A Simple Solution for Homeless Vets

The Veterans Affairs and the Housing and Urban Development departments reported on Thursday that nearly 76,000 veterans were homeless on any given night in 2009, while roughly 136,000 vets spent at least one night in a shelter during that year.

VA has a bold plan to end vet homelessness by 2015, but Jack Downing, president of Soldier On, a non-profit in Leeds, Mass., which has served homeless vets since 1994, has a simpler kind of plan: Provide vets with homes -- now.

Soldier On opened an apartment house in nearby Pittsfield, Mass., last October that houses 39 vets, who also have equity in their new home.

This is more than just housing Downing says, but a community based on integrity in which vets can work together to manage the problems that put them on the street such as alcoholism and mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

Soldier On also operates a shelter in a building on the grounds of a VA hospital in Leeds that last year had 238 residents. Downing plans to build more apartments on a nine-acre plot on the hospital grounds.

That will provide even more homes for previously homeless vets -- not in 2015, but the near future.

What a concept. If you provide housing for homeless vets, they are no longer homeless.