization primarily works with Vietnam-era veterans, he does feel that there may soon be a rush of younger homeless or in need veterans.
“We’re not seeing so many yet, but we’re seeing a few,” Hemingway said. “The same thing happened with (Vietnam veterans). We said ‘we’re okay, we’re fine,’ and then over time the problems began to surface, and the need for services became quite evident.
COVO doesn’t work exclusively with homeless veterans, but any veteran in need. It’s a volunteer-based organization, and one of its main missions is donating cold weather gear and other materials to what Hemingway identifies as veteran encampments in and around Central Oregon.
“There’s a group of veterans out in the camps where that’s the life they’ve come to realize, and that’s what they want. They want no help. They want to continue living that life, and that’s it,” Hemingway said. “But then there’s that group of veterans who’s come to grips with their own mortality, and they realize that ‘Hey, I can’t live this way anymore and I need some help.’”
Hemingway said that increasing numbers of this variety of older homeless veterans have been beginning to seek assistance from VA-assisted programs like COVO.
He also said that COVO knows of at least 19 such sites, and that they are made up individuals who aren’t comfortable living in regular society and who often have drug-use issues. Hemingway said that during the winter some of these individuals will migrate to urban centers with shelters like Bend or Eugene.
Jeff Utley, a therapist with the VA Behavioral Health Reintegration and Recovery Services in Eugene, said that his operation sees more homeless veterans who have come in from nearby rural areas during winter. His work specializes in group therapy sessions and mental health issues with veterans, not all homeless, but nonetheless in need of assistance.
“I would say most of the greater percentage of people we see is Vietnam-era,” Utley said. “But there also a lot of specialty groups for people just coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lot of those groups are held in the mental health clinic itself.”
Joel Watson, the Complex Manager of the Eugene Mission said his organization receives larger numbers of homeless people during winter, and many are veterans. He says that the numbers do tend to fluctuate, but of the approximately 280 individuals the mission deals with daily, between 20 and 30 are usually veterans.   
The Mission is a non-demoninational, but ultimately Christian aid-based organization that specializes in providing basic care like beds, showers and food to the homeless in general, but not specifically homeless veterans.
Despite assistance programs like COVO and BHRRS, there seems to have been a steady increase in the national and state levels of veteran homelessness in the last year.
The image of the down-and-out-on-his-luck veteran asking for change on the street corner became an often stereotyped image following the end of the Vietnam War. A report by the state of Oregon’s Ending Homeless Advisory Council reported that it had seen a 37 percent increase in the amount of individuals who qualified as being homeless in 2009.
This same report identified at least 17,122 individuals in the state as being homeless. The state of Oregon has said that it saw its identified homeless veteran population double last year to at least 1,425 households. According to data collected by the Department of Veterans Affairs, on any given night in the United States there are approximately 131,000 homeless veterans.
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