Making a home for every homeless vet

LOS ANGELES — On a block of Sunset Boulevard near Normandie Avenue in Hollywood, Christopher “Cat” Gill is a fixture. His shopping cart is overflowing. Newspaper clippings about his latest obsession, the Super Bowl, are plastered on a street facade. He’s animated. He paces. He bursts into laughter. He bounces from one topic to the next.

One day last month he decided to shave. He grabbed a broken disposable razor from his cart and dry-shaved vigorously, looking at his reflection in a cigar shop window. He pulled back his long blond hair into a ponytail. The razor snapped in two. His haphazard grooming revealed a handsome face and winsome smile.

That’s Cat at his best, and maybe, for a brief moment, one imagined Navy Petty Officer Christopher Gill in uniform, on a submarine in the Atlantic Ocean in the 1970s.

Or was it the ’80s? He threw out both dates during a manic diatribe.

One thing is clear.

“I’ve been on and off on the streets since … after my severe pinched nerve,” he said.

In December, Phoenix announced with much fanfare that it was the first city to meet the White House goal. Salt Lake City quickly followed.

But in a city like Los Angeles, which has 30 times the number of homeless veterans than Phoenix had, the challenges are daunting.

Nowhere is the get-them-off-the-streets-first approach more intense than here, where the mild weather creates a more welcoming environment for the homeless.

The city has the highest number of homeless veterans in the U.S. — almost 6,000 on any given night (Phoenix had 200). More than a third have been homeless for at least a year, and more than two-thirds served in the U.S. armed forces after Vietnam. Fewer than 20 percent have seen combat.

Average age: 51. Fifty-two percent are black, 31 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic and 4 percent Asian, Native American and other. By far, the vast majority are men (94 percent).

Often, homeless veterans have mental health, medical or social issues. Forty-five percent have a substance abuse problem, and half have a serious psychiatric disorder, such as psychosis or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Twenty-seven percent have both.

The VA has partnered with counties and nonprofit groups to set up Veteran Courts to help divert veteran inmates from incarceration and into homeless and mental health treatment.

“We’re providing many, many exits out of homelessness,” said Michelle Wildy, chief of community care for the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System. “The way we’ve been able to do it is by meeting veterans where they’re at. We engage them on the streets.”

Staffing in her division grew from 35 in 2009 to 400 today.

Los Angeles has been ground zero for many VA pilot programs targeting homeless veterans. “If it can be done in L.A., it can be done anywhere,” Wildy said.

Craig Joyce rounded up his ACT (assertive community treatment) team: a social worker, a nurse practitioner and a peer support specialist (a veteran who has been homeless and now helps others get off the streets). Sometimes a psychologist or licensed nurse comes along.

The team has a morning huddle every day and assigns team members to various clients. They may go alone or in pairs.

“We meet five clients in one day,” said Joyce, program manager for the VA’s Enhanced Housing First program. “They have all the resources they need from one group of people.”

Referrals come from multiple sources — from groups such as PATH and Housing Works (which addresses issues of AIDS and homelessness) to churches and business owners.

They reach out to clients on the streets and at shelters. They know where they sleep or panhandle. If and when they get them off the streets, they visit them in their apartments.

On a day late in January, the first stop was at Raymond McGinnis’ place in Van Nuys, a San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles. A severe alcoholic, the Navy veteran had lived on the streets of Hollywood for 17 years. His life was sidetracked by a car accident that required hip replacement, he said.

“That’s it. I lost my place,” he said, sitting in a messy apartment.

Janel Perez, the nurse practitioner on the team, monitored his blood pressure. Slightly elevated, but the medication he was prescribed seemed to be working.

McGinnis plopped in a chair and talked reluctantly about his life: a sister in Utah, a son who blames him for the breakup of his family and hasn’t spoken to him in five years.

Friends? “Most of them are dead or in jail,” he said, his breath pungent from alcohol in the middle of the morning.

More than a year ago, McGinnis was living on the streets. The VA’s outreach got him temporary shelter and, eventually, an apartment.

“I’m enjoying it,” he said. “I have a shower. I have a toilet. I have a TV, a radio.”

He’s talking about going back to work.

It may not happen, but McGinnis is not on the street more than a year after getting a housing voucher.

“Before, having a ticket off the street was having AIDS,” Holmes said.

Now veterans hold the winning ticket called HUD-VASH, which stands for the Department of Housing and Urban Development's and Veterans Affairs' jointly run Supportive Housing program.

“That’s where the money is, and there’s less focus on civilians,” he said.

The program combines rental assistance for homeless veterans with case management and clinical services by the VA.

