Veterans of recent wars add to homeless rosters

David Kihara

Thursday, May 12, 2005 | 9:34 a.m.

Gary Andrey was drafted into the Marines at the age of 23, served three years in the military including seven months in Vietnam and suffered several minor wounds while in Southeast Asia.

He is now living temporarily at a Budget Suites hotel and, according to the 49-year-old unemployed veteran, is facing homelessness because he can't pay the $225 weekly rent at the hotel.

"It's rough," he said. "Trying to find a place to stay is hard in Las Vegas."

Andrey was just one of more than 200 homeless or near-homeless veterans who took part in Wednesday's "Veterans Stand Down," an annual event sponsored by the nonprofit organization U.S. VETS of Las Vegas.

For one day multiple agencies and businesses supply food, clothing, haircuts and medical and dental check ups, among other services, to the estimated 5,000 homeless veterans in Las Vegas. The stand down took place at a nonprofit organization on E. Washington Avenue.

There are approximately 275,000 homeless veterans nationwide, according to the event's coordinators.

"We want to give them one day of relief and give them the direction for a better future," said Shalimar Cabrera, an AmeriCorps director and the chairperson for the Las Vegas Veterans Stand Down Committee.

The reasons for the number of homeless veterans are multitude, Cabrera said. Some suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and therefore self-medicate, while others abuse substances such as alcohol or illegal drugs. Some just have fallen on hard times.

While many of the 211 veterans who attended the event served in Vietnam, there is a growing trend of younger soldiers who served in the Gulf War or even Iraq becoming homeless after serving, Cabrera said.

Ermelindo Rodriguez, who served in the Marine Corps in Iraq, is one of those younger homeless veterans. Rodriguez, 34, returned to the United States from Iraq in November after serving 1 1/2 years but had no home nor job nor money.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Rodriguez said he served mostly in Najaf, building roads and providing combat support.

He recalled driving in caravans along supply routes and being fired upon and returning fire in absolute darkness. The caravans drove after dark and kept their headlights off to try to avoid detection.

"We'd return fire and hope for the best," Rodriguez said. "It's so dark that we didn't know if we were hitting enemy or friends. I would ask myself, 'Am I shooting at someone I know?' "

Rodriguez had sent his military pay to his mother while he was stationed in Iraq, but when he was discharged in November, he discovered that his father had died and his mother had moved in with his brother because she had so little money. Rather than be a burden to the family, he packed up his car and lived in it for two weeks.

He eventually made his way from California to Las Vegas, where he found employment with the assistance of U.S. VETS. Rodriguez was volunteering at the event on Wednesday.

"Saying that I served in Iraq hurt me more than helped me," he said. "No one helped when I got back. People just assumed I was crazy."

Finding employment for veterans who are homeless is an especially dire situation because of the many hurdles the homeless face, regardless of their military past.

Patricia Logan, a veterans career consultant with Nevada JobConnect, a local employment agency, said that homeless veterans, like many of the homeless, often can't get jobs because they lack simple identification such as Social Security cards or valid drivers licenses. Few employers will give an applicant without proper identification a job, she said.

The lack of a consistent address or reliable transportation also scares many employers from hiring homeless vets as well, said Logan, who served 26 years in the Air Force.

Greg Payne, 51, knows all too well the difficulties of finding employment in Las Vegas as a homeless veteran. Payne was reluctant to discuss his military past, saying only that he began serving in the Air Force in 1966.

Payne said he is homeless and has neither a home nor a vehicle, but declined to discuss details of how he became homeless.

"I got only two words for you -- homeless vet," he said by way of explanation.

Payne said he was pleased that soldiers returning from Iraq were receiving recognition for serving their country, but held some bitterness over the way soldiers returning from Vietnam were treated when they returned home.

He named the shoddy treatment Vietnam veterans received as at least partly contributing to the high number of veterans who became homeless after serving in that war.

"They didn't pay attention to us, and it grew into a problem," he said.