Veteran Survivors: Finding Peace Postwar

Every other day, she drags her furniture around the apartment. She shuffles and heaves the sofa, the dining table, the bed and dresser from wall to wall, rearranging this new life she has. She only has a few pieces, but she’s not solemn about it, and she isn’t indecisive or confused. It’s just new. It’s new and incredibly exciting. She moves her things because she can; because for the first time in years she has a home and furniture of her own, and she can do whatever she wants with them.

She remains faceless and nameless because of privacy requirements, but the way Amy Mitchell, manager of the Veterans Services Program for Volunteers of America Colorado Branch, tells the story, it’s a poignant picture of what success can look like for the veterans in her program— going from homeless to housed and having possessions in as short as six months.

Since 1907, the Volunteers of America Colorado Branch program has been helping women take control of their lives and overcome barriers that have pushed them into homelessness. In that time, they have helped scores of veterans who happened to be homeless; but 

in 2008, the Veterans Services Program was started in Denver to give targeted help to homeless women veterans.

Though a traditionally smaller and unseen group, the number of homeless female veterans has been surging along with the enlistee rate. Female homeless vets have almost doubled in the past 10 years, to 6,500 of today’s estimated 131,000 homeless veterans.

Volunteers of America Colorado Branch President and CEO Dianna Kunz said, "America as a nation and Volunteers of America as an organization must step up and provide a set of comprehensive services to aid our returning veterans in their journey to return to their personal lives and to reclaim their roles in society. In those cases where our best efforts fall short and our veterans find themselves homeless, our organization has an important role to play in their recovery."

In part, the Veterans Services Program was born in response to a growing need, and it couldn’t have been implemented soon enough. The past three major conflicts U.S. military forces have been engaged in have seen a dramatically higher rate of female active duty members, meaning more women will be appearing among the homeless veteran population.

During the Vietnam War, less than 1 percent of active-duty members were women—approximately 7,500 women were on active duty, in a theater of roughly 8.75 million active-duty members throughout the war. During Desert Storm, a reported 40,000 women served on active duty, or 7 percent. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense estimated that women made up nearly 15 percent of the military, and they are increasingly taking on active combat support roles.

Additionally, female veterans are just as likely as men to experience post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a term used to describe a wide range of war-related anxieties experienced by returning military personnel. Among female veterans experiencing PTSD, 71 percent experienced Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Defined as military personnel sexually harassing, raping or assaulting another soldier or civilian, a 2004 study conservatively estimates that at least 30 percent of female veterans had experienced MST, while the Pentagon estimates that only 10 to 20 percent of cases are reported.

These trends come with alarming problems. For decades, most of the Veterans Affairs (VA) services have been directed toward men. Women, often with different types of military-related trauma, and with different kinds of social and medical needs, have fallen outside the support network that was developed with male service members in mind.

"It’s an interesting transformation," said Mitchell, "of all of these very typically male issues and problems associated with military service being rolled over onto the female military population. But once it gets there, it looks different. And I think it’s taken the military some time to get it."

Having worked with 34 homeless female veterans through the Volunteers of America Veterans Services Program, Mitchell has a good perspective on the way some needs differ between men and women.

"PTSD generally looks different in women than it does in men," said Mitchell. "People think of, again stereotypically, a veteran with PTSD as a guy who is completely anti-social, lives under a bridge and pushes a grocery cart, or the guy who comes home and kills his family or walks down the street with his M-16. Women who have post-traumatic stress disorder can be violent, [but] as a rule, what they are is addicted, alcoholic, depressed, manic-depressive, in some cases disoriented and disenfranchised from their families and their support structure."

Mitchell believes the VA is coming around quickly to issues specific to this demographic by implementing and supporting new programs for women. The Volunteers of America Veterans Services Program, for instance, is funded by what’s called "Grant Per Diem."

"I think, at least in Denver, they have done a tremendous job of making services available, female-friendly and sustainable for the women," Mitchell said.

