About 3,328 female veterans are homeless in the United States, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). That number may seem small, but it doesn’t account for women who are sleeping on friends’ couches, staying with family, or afraid to leave abusive situations. While the VA and HUD don’t keep track of the factors that contribute to female veteran homelessness, there are many theories.
“America as a whole has forgotten about the women,” said Jas Boothe, a U.S. Army Veteran and founder of the nonprofit Final Salute, Inc., an organization to help female veterans get back on their feet.
Boothe founded Final Salute in 2010 after her own experience caused her to become aware of the lack of services available for struggling female veterans, especially those with children. Final Salute has three transitional homes for female veterans and their children, with the capacity to support 20 women. The organization, which places its primary focus on helping women in the DC Metro region, operates two transitional homes in Northern Virginia. It also operates a third home in Ohio and offers a variety of services across the country, including grants and no-interest loans to female veterans as well as current guardsmen and reservists who are homeless or on the verge of homelessness.
“If you’re a man there are 500 transitional housing facilities, there are hundreds of programs to help you,” she said. “When it comes to women the welfare office is good enough for you.”
Boothe sought help for herself and her young son after losing her home in Hurricane Katrina and receiving a cancer diagnosis, both shortly before she was scheduled to deploy with her Army Reserve unit. She reached out to the VA but found little in the way of assistance, she said.
When someone suggested she apply for welfare assistance, she was deeply hurt.
“That’s not a line that I should ever be in,” Boothe said. “No disrespect for the women who are on welfare, but as a person who has served my country honorably, raised my right hand to say that I am willing to die in support of my country, there should be something else for me, but because I’m a woman there isn’t.”
Homelessness among female veterans has been discussed in variety of forums, from Congressional hearings to the Oprah Winfrey Show, but like Boothe, many female veterans feel more outreach is needed.
Ending female veteran homelessness falls under the scope of the VA’s plan to end all veteran homelessness by 2015, but many programs are not equipped to meet women’s needs. Due to the shortage of supportive services for homeless female veterans nationwide, Boothe said she has been receiving plenty of calls from women in need.
“They actually find me pretty easily,” said Boothe.” I’ve never had to go out and look for them or say ‘Hey, Final Salute is doing this.’ We definitely have more people than we can help, and the VA is our largest referral source.”
The National Resource Directory (NRD), the U.S. Government inter-agency online portal for service members, veterans, their families and caregivers, currently lists 21 services for female veterans. Nationally, the VA’s Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program funds eight programs for women in California, Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
According to data collected by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV), many housing facilities for veterans don’t allow children, despite the Department of Defense (DoD) estimate that more than 30,000 single mothers have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and that as of 2006 more than 40 percent of women in the U.S. Military have children.
“Programs that support women need to automatically be ready to support children,” Boothe said. “Half of our [female veteran] population is single mothers, so if you do land that good job at $15 or $20 an hour, factor in three children and you’re going to need daycare.”
The NCHV cites a recent survey by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicating that more than 60 percent of organizations with GPD programs did not have adequate resources to provide housing for the children of veterans. Fifty-two organizations provided housing, but 70 percent had restrictions on age and number of children.
Boothe said of the over 500 women who have applied for Final Salute’s help, unemployment and underemployment are probably the largest causes of homelessness, although the statistics are often skewed in favor of hot button issues. In a recent interview she did with SBS Dateline in Australia, sexual trauma was named as the leading cause of veteran women’s homelessness. “Maybe five percent of the women who have applied for our programs have mentioned some type of military sexual trauma,” she said. “It’s not fair to the women who are actually going through these issues for other reasons for someone to put that label on it because that’s what they think.”
Another misconception Boothe sees is that women currently in the military, reservists and guardsmen don’t need help.
“When they go on their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan they don’t always have a job to come back to or a support system,” she said.
