The help a veteran might need may be extensive, from affordable housing to better mental health care.
At the Four Corner Veterans Stand Down held at the La Plata County Fairgrounds on Tuesday, agencies and nonprofits from across the region came together to help provide some of these services to veterans.
Some veterans came away from the annual event, now in its second year, with a haircut, clothes and shoes, leads on jobs and information about benefits available through Veterans Affairs.
“It helps a lot of homeless veterans get cold weather gear,” said Richard Schleeter, veterans service officer for La Plata County.
For homeless veteran Michael Coldwell, a Stand Down in Carlsbad, New Mexico, was much more helpful than VA representatives. He had left Colorado for warmer weather this fall, and he found it in the form of a hotel room provided by people staffing the event.
“It’s too cold to live in a tent right now,” he said.
Now back in Colorado, Coldwell sought help for his post-traumatic stress disorder and other needs at the Stand Down held Tuesday. Veterans for Veterans and other agencies also promised to help him find affordable housing.
In 2010, the VA had set a goal of helping all veterans seeking housing, like Coldwell, by 2015.
To help meet this idealistic goal, the VA is trying to make sure every homeless veteran who comes in for help is housed within 30 days, said Jason Ramos, who supervises the VA’s housing program across New Mexico and southern Colorado.
The availability of affordable housing has been one of the main challenges in southern Colorado, Ramos said.
“You can’t end homelessness without housing,” said Sarada Leavenworth, the local director for Volunteers of America, which runs the Durango Community Shelter.
But new funding from the VA has made it possible for the community shelter to spend more time with veterans and to help them find housing.
The shelter allows veterans to stay for up to two years while they seek health care, employment, benefits and find housing, said Rachel Bauske, project manager for Veteran Transitional Housing.
This has allowed veterans to build trust, and almost all of the 15 people who were in the program in 2014 found housing.
“We’ve seen a drastic difference,” she said.
In one case, a man who had stayed at the Durango shelter intermittently over the course of eight years found permanent housing, she said.
Connecting veterans to the disability benefits or pensions they earned as part of their service is also a goal of the event and local agencies.
These benefits can provide much-needed income to pay for housing.
Richard McKiernan, who served in the Air Force for eight years during the Cold War in Europe, came to look into receiving a pension to help pay for housing.
“I thought I was going to be out on the street last year,” he said.
His monthly Social Security check is just not enough to pay for average rent and living expenses in Durango, he said. But he’s been able to get by through an agreement with his landlord.
McKiernan is one of many seeking help with their applications for benefits.
About 10 to 13 people a day come into the county office to ask Schleeter for help.
Pension applications are processed within a few months, but many vets in Southwest Colorado who qualify for disability benefits often find they still face long wait times or undeserved denials, Schleeter said.
The total number of claims making their way through the Veterans Affairs system is about 373,000, a major reduction from the 900,000 claims in process in 2012.
But sometimes the claims processors don’t read the fine print in the claims, he said.
“They are rushing through and denying them,” Schleeter said
In the case of some homeless veterans, even if their claim is approved Schleeter sometimes can’t find them to let them know.
Those veterans can reapply later, if they choose, he said.
About 5,000 veterans live in La Plata County, and Meggan Braley, a Stand Down volunteer, said the community needs to hold similar events throughout the year because so many veterans come to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post seeking help.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
