Out of the Shadows Women Veterans and Homelessness

hi there

it’s great to be here i wanted you to

just close your eyes

and when you hear the phrase homeless

veteran

i wanted you to picture who comes to

mind

what does this person look like how are

they dressed

where did you encounter them are they by

themselves or do they have an animal

with them

and

what ends up happening with this

question

is that the entire united states

including women veterans who have been

homeless themselves

default to the same image and that image

has been embedded in our collective

consciousness

that image is a single white male

scruffy kind of grisly vietnam era

standing at an intersection and

panhandling

with a cardboard sign so

basically that’s where you’re imagining

except he’s usually standing

and that’s who you’re not imagining

women veterans

are the fastest growing demographic of

homeless veterans

and we have a lot to learn about them

because they’re not at all how we

imagined

so in keeping with the rise and shine

idea

for today the theme i’m going to look at

this in three main areas one

perception is not reality number two

hey it’s really dark in here the

connection to trauma

and last of all let their light shine

how are we going to constructively help

women veterans

to be able to experience their best

lives despite the challenges that

they’ve had

so what i wanted you to think about is

there’s a topic called

symbolic annihilation and a friend who’s

a journalism professor

told me about this she said that

basically the media sets the agenda

for what we understand about society and

what we prioritize

as well and symbolic annihilation means

when a group of people let’s say women

veterans who are homeless

is so not regularly depicted in the

media

and by media she means print regular

media as well as entertainment media

like television

the effect that it has is it

marginalizes them

it trivializes their issues and we

forget to even remember

they’re at the table and our brains go

back to

the one and only thing that we’ve

that we’ve seen so because women

veterans who are homeless are a little

hard to encounter you might not realize

that you

might already know some i’m using

material from one of my surveys that’s

reached almost 4

000 women veterans across the country

and i wanted to share with you some of

their own words

about homelessness and i’m just going to

click through these so you can see

what’s on the screen people don’t

realize that there are lots of women

veterans who are homeless

as a woman veteran i felt like i was

muted i wasn’t heard

nobody believes i’m dead i just didn’t

expect it to take this long

to get myself together after moving back

home

you’ve been sleeping on the floor of my

parents house for over a year

[Music]

