Raising Awareness On Homeless Veterans

         This is a tribute to all our veterans out there. Some are lost, scared, homeless, or worse. If you're a vet reading this, thank you for your service. If you're a civilian reader, stick around. I'm going to blow your mind. Just to warn you all, this is sad

          There's a huge problem in the US. Our nation's warriors are being forgotten. They've fought, bled, and died for us. But our men and women who served overseas need us!
A prediction by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) states that approximately 40,056 vets sleep on the streets every night! To put that in perspective, 11% of homeless adults are vets, even though less 1% of the US population has served. That means that a vet is over 20 times as likely to be homeless! I don't understand; how are they so easily neglected? To state the obvious, being homeless is hard, and our vets are getting it worse than anyone.

         Homelessness isn't the only issue they suffer from .An article from DadsDivorce Live made this astonishing statement: "The divorce rate in the U.S. hover between 40 and 50 percent, but that number jumps to 80 percent for combat veterans." A thirty percent increase. I can't even image what that must be like.

          There's even more! In the United States, an average of 123 people commit suicide each day. It's truly horrible that so many people chose to end it all. from 1979 to 2014, an average of 20 veterans died every day. So just under 17% of the 123 suicides are veterans. Again, less than one percent of adult citizens served! That means that one in five suicides are veterans, while only 1 in a hundred people are vets!
          Now, this isn't to say that it's hopeless! "In 2019, there was a 2.1 percent decrease in the estimated number of homeless Veterans nationwide...And still, the estimated number of Veterans experiencing homelessness in the United States has declined by nearly 50 percent since 2010." Some vets are getting what they need, and that's amazing! It fills me with hope for the future.
          Want to help? there are tons of opportunities to provide assistance to our soldiers.

Organizations to volunteer or donate to

https://www.nchv.org/
https://www.dav.org/
https://iava.org/
https://www.usvetsinc.org/
https://www.voa.org/

Sources:
https://www.va.gov/HOMELESS/pit_count.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_veteran_suicide
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
http://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/
https://dadsdivorce.com/articles/dadsdivorce-live-divorce-rate-higher-veterans/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_l4Ab5FRwM