>As a member of the U.S. army National Guard, Nadine
>Beckford patrolled New York City train stations after
>Sept. 11, 2001 with a 9 mm pistol, then served a
>treacherous year in Iraq.
>
>Now, six months after returning, Beckford lives in a
>homeless shelter.
>
>"I'm just an ordinary person who served. I'm not
>embarrassed about my homelessness because the
>circumstances that created it were not my fault," said
>Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at
>a base in Iraq that was a sitting duck for
>around-the-clock attacks.
>
>Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and
>Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare - the risk of
>homelessness. The U.S. government estimates several
>hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are
>homeless on any given night across the country,
>although the exact number is unknown.
>
>The reasons that contribute to the new wave of
>homelessness are many: some are unable to cope with
>life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks and
>roadside bombs; some can't navigate government red
>tape; others simply don't have enough money to afford
>a house or apartment.
>
>They are living on the edge in towns and cities big
>and small from Washington state to Florida. But the
>hardest hit are in New York, because housing costs
>"can be very tough," said Peter Dougherty, head of the
>Homeless Veterans Program at the Department of
>Veterans Affairs.
>
>Former army Pte. 1st Class Herold Noel had nowhere to
>call home after returning from Iraq last year. He
>slept in his Jeep, parked anywhere in New York "where
>I wouldn't get a ticket."
>
>"Then the nightmares would start," said the
>26-year-old, who drove a military fuel truck in Iraq -
>one of the war's most dangerous jobs.
>
>At one point, he saw a friend's leg blown off.
>
>"I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a
>truck. I relived that every night," said Noel, who
>walks with shrapnel in his knee and suffers from
>severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.
>
>To help people like Noel, the VA gives grants to
>non-profit, private housing organizations that offer
>about 8,000 free beds across the country. The space
>isn't always enough to accommodate everyone in
>desperate need of shelter among the more than 500,000
>vets of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been discharged
>from the military so far.
>
>When Noel returned, the shattered soldier couldn't
>immediately find a job to support his wife and
>children and all the housing programs for vets he knew
>of "were overbooked," he said.
>
>The family ended up in a Bronx, N.Y., shelter "with
>people who were just out of prison and with roaches,"
>he said.
>
>"I'm a young black man from the ghetto but this was
>culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I
>almost died for."
>
>"This is not what I was supposed to come home to."
>
>Noel now attends a Brooklyn, N.Y., program to train
>for a job in studio sound production. He also is the
>protagonist of the documentary film When I Came Home,
>which was named best New York-made documentary at the
>Tribeca Film Festival this year.
what have you done to help? (NT) -- sKewL, 01:07:20 06/29/06 Thu