women veterans are not even counted it

is even harder

if you have children we are dealing with

an ungodly amount of stress

shame and suffering and remember these

are all different when that matters

making these comments lack of safety in

the home can drive women veterans

into a housing crisis and finally

more needs to be done to help these

women veterans

especially if their homelessness is due

to trauma and again with 4 000 women

veterans

there were not a lot to choose from but

this is just a sampling

so i want to turn to the first point

which

is perception is not reality

the first question you might have is how

many women veterans are there

and then how many are homeless so

basically you can keep in your mind the

round number

two million women veterans alive in the

us today

world war ii to the president of those

how many would be homeless

will we default to a count that the

federal government puts out every year

in about

may hud does it and it’s based on

something called the plane in time now

which we do here and

really happens in communities all over

america

volunteers fan out into the the january

night uh with a little bit of training

and they estimate

how many people they’ve seen who are

homeless generally and oftentimes if

they’re wearing some camouflage stuff

then

honestly they might just have gotten

from goodwill they think okay

veteran and there isn’t always a lot of

conversation about it and then they put

that point in time count figure

together with everyone who moves through

the shelter system

or other services that are directed to

homeless people

over the course of the year and then in

may they come up with this count

and within the count they say this is

how many veterans were homeless

and then they say how many women

veterans so two million

women veterans how many do you think

they find we’re homeless

4 000 now that doesn’t even make sense

that is one-fifth of one percent

of all the women veterans in the u.s and

just to give you a comparison

in the surveys that i’ve done sixty

percent of the women veterans i’ve

surveyed never had any problems with

homelessness but forty percent

had some sort of problem what’s forty

percent

of two million eight hundred thousand so

i’m not saying my results are accurate

but look at that spread four thousand to

eight hundred thousand

it’s likely that the truth is somewhere

between the two

so one of the first things i encountered

when i was doing this research

is that va has actually had a

calculation of its own they have a few

homelessness researchers

who’ve done great work and if you read

the research literature

they came up with their own formula

poverty is a risk factor for

homelessness

as in as his chronic mental health

issues substance abuse alcoholism

but poverty isn’t is an obvious one so

they said okay

10 of women veterans are in poverty

and of course that changes by state some

places have a higher figure

of women in poverty but let’s just use

10 across the board

then within that bucket of 10 there’s a

range

13 to 15 are likely to be homeless

so suddenly that changes things quite a

bit on the national level that takes you

from 4

000 to 26 000 to 30 000 as the range

and the good thing about this formula is

it’s really really versatile

we can also look at it for texas texas

150 000 plus women veterans

15 000 in poverty 2 000 to 2 300

likely to be homeless right now what

sort of provisions are being made for

them

bear county we actually have the largest

number of women veterans in the entire

state

by county so 20 000 women veterans

2 000 living in poverty 260 to 300 who

are homeless right now

and we’ve never seen one of them

panhandling at an intersection

and the reality is when i traveled

around the country interviewing women

veterans who had been homeless

they said you’re never going to either

that would just be the most shameful

thing that they could imagine

it’s not the badge that they want to

wear to the world so they

are hiding out of a plane site

so we’ve already seen there’s a problem

of account

how about what’s included in the

definition of homelessness

again more than 10 years ago

an idea called coach surfing you’re

doubling up with family and friends

it’s a very prevalent mode for women

veterans to be homeless

in it actually was considered

homelessness so

advocate i know would tell people get to

va if you’re actually homeless now get

some

get some resources that would help you

then the federal government

changed the definition of homelessness

they called that

couchsurfing precarious housing and they

pushed it out of the definition

so we’ve got two problems here with

recognizing women veterans who are

homeless

the first is they’re not going to be

found in the count

and the second is they’re mostly not

even found in the federal definition

and yet many are functionally homeless

we’ve had a focus for too long on

chronic illnesses

because that’s the easiest mode to

recognize that is the guy at the

intersection

he’s maybe been homeless for 10 or 20

years he may be homeless for another 10

or 20 more

because he has intractable issues that

do not succumb to treatment very easily

but think of how many other moments of

homelessness there are

including temporary you get on your feet

and then another thing knocks you down

let’s say you’re a single mom with kids

and you’re staying at a friend’s house

you stay there until you can’t stay

there any longer maybe you get a better

paying job

you’re out of homelessness but then

there’s a setback because you were

pretty marginal to start with in terms

of your earning

and now you’re back in homelessness

again so while we’re way too focused on

chronic homelessness

just remember it’s not the only time

there is but unfortunately

charitable giving as well as the

services that are out there

very much geared to chronic homelessness

another question is how long does it

take for someone to become homeless

so it’s pretty obvious or i’ll tell you

this

that there was only one model for how we

would

conceive of a homeless veteran and it

was male and is very much that person in

the beginning slide

very little research done on women very

little understanding of it

so they just kind of assumed women

veterans would fit right into the male

model

in general it had taken male veterans

10 years to become homeless and if you

think about why it makes sense

they come back from deployment they want

to reintegrate their community

and then over time let’s say they have

ptsd and it’s not treated and it’s

causing other

physical health problems like heart

disease and

anger issues that maybe they’re

