At
the Stand Down for Veterans event Friday, September 20, 2024, an
attendee learns more about housing resources outside City Hall.Boston’s older vets face unique challenges on the issue of homelessness
One weekend each year, hundreds of Boston’s military veterans stroll from booth to booth at the Stand Down for Veterans event, learning about life-changing resources: Where to seek help for a toothache; how to retain a lawyer; how to find an apartment.
At this year’s event, held Friday at Boston City Hall, they also learned about resources aimed at preventing homelessness. Those resources have already had a notable effect, said Andy McCawley, president and CEO of the New England Center and Home for Veterans, which organizes the event.
“When I got here in 2011, I think the number of veterans experiencing homelessness in Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was double what it is now,” McCawley said. “We’ve made great strides in reducing that.”
That observation is backed up by data: Since 2011, which was the first year that veteran status was included in the city’s annual homeless census, the number has dropped by 46.5%.
But in recent years, there has been a small but concerning uptick.
There was a 5.5% increase in homeless veterans from 2022 to 2023. And in the latest Boston homeless count, the number of veterans dealing with the problem went up 20%: from 190 to 228.
Unique housing vulnerabilities
One reason veterans struggle with homelessness is a loss of identity when returning to civilian life.
That’s something Joe Tocci, who now works with VA Boston, felt when he was discharged from the Marines in 2008.
“Going
through those struggles, those problems, those difficulties, eventually
made me succumb and really look at the whole picture and what I was
going through and realize that ‘I do need support and I do need help,’”
he said.
Locally, people on the ground have also seen other issues leading veterans to homelessness.
Daniel
Nagin, faculty director of the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard’s
WilmerHale Legal Services Center, said some of the veterans who are most
at
risk are those who left the military with a less than honorable
discharge — a demographic he sees frequently. But more recently, he’s
also seeing older veterans showing up in need of help.
“These
are folks who might be experiencing homelessness for the first time in
their lives or being at risk of homelessness for the first time in their
lives as an older member of our community,” he said.
Another
vulnerability veterans face is that the physical and mental impacts of
service — like PTSD or the effects of exposure to toxic substances —
don’t always show up immediately. For some people, they manifest only
years, or decades, down the road.
That’s
something that David Sykes, who supervises the veterans program at Pine
Street Inn, has seen. He, too, is noticing a trend of older veterans in
Boston needing services.
“Here
at the house, I want to say our average age used to be like 44 or 45,
but I think our average age is up towards 60 now,” he said.
Sykes
says while older veterans may have benefits like Social Security, those
funding sources may not cut it when the cost-of-living increases.
“We
just had a gentleman here who was living in a relative’s home and the
taxes went up or something,” he said. “The next thing you know, they’re
trying to take the home. This guy came to us. He’s in his 80s. And they
put him out of his house. Lifelong family house, he got put out of it.”
A call for empathy
Katie
Guay, a social worker with VA Boston, which is helping organize
Friday’s event, is familiar with the mix of factors making older
veterans particularly at risk.
“You
see a combination of veterans who are aging and they’re not able to
increase their income in any way and then you have the housing market
that’s so out of control and not affordable,” she said. “And then
there’s a lack of elder housing, right?”
Federally,
the Housing and Urban Development’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing
Program has been credited with decreasing the number of veterans
dealing with homelessness nationwide. And just last month, Gov. Maura
Healey signed the HERO Act, which expanded the eligibility of veterans
in Massachusetts and increased their benefits.
For Joe Tocci, something as simple as having compassion and empathy for veterans who may be struggling is key.
That
may be especially important as advocates continue to help veterans in
need — both younger and older — before they experience homelessness.
“And
I think the more that we do that personally, it’s not a save all, but
it can help a lot more,” Tocci said. “Because I know when I came home, I
was stuck in a rut. I was just a bad habit waiting for something bad to
happen.”
Esteban is a reporter for GBH News.