California's first Female Veteran Stand Down (for homeless women vets)

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(Cross-posted from Veterans Forum)

Homeless Women Veterans Need More Clinical Resources, Open Ears

The Huffington Post Jessica Prois First Posted: 04/12/11 10:51 AM ET Updated: 04/12/11 10:54 PM


Paulina Hicks has always done things systematically. She went to college for civil engineering, enlisted in the military out of veritable love of her country and always kept a cinched-tight savings account. Now, as a former military officer, she can't quite understand how her life escaped her fixed grip, forcing her to assume a new title: homeless veteran.


I meet with Hicks at her home in Cabrillo Villages, a U.S. Vets-funded women's living center in Long Beach, Calif. She's friendly and circumspect all at once, but she eases into talking by passing me some papers -- face down and neatly stapled. The papers contain a few excerpts from her impassioned journal, recounting how she was verbally and physically assaulted and raped during her nine years in the service, leading to PTSD, homelessness and living in her car.

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The federal government's first-ever Veteran Homelessness study released earlier this year revealed veterans are 50 percent more likely to become homeless than other Americans. What's more, the report states, "Female veterans are twice as likely to be in the homeless population as they are to be the U.S. adult female population."


President Obama's administration has called for the end of veteran homelessness by 2015. But that won't be possible unless more is done to understand and tackle the complexities of homelessness, says Victoria Curtin, program director at the Naomi House, a Veterans Affairs-funded recovery-oriented program for female vets in Los Angeles. She says more help is needed to address the unique challenges women vets face and the reasons they become homeless.


Some of these female vet-specific issues include having to leave children when they enlist, dealing with custody battles upon returning and recovering in shame from military sexual trauma, Curtin says. She insists more clinical help is needed for female vets and that too often women's programs attempt to mirror men's programs. Typically, help for men is geared toward drug and alcohol abuse and addiction.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/homeless-women-veterans_n_847304.html