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 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.

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"

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.