Rep. Al Green ensures funding for veterans housing program in Houston
Rebuilding Together – Houston, which is widely acknowledged for offering affordable housing programs, made an announcement recently that it will get a $400,000 grant from HUD. This is particularly allotted for rebuilding Together – Houston’s Veterans Housing program. Disabled World has the details:
U.S. Congressman Al Green was instrumental in securing the funds for Rebuilding Together – Houston that will expand its capacity to provide home repairs to Houston’s low-income and disabled veterans who are also homeowners. The repairs will be made free of charge. The grant is a part of the fiscal year 2010 federal funding legislation for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Houston is home to many of our nation’s retired armed services heroes,” said Jim Fonteno, Board Member of Rebuilding Together – Houston. “It is important that we help them stay in their homes, safe and secure. We will be providing the repairs and modifications that they could not otherwise afford.”
Rebuilding Together - Houston will be targeting low-income veterans who own their homes, as well as disabled veterans who need modifications made to their homes so that they can live more easily with their physical limitations. Rebuilding Together will leverage the federal funds with both skilled and unskilled volunteer labor and donated materials, creating more than four dollars in the value of repairs accomplished for every dollar spent.
Gary Officer, President and CEO of Rebuilding Together said, “I am grateful to Congressman Green for his steadfast support for the efforts of Rebuilding Together. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who have served our nation in uniform, and this partnership between the federal government and Rebuilding Together is a fitting way to make good on that debt.”
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Vets can help in economic development, says state official
According to retired Marine Corps Col, Rocky J. Chavez, who is the undersecretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, hiring veterans is a sure-fire way not only to help returning military personnel have livelihoods, but also to aid in national economy. Monterey Herald has the details:
He cited Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book “Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,” as a guide for the future.
“Israel is one of the smallest countries,” Chavez said, “but it’s No. 4 among countries traded on the stock exchange, after the United States, China and the European Union.”
A key to Israel’s success, he said, has been a requirement that all of its citizens — men and women — serve in the nation’s military.
They emerge at age 20 to 22 to go to universities or into business having “learned in the military to be accountable, responsible, to work as a team.” Veterans are highly prized as students, employees and business leaders.
Singapore may lead in higher education and Finland in the number of new inventions per capita, Chavez said, but Israel’s success is founded on “a positive entrepreneurial attitude.
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Stress disorder increases chances of dementia for senior veterans
According to US researchers, senior veterans who have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder have greatly higher chances of getting dementia than other veterans. The Vancouver Sun has the details:
The findings, presented at an Alzheimer’s Association meeting in Vienna, are the first to link PTSD — a debilitating anxiety disorder that can be caused by wartime trauma — with dementia.
“The million-dollar question is why,” Dr. Ronald Petersen of the Alzheimer’s Association and an Alzheimer’s researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a telephone interview.
Some studies have found PTSD was linked with diminished brain volume in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory and stress response.
Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, which is marked by a loss of memory and other cognitive, or thinking, abilities, including the ability to speak, identify objects or think abstractly.
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New program set to assist homeless veterans in Somers Point
According to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, there are 107,000 military veterans who are without a home to live in on any given night. But all that is going to change, as there’s a plan by Community Quest to build an apartment complex for veterans in Somers Point. Press of Atlantic City has the details:
Benner, a Navy veteran of Vietnam, was doing everything he could to try to keep his house on Jefferson Court in Somers Point. But after being laid off from his longtime casino job following a car accident, he was forced to declare bankruptcy in the fall.
“I figure by September I won’t have a house,” Benner said.
Benner isn’t alone. Jay Smith, who served in the Air Force in the early 1970s, has been living out of his RV for the past few years. For now, his van is parked in front of a friend’s place in Hammonton.
“I’ve got a pension, but it’s not enough to get a house or apartment,” Smith said. “What little income you get goes to food and medicine … I sit and sleep in a lawn chair. I have a roof over my head. I’m not complaining.”
A new housing program, including a project starting up in Benner’s hometown of Somers Point and in Tuckerton, Ocean County, might be the salvation veterans such as him need. And next year, when the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to fund community groups focusing on at-risk veterans, programs like it may advance the VA’s goal to end veteran homelessness by 2015.
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Veterans depart for Korea to celebrrate 59th anniversary
Commonwealth veterans congregated together yesterday at Gapyeong, South Korea to commemorate an important Korean War 59 years ago, which they won. The veterans marched to the Canadian Korean War Memorial,which was the venue of the four day battle. AFP reports:
Wearing purple or green berets and sporting blue grey or green uniforms decked with medals, some 30 Canadian veterans saluted solemnly in front of the monument engraved with a Canadian flag.
Scores of other Korean War veterans from Australia, New Zealand and Britain joined them in a moment of silence as a bugler played reveille for the lost souls.