self-medicating

oh suddenly they’re losing their

marriage

they’re losing their job they’re losing

housing

and after 10 years now they’re really in

trouble so the expectation was that

women veteran veterans would be the same

way

and i figured i just wanted to find out

if that was true so i asked them in my

survey

how long after you left the military did

you start to struggle with homelessness

if you did and of the ones who did

a full third it was in within the first

six months

to a year apparently anyone is

struggling 10 years out

it’s that severe there were even women

veterans and not just a few

who said they were struggling with it

before they even left the military

as they were anticipating they had

nowhere to go for them and their

children

so even our model of how long this takes

which intervention and resources are

based on

it doesn’t really fit women veterans

the last issue is all women veterans use

va right

because they’re eligible yeah that would

work except that

all veterans generally aren’t enrolled

in va

women veterans even less so and here’s

an extra wrinkle that’s very very

problematic

for decades many women veterans

were affirmatively told you are not a

veteran

and you are not eligible for resources

so women veterans

my age and older and maybe even a little

younger than me

that’s a very common situation and down

the road they meet someone

like a neighbor who’s serving or their

grandson is or something like that

and that person says about grandma you

were in the navy

how come you don’t go to va and that’s

the first time they’ve realized they’re

eligible

so even in my survey i learned from

women veterans don’t ask them explicitly

are you a veteran that’s a word that’s

freighted with a lot of controversy and

conflict

just ask them did you serve in the us

military they know how to answer that

so very different situation now what we

want to look at

is the connection to trauma what has

changed with this current crop of

veterans

which is now we have a lot of women

there’s 15

of women in the 15 of the active duty

military is women 18 in the garden

reserve

so not quite one in five but quite a lot

of women

and those will all become veterans well

in my survey

a full one-third of them can see in

combat that’s very new

but what does combat cause that we know

about causes ptsd

among other things not always

but there’s a definitely do you know

what causes ptsd even

more than combat military sexual trauma

now that’s the thing that happens to

male veterans women veterans transgender

veterans

and certainly not the exclusive domain

of women but the percentage of women it

happens to is extremely high compared to

men

because there are so few of them so in

my survey

whether women veterans experience total

totalness or not

a full 50 of them had a ptsd

diagnosis not just their opinion

40 percent of them had experienced

military sexual trauma

and 20 percent and experience greatness

in the military

and when those numbers first started

coming in i thought this is shocking

this can’t possibly be true

that just seems so high one in five

imagine

joining the military at 18 with your

four friends and

it’s not you it’s one of your friends so

i reached out to rand corporation who

does the definitive research on

the military workspace and they were

like oh no

that’s extremely accurate very troubling

so they already know the military sexual

trauma which is the whole collection

of injuries and offenses everything from

gender harassment

to sexual harassment to sexual assault

to rape to gang rape that’s

all military sexual trauma they already

know now

that there’s a connection for women

veterans male veterans transgender

veterans

to homelessness yet every single time

they look at it

but it’s something that the research

literature really hasn’t reflected

until now and it’s super important

because if we go back to the federal

definition

and then how women veterans are counted

in the count

can you think that trauma would be a

barrier

to why you want to sleep outside or why

you’d want to stay in the shelter

including if you had children with you

women veterans

for the most part express that they are

not interested

in being triggered and being

re-traumatized and

exposing their children to this so our

entire model

of how we help veterans which is male

veterans

really doesn’t fit the crop of women

veterans that we have now especially

given

the prevalence of sexual trauma

so in my survey two versions of it

two years apart two totally different

populations i asked them

if you ever were homeless after you left

the military

what of these choices did you use and i

put in all the federal choices

sleeping outdoors staying in abandoned

buildings that sort of thing

and their top three choices were the

same in both years

that’s significant number one

couchsurfing doubling up staying with

family and friends the very thing

that they’re not allowed to call

homelessness anymore

number two staying in an unsafe

relationship

such as one characterized by domestic

violence of all the things i’ve

published on this

that’s the one that almost went viral it

received so much attention

it is a taboo topic and women veterans

could literally articulate

i knew i was training my personal safety

to keep a roof over our heads that’s how

serious it is

and number three of their choices was

sleeping in their vehicles

of those three the only one that’s

included in the federal

definition explicitly is sleeping in

their vehicles

so you see there’s a big gender

difference you’re trinkling because of

trauma

with how people want to accommodate

their own struggles with housing and

homelessness

so that’s the bad news how do we

help women veterans three choices

goldilocks papa bear mama bear

baby bear be a benefactor create housing

resources or support them

that are trauma informed create bridge

loans that will help women who aren’t

chronically homeless avert homelessness

to a psa that raises the profile of

women veterans

be an engaged citizen use that formula

now that you know it apply it to your

own community

check out how many resources accommodate

women veterans

you’re liable to find very few quiz your

elected officials do they even know

about this population

and what sort of accommodations are they

working on and last

be an ally every conversation about

veterans

every ceremony every recognition 15 to

18 percent

make it about women veterans they are

not in the view

and you have the power to insist on that

happening together

let’s see what we can do to help women

veterans rise and shine

[Applause]

you