Helping homeless veterans in Central Oregon

Thursday is the anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and veterans around the country are being honored for their service.

But another discussion taking place concerns homeless veterans.

Tory Flory is the homeless outreach program coordinator for Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, he said Thursday there are many reasons for the high numbers of homeless veterans.

“Conflict and war changes people, so that person who was deployed and ends up overseas and fighting that war comes home, essentially a changed person,” Flory said.

And according to Chuck Hemingway, a volunteer at Shepherd’s House Ministries, those changes make life extremely difficult for some veterans.

“You come from that environment into society, a lot of times it’s hard to reintegrate into that,” Hemingway said. “And you’re searching and longing for that companionship and camaraderie. And if you can’t find it, you might lapse into some behaviors like anger or rage or addictions or other problems like that.”

In Oregon, there are just over 1,200 homeless veterans, meaning our state has the fifth-largest number of homeless veterans in the country.

The latest statistics show half of those homeless veterans are living unsheltered.

To change that, some say our perspectives need to change.

“We need to look at at the individual, rather than the overall homeless, and kind of break down what that individual is struggling with that is creating those barriers between homelessness and housed,” Flory said.

But there are signs of progress.

According to Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, in just three years, the number of homeless veterans in our area has dropped by nearly half.

Officials credit the success with the numerous programs offered to veterans in Central Oregon.

For more information about COVO, you can click here: http://covo-us.org/