Some go extra mile to hire growing pool of jobless veterans, By Gregg Zoroya, March 20, 2012, USA Today: “Thomas Garlic and Steve Castillo found that their time in combat in Iraq and their service in the Army added up to little or nothing when they became civilians looking for work. ‘It was very depressing,’ says Garlic, 26, who lives with his wife and 5-year-old son outside Chicago. He was discharged in 2008 with post-traumatic stress disorder and has been largely jobless ever since. ‘Every time I would go up to bat, I would just strike out.’ ‘When I first got out (in 2008), I had a lot of motivation, a lot of high self-esteem, and everything was good,’ says Castillo, 31, a medically retired Army staff sergeant from Biloxi, Miss. But steady work eluded him as well. He lives on temporary, often-menial labor and an $1,800-per-month government disability check for his combat injuries. ‘We’re barely scratching by,’ Castillo says. As the nation grapples with finding work for its newest generation of combat veterans, job experts say that basic roadblocks persist for those willing to hire them: how to find these veterans and how to train them in new, non-military skills…”
Tag: Military service
Homeless Military Veterans
Number of homeless vets down 12 percent, report says, By Steve Vogel, December 12, 2011, Washington Post: “The number of homeless veterans in the United States declined by nearly 12 percent between January 2010 and January 2011, according to figures being released Tuesday by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan called the decline ‘nothing short of extraordinary,’ given the economic conditions in the country. The annual survey found that 67,495 veterans were homeless in the United States on a single night in January 2011, nearly 9,000 fewer than the 76,329 counted in January 2010. The figures show nearly an 11 percent drop in homelessness among veterans since January 2009, when 75,609 were recorded as homeless…”
Military Veterans and Homelessness
More Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans wind up homeless, By Gregg Zoroya, October 28, 2011, USA Today: “As wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, federal officials are seeing a growing number of young veterans on the street, according to a joint homeless study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Veterans Affairs released Friday. About 13,000 of the nation’s homeless in 2010 were ex-servicemembers between ages 18 and 30, a disproportionately large number of the nation’s overall homeless veteran population, the study says…”