The Veterans Services Program has three main goals: residential stability, employment or income, and self-determination. Right as women walk in the door, Volunteers of America is able to conduct an intensive intake interview, identifying barriers the women wish to overcome and establishing personal goals they wish to reach. After intake, Mitchell helps new participants navigate the network of veterans’ services that are now available to them through the VA, from mental health therapy or medical attention to something as simple as getting tags on a vehicle.

With a variety of histories and unique concerns, meeting these goals is different for every woman who enters the program; but every woman can stay at the residential shelter or at a family motel through the program for up to two years while getting back on her feet.

Mitchell said she remembered taking a woman to the Provider’s Resource Center, which sets aside donated items for people in Volunteers of America programs. "They get to choose a bed, and they get to choose the bed coverings, and they get to choose cups and saucers and a lamp. And she was just like ‘can I really have all this?’" Mitchell gestured with an eye-bulging expression, "And I said ‘yeah it’s for you.’" Mitchell added, "They can’t get their arms around it," alluding to how difficult it is for a woman who has been homeless for years and estranged from her family and suffering from PTSD to comprehend a normal life for herself.

"They come to me and as far as they’re concerned, they’re broken and there’s something wrong with them because they 

With 10 women in the program at any given time, Mitchell said, "I would say the way that they’ve changed over the past year or so is the same way that the general [homeless] population has changed. We have more women who have been historically self-sufficient, have no addiction disorder, have no significant mental health diagnosis, but who simply lost their job, lived off their credit cards, their 401(k)s until they were gone and then ultimately wound up sleeping in their car, and came to us purely because of the economy."

Annie White is one such person. She held several positions during Desert Storm, including work as an assistant to a General. Though she was certainly in a difficult environment in Iraq sometimes, Annie says she never experienced PTSD. When she came back, she got a job, started a family, and has worked in several fields since then, ranging from hazardous materials clean up to volunteer casework with American Red Cross disaster relief.

In 2008, the furthest thing from her mind was being homeless or lacking direction. She was working for a government subcontractor at the time and had been there for four years. "I thought I was okay. You know, I was good," she said in a heavy Hawaiian accent. "And then when the economy went down, my name came up with a lot of other people." A strong, regal woman, she has a confident air about her. But her humility makes her seem shy. "I’m kind of sad," she said as she reflected on her situation.

In February of 2009, she sent her son to live with his father in Texas. She was staying at a friend’s house at the time. But by spring 2009, after almost a year without income, her friends told her that she could stay for only one more month. She moved around from couch to couch after that, and ultimately landed in her car until some friends told her to go to a shelter. She called Denver’s 3-1-1 and was connected to Volunteers of America’s Veterans Services Program.

She’s been at the center for six months and says the program has given her hope and direction. She came in feeling very negative about herself. "I was down…didn’t want to talk. I’m blaming myself for what had happened to me. Didn’t make the right choices. But they really build you up," White said.

Considering where she is now in life, she said, "I’m happy and I’m glad I made the right call. They helped me. They really did. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. And, you know, right now I’m standing tall."

Her strength is incredible. She said she sleeps only a couple of hours a day. She works nights in a temp job for the time being, and spends the days at the Denver Workforce Center looking for full-time positions. When she came to the Veterans Services Program, she said almost immediately they made a plan with her, identified her goals, and she set out to start accomplishing them. She wants to go back to school and be enrolled by this summer in courses either for social work or medical billing and coding—the former because she likes helping people; the latter because it pays well.

White wants to bring her son back to Colorado by this summer. Since he went to Texas, she hasn’t told him what has happened to her. "My son doesn’t even know what’s happening to his mother. I don’t want to tell him yet. I still act like I am good. I want my son to continue on with his life. He’s 16 so he’s gonna be a man pretty soon. So I don’t want him to worry. It’s just me," she said, "We’re Islanders. We can survive."