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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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 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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