Member Randy sent me this today and it burns me up for any number of reasons. We live in the greatest country on the planet and we cannot provide for our own. We ship boatloads of money overseas to Muslim countries like Egypt and Pakistan who are noticeably hostile to our endeavours. Let’s set that aside for a moment and dig deeper.

The article mentions “affordable ” housing for Vets but misses the mark. Is that a description for marginal housing-a toilet and a hot plate? Affordable to me implies the Veteran will be paying for it out of his or her pocket. The article mentions that the Pueblo Housing Authority reclaimed these boarded up buildings and fashioned 16 units specifically for homeless Vets. This begs many questions. Did they do a census of homeless Vets and arrive at the magic figure of sixteen individuals county-wide who would benefit from this largesse? What happens if the numbers are far higher? Do they have provisions for a lottery in place in the event the numbers of Vets exceeds the available units? Is the prognostication of eventual usage predicated on single occupancy or are they planning on packing them in dormitory-style six deep to a unit? While I admire the munificence of what they are doing in Pueblo, Colorado, I question the implementation.

As most of us know, these things metastasize over time. Eventually the administrators’ paychecks overwhelm the fund set aside for this purpose. One homeless person ends up being supervised by three or four $80,000+ per year salaried “homelessness facilitators”. I see many similarities with the vA’s system. They begin by arriving at some magic number of souls who need saving. Next, they formulate a snappy sounding acronym to “brand” it and launch it to great fanfare. How about STARME? Special Team to Assess Recent Military Employees. Instead of hiring more raters to reduce the backlog, they hire Senator Snakebite’s son fresh out of college with a degree in Humanomics and give him a desk at the Central Office. Naturally, he has enormous debts from all his Pell grants so he must be remunerated at “the going rate” of $80+K/year or more. He’ll need assistants, office space and a large budget to flit from city to city to ascertain the depth and breadth of the problem first hand. By the time they get around to apportioning monies out for the Vet who is home-challenged, there is little or none left that can be tapped. More’s the pity. They tried.

Remember Star Wars V when Yoda admonished young Skywalker the padewan after his failure to raise his X-wing out of the swamp? “To try implies defeat. Do. Or do not.” A very simple concept and one the vA is sadly unable to fathom. Congressman Filner aptly stated this to the Hon. Allison Hickey when he defined the definition of insanity as “someone who tries the same thing over and over in hopes of seeing a different outcome.” I think that sums it up.

Oddly the article mentions neither the contributions of our veterans Administration nor the those of the Colorado Department of Veterans Affairs (assuming there is one). After parsing Posada Inc. all over the internet, I found a reference to an outfit that specializes in Bed and Breakfasts in Vermont! I assume it’s the same one that Pueblo’s finest partnered with. How fitting. Who better than a trendy Bed and Breakfast consulting firm with twenty employees to design and supervise the conversion of 16 units into affordable housing for those who shall have borne the battle? Well, let’s see. Did anyone check to find a Veteran-owned construction company who might be interested? Volunteers? Funding from the very Administration tasked with this responsibility?

Once again, we see the Good Ol’ Boy Network hard at work making money for the 1% and paying lip service to the 99%. However in this case its the grand poohbahs of Pueblo who go to Vermont to find a cure for Veteran homelessness in their own front yard. I’m sure the Pueblo folks meant well and I am heartened that some effort was expended towards this worthy goal. I am also reminded of the treatment I and my brothers received after coming home after the war. I ended up on food stamps and Medicaid  in the winter of 1973 after a hepatitis relapse. My story isn’t one of desperation akin to the travails of the Afghan/Iraqi Vets today. They will have it far, far worse than us. Their numbers are swelling daily like the vA backlog and guess who doesn’t have a STARME plan formulated or even a clue of the brewing storm? Remember-they are still myopically engrossed in the present homelessness imbroglio and fail to acknowledge this new threat building. Woe is vA. You can never rest on your laurels in this business.

P.S. Mark my words. When funding for this initiative dries up, Pueblo’s Veterans will be homeless again. This is often the case. A grand gesture is made with no supportive follow through.