Allow government issued land with homes so that we can get our Veterans off the streets and into housing. Allow them to live peacefully and comfortably. Have onsite therapist, addiction clinics, access to therapy dogs, and activities to help overcome PTSD
Although I am not sure the land with homes is the best solution, I agree that our veteran services are a disgrace. These men and women have put everything on the line for America and we owe the mental and physical health services and job placement programs to help them succeed.
Just for the sake of this conversation-
According to reports there are about 35k (and change) homeless veterans reported to be living in America. There are 620k more homeless civilians in America. That is about 650k homeless in total.
That is a lot of homes.
However, from another report earlier this year there are about 15.1 MILLION vacant homes throughout the nation. With about 75k of those homes being in Detroit. Why did I mention Detroit? As most of us are aware Detroit has been going through some hardships in terms of it being a dying city. There are about 58k homeless families (not just one person, but a family) and if they were all to move to Detroit and take up residence in a vacant home we could potentially reverse the urban decay of Detroit. An influx of personnel could help bring new jobs to the area and simultaneously bring a resurgence to the city. New families means new students, means new teachers, means new markets, means new workers, etc.
One might say that a lot of these vacant homes are in states of massive disrepair. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy Seabees have electrical, plumbing, structural, etc specialties that could help renew those homes at little to no cost to the individual. Now, one might also argue that using the military for civilian projects would violate Posse Comitatus but that really applies for law enforcement. Historically the Army Corps of Engineers have built nearly 1k bridges throughout the nation. Operationally the Army Corps of Engineers builds homes and buildings in other nations in order to garner support, why not at home?
But, they don’t even need to build new homes since there is a staggering number of vacant homes already. We offer Seciton 8 housing already to people. This would be a minor change to the already established system.