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