60 Thousand Veterans Homeless: US

Local Editor

About 60,000 American veterans remain homeless in the United States, says Shaun Donovan, Housing and Urban Development Secretary, calling the statistic a "national disgrace."
"Having close to 60,000 homeless veterans, as we currently do, is a national disgrace," Donovan said at the annual National Coalition for Homeless Veterans conference Wednesday.

Donovan said the staggering figure serves as a sobering reminder of the challenge to find housing for America's homeless veterans.
US officials will have to provide housing for about 60 homeless veterans a day if they are to meet a self-imposed deadline to eliminate homelessness among former soldiers, according to Stars and Stripes.
Five years ago, the White House announced an ambitious plan to end veteran homelessness throughout the country by the end of 2015. Since then only a fifth of former service-members have been taken off the street.

"To do it by 2015 is going to be a bumpy road," Donovan told the audience. "We're going to have to be more creative than ever before."
At the Wednesday conference, Donovan and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki announced plans to grant housing vouchers worth $60 million to about 9,000 more homeless veterans this year, raising the number of veterans receiving aid to over 57,000.

The federal assistance programs for veterans are painstakingly slow and mired in bureaucracy.

An increasing number of veterans never receive their disability benefits, or receive them far too late, NBC News reported. As of May 20, the VA had over 838,800 disability claims waiting to be processed, two-thirds of those classified as "backlogged."

Nearly 20,000 former US soldiers have died while waiting for their disability aid. That accounts for about 53 dead soldiers per day.

Source: Press TV