Homeless Vets' Tough L.A. Winter

Karl says his beef with the VA springs from its apparent eagerness to medicate him, which, he claims, was the same tactic it took to prepare him for combat.

"I do not like the VA here," he says. "All they want to do is pump me full of drugs. Dude, that's what you guys did to me in Desert Storm — we got amphetamines, uppers, downers, it was ridiculous. They made me want to kill myself."

PHOTO BY TED SOQUI

Russell Sheen, well-spoken Vietnam veteran and expert on Westside sleeping crannies: "That air of hopelessness is palpable."

PHOTO BY JESSICA P. OGILVIE

During the cold snap, Sheen joined many at the Armory shelter, less than a mile from Brentwood's mansions.

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More About

• Russell Sheen
• Venice (California)
• Robert Rosebrock
• Homelessness
• Veterans' Affairs

Others are still on the streets for the opposite reason — their dependence on drugs or alcohol. Eric Hill, a 57-year-old whose skin is pocked and scabbed after 15 years of homelessness, served in the Navy between 1984 and 1988. It was during that time, he says, that he began drinking heavily.

"The Navy has a tradition of alcoholism — the 'drunken sailor' — and I fell into that group," he says. "There's a lot of pressure on you, and in the Navy we try to relieve our pressure by drinking. We drink and go chase women."

Now, he says, his alcoholism contributes to a cycle in which he consistently stays away from places that could help him.

"I'd like to be off the streets more than anything," Hill says, but instead, "I drink more than I should."

With so many of America's vets succumbing to long-term homelessness, others are working to give voice to their comrades' lack of a social safety net. On a recent Sunday, Robert Rosebrock, a veterans' rights activist, stood outside the VA's Medical Center in Westwood, just off the 405 freeway, agitating for more space on the sprawling campus to be used to house these veterans. A brisk wind whipped his American flag, and a handful of other protesters shivered despite earmuffs and leather gloves.

Rosebrock, a Vietnam vet, says that the government has left former servicemen and women high and dry after grooming them to defend rights that many Americans cherish.

"We take these innocent young people and teach them to be trained killers," he says. "That's an enormous sacrifice we're asking, and when they get discharged there's no support."

Rosebrock's sentiment is echoed by Gregory Scott, president-CEO of New Directions, a well-regarded nonprofit based in a building on the federal land that also houses the Westwood VA campus. New Directions helps veterans get off the streets, but Scott — who estimates that New Directions works with 600 vets each year — agrees that the country is doing veterans a disservice when they return home.

"They are leaving one war and coming back to another battle," he says. "Here you are, leading a team and fighting for your country, and you come back and there are no jobs."

But according to officials in charge of government programs, plenty is being done to get vets off the streets, and plenty more will be done.

In 2010, the Obama administration announced a hugely ambitious plan to try to end veteran homelessness altogether by 2015. Conceived across party lines, the plan consists in part of providing grants and public funding to community organizations nationwide. More than $160 million has been doled out, and another $300 million is scheduled to be released this summer.

"It's certainly more [funding] than we've ever had," says Dr. Susan Angell, executive director of the Homeless Veterans Initiative Office in Washington, D.C. "We have more creative programs than we've ever had. ... We will have a better picture of what it will take to bring that number [of homeless vets] down to zero in the next year or so."

But the local homeless community isn't convinced that every vet on the street will be huddled cozily in a safe apartment within the next 24 months. When Karl hears the details of Washington's plan, he snorts out a laugh. "Yeah, right," he says.

The well-spoken Sheen isn't optimistic, either. "2015 sounds good and is probably appealing to people," he says, "but look at how many things they promised us in the last 50 years that never came to fruition."

The local VA has a plan of its own. On Jan. 25, it will break ground on Building 209, a structure dedicated to housing for homeless vets. The building will feature 55 rooms to accommodate 65 people.

Rosebrock, who has followed the project with interest, says the feds' languorous speed and stiff price tag for its modest 65-bed project, in a city of 6,300 homeless vets, is a problem for him: "It took them years to find $20 million to rehab one building with 55 [rooms]," he scoffs.

Yet within the homeless subculture of Los Angeles, many military veterans are quick to shoulder the blame for their own situation rather than heave responsibility onto the powers that be.

"It's by my own hand," Hill says of his living on the streets. "I did it to myself; I can't blame the government."

Sheen repeats the refrain.

"In the long run, I try not to blame," he says, "I try to be accountable for what I do and what happens to me." Of the government, he adds, "I just think they're overwhelmed."

One night, after Sheen showed L.A. Weekly around the Venice streets where he's been staying, we gave him a ride to the National Guard Armory on Federal Avenue adjacent to the VA, where a winter shelter had been set up by Los Angeles County. It's locked down for the night, but he'd previously worked out a deal to be admitted late, after his interview. He knocks, and a security guard cracks the door open.