HUD has awarded funding for approximately 10,000 HUD-VASH vouchers almost every year since 2008. Every state has at least one site that administers the program.

“I have never seen this before, this degree of focus and attention (to homeless veterans),” said Megan Colvard, associate director of community engagement at PATH, which has more than doubled its staff to 160 in the past year, largely to handle the distribution of housing vouchers.

In 2011, HUD appropriated $50 million to serve about 7,000 families, and another $5.4 million was given to existing HUD-VASH sites. More than 58,000 vouchers have been awarded since 2008.

Last year, when PATH in Los Angeles won the entire $1 million contract to distribute 1,100 vouchers locally – something that caused some grumbling among other advocacy groups – word got out and homeless vets began coming to the area. The contract totals $6 million over five years for vouchers and case management, said Carlos Gonzalez, director of programs.

“We target chronically homeless veterans with some level of mental illness or substance abuse,” Gonzalez said. “We assign a case worker. We chase down the documentation they need. We make appointments at the DMV, the VA, Housing Authority, and we’re with them another year or two after they move in.”

About 1,000 have been doled out so far. This year, the contract is spread out to several agencies.

Only the chronically homeless — those on the streets for a year or more or individuals who have recurring episodes — are eligible. When the voucher is granted, recipients have 90 days to use it before it expires. That means 90 days to get these homeless veterans Social Security cards they may no longer have and discharge papers they’ve long lost. Another obstacle: the high cost of housing in Los Angeles.

“There’s a growing gap between housing costs and income,” Colvard said. “The total average incomes may be $500 to $700 a month and the average one-bedroom apartment is $1,000. You can do the math.”

To get someone such as Cat Gill, the walking definition of chronically homeless, to become a Raymond McGinnis, off the streets for more than a year, is a monumental task.

Placing them in temporary shelter is one thing. Once they’re there, the paperwork and bureaucratic maze begins.

“The biggest problem is, if they don’t have honorable discharge, they’re not eligible for health care,” said Savanah Walseth, outreach navigator for PATH in Hollywood. “We try other ways of housing them or try to change their status with the VA.”

When David Hauser, 55, walked into his interview with PATH workers, he wore a brown sports jacket a bit too big for him and a green "Welcome to the Wildlife" cap. He sat nervously and answered all questions the way a student who aims to please his teacher would.

Enlisted? Yes, in the Navy from 1976 to 1978.

Honorable discharge? Yes.

Documentation? Yes.

Debt? None.

Health? Good.

Substance abuse? No street drugs.

Ivan Bennett is a spry 85-year-old with a sharp mind and tongue, athletic pants and a headband. An Army veteran who served in Korea from 1946 to 1948, he has been homeless for more than two decades. It’s not clear how he ended up on the streets. He talked about attending Arizona State University for three years on the GI Bill and even the Sorbonne in Paris.

“I never had the ability to have a steady job,” he said. “I tried to be a writer.”

His manuscript is titled “War Against Control,” about the power of China, Bennett said.

He married in Bangkok and said he has a 45-year-old son he hasn’t since the son was 5.

Perez checked him out.

“Besides being a bit hard of hearing, he really doesn’t have any major medical issues,” she said.

The VA’s ACT team spotted him in Beverly Gardens Park, across from the swanky Beverly Hills City Hall, and worked several months to get him off the streets.

On a Thursday in January, Bennett’s life changed. He stood in a one-bedroom apartment with wall-to-wall carpeting. It was empty, but furniture would arrive soon.

A few days later, the apartment was still empty, but Bennett had a few things in the refrigerator: eggs, bacon, butter, mustard, lettuce. A bottle of tequila was on the kitchen counter.

Case workers arranged to pick him up later that week to take him to the bank and pay $205 to the Department of Water and Power.

“A $205 deposit for that?’’ he asked, baffled.

When the furniture arrived, he was overwhelmed. When someone plugged in a lamp and the light came on, he clapped.

For veterans who have been without a home for years, the prospect of living alone in an apartment is terrifying. They miss their friends on the street. Their world is turned upside down. They feel lonely. Many just sit in front of the TV.

“One of the most horrible parts is the isolation,” said Spencer Downing, director of programs and operations at the Center at Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood, where the homeless come for coffee, mill about, show off their artwork, listen to music or just talk.

Michael Brady, 72, an Air Force veteran who was stationed in Morocco from 1960 to 1964, spent 23 years in motels and on the street, but Joyce’s team at the VA managed to get him into an apartment in Santa Monica more than a year ago.

“He was living on the floor,” Perez said. “He didn’t have a stick of furniture. It took us several months of working with him for him to accept the furniture.”