endhomelessness

I am so sorry. I don't know what's available in your community, but I'd try calling 211, and asking if there is a homeless assistance organization that focuses on housing solutions.

Veterans are homeless due to a variety of factors including inability to afford housing, low incomes, service-related trauma (including military sexual trauma), and difficulty making the transition to the civilian workforce, among other things. Stigma related to homeless veterans and homelessness overall is a serious problem, and I think a good way to address it is by focusing on and promoting solutions. The good news is that there is a lot of political and public will for ending veteran homelessness, Congress and the Administration are supportive, and the number of homeless veterans is going down.

The Housing Commission of the Bipartisan Policy Center, of which I am a member, recently recommended that every low income family or individual who needed housing assistance should receive it. I think this would do more than any other single law to end homelessness. www.bipartisanpolicy.org

"I'll Be Home for Christmas"

The nation has 7 million fewer units of affordable housing than we need, and I think that is more persuasively the cause of people becoming homeless than their behavior -- plenty of people with bad behavior are housed.

I do think that it is possible to house people with criminal records, and I don't think it makes communities safer to leave people unsheltered and exclude them from programs.

In my personal experience, I have not met anyone I would say wants to be homeless. They often choose camping, etc. over the alternative of shelter, rules, etc. Sometimes people have mental illness, and it takes a while to reach them. But pretty much everyone wants a home.