Friday, December 10, 2004

Homeless vets from Iraq showing up in Shelters

Hat tip to Em, so far according to the UPI Story there have been only 50 Iraq Veterans that have shown up homeless shelters so far. It's the other numbers they quote that worry me, the article states that there are 500 thousand homeless vets at any given time. Over the past ten years I know personally that there have been vast improvements to how we out process our active duty military members when they leave the the service. The issue that this war is bringing up is how are we taking care of our reservists? It's not a clean process like the active duty has; many of them return, demobilize and do not have jobs waiting. Maybe an improved transition to civilian life program? War makes it especially hard for them, they get called up, head over, return, are set free and are called up 6 months later to go back. There are some great companies out there that support the military reservists that work for them but in general our reservist don't have a job to return to. With the OP Tempo right now, hiring a reservist is shaky business and for the reservist what kind of good job can you find for 6 months at a time? Wish there were some easy answers but I can't think of them, maybe it's something that the higher up's should look into?

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