“That was the biggest battle we were involved in,” Canadian Kim Reynolds, 83, said of the fighting in the rugged area 55 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Seoul.
His platoon was on a ridge as another Canadian platoon on the next ridge came under attack from Chinese troops after sundown.
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Veterans advocate for continuous medical services
Several groups which represent military veterans around the country are continuously crusading for proper health care for fellow veterans. This is in opposition of the medical services law that attempts to limit the access of veterans. Government Executive has the details:
The lobbying comes despite assurances from the Obama administration and key lawmakers that the law protects military personnel and veterans. But the Veterans of Foreign Wars is refusing to accept the claims at face value.
“We don’t want assurances,” VFW national spokesman Joe Davis said. “We want it written into law.”
The concerns stem from imprecise language in the health law signed by President Obama on March 23. Under that law Americans must buy private health insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty. However, citizens don’t have to purchase health insurance if they have “minimum essential coverage,” such as employer-sponsored plans.
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Report reveals loopholes in veterans’ medical care
An Institute of Medicine report was recently released, advocating for agencies in the US government to improve the health care services of veterans coming from Afghanistan and Iraq. The report also prompts the government to extend this medical assistance to the families and neighborhood of the veterans. Homeless Veterans Provider has the details:
Veterans today differ from those who returned from earlier wars, said Dr. Albert W. Wu, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of the committee that prepared the report for the institute, an independent advisory arm of the National Academy of Sciences.
The nearly 2 million veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are older and many more are married than veterans from other wars, he noted. Today, the average enlisted person is 27, compared with an average age of 18 during World War II, Wu said, and more than half are married and have children.
Today’s veterans also have a higher survival rate after being wounded — three times higher than from the Vietnam War, Wu said.
“People are surviving with pretty devastating injuries,” he said. “Consequently, there are almost 44,000 veterans with traumatic brain injury to be cared for.
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State association prompts veterans services fracture
Several veteran personnel gathered recently to establish a state association with the main focus of getting certification. Gary Chalupa from Lancaster County was appointed the president of the Nebraska Association of Professional Veterans Advocates, and according to him, the group feels that it’s time to steer to another direction for their needs to be properly met. Journal Star has more:
Chalupa acknowledged “a problem with delivery of services in some counties. We felt the solution to this would be to mandate continuing education hours for all county service officers.
“And because of that, some of us felt going in a different direction is maybe the right thing to do.”
That represents a split from the Nebraska Association of County Veterans Services Officers, the mainstream affiliation for dozens of county service providers in the state over the past 60 years.
“We’re going to extend invitations out to maybe another 12-15 counties, at least initially,” Chalupa said, “and see where we go from there.”
John Liebsack of the Nebraska Veterans of Foreign Wars said he and others who serve on the Nebraska Veterans Council were so upset with the older county organization’s refusal to support a state training mandate that they recently severed ties that go back “as long as I can remember.”
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Veterans unite back home
To be able to gather more support when rallying to receive proper health benefits, veterans form groups and help each other when they get home. One of these groups is the local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Association, where Henry Alfaro is the president. Lompoc Record has more:
More than 35 years after his war service ended, the outspoken leader of Chapter 982, who still suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), fights to get health benefits and other assistance for veterans of a variety of wars.
It’s people like Alfaro and his work through the VVA that the California Department of Veterans Affairs (CalVet) are once again looking to recruit.
The department announced a new program this week called Operation Welcome Home, which is designed to help all California veterans re-acclimate themselves after their discharge. It’s focus is to get the state’s veterans all of the benefits they’ve earned through their service to the country.
“The real solution is all of you, who will be a seed to get information out there,” CalVet Undersecretary Rocky Chavez told local vets who attended at meeting this week in Santa Maria.
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New Veterans Center in Bend opens
War veterans, together with dignitaries, joined forces yesterday to officially open a new Veterans Center situated in Bend – a topnotch resource center in that side of the Cascades. The event was attended by Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore, who was in attendance just in time for the ribbon cutting. KTVZ has more:
And with one snip of the ceremonial scissors, frustration was replaced with hope, relief and a sense of excitement about the services set to be offered to veterans returning from war, as well as their families.
The center will be ready, just in time for a very important homecoming. Nearly 2,700 Oregon Army National Guard troops are coming home from a nearly year-long deployment to Iraq, the largest Guard deployment to a battle zone since World War II.
Word came Wednesday that the Central Oregon demobilization ceremony, one of several around the state, will take place on Sunday, April 18 at 1 p.m. at Vince Genna Stadium in Bend. About 200 Central Oregonians are among the citizen soldiers who are due home very soon.
“Whether its employment, counseling or health care,” Wyden said in a short speech, “every one of our veterans after they have served us go gallantly overseas deserve a soft landing when they come back, and we’re going to stay at it until they get it.”
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