Two midwest cities are stepping up and helping out veterans that don’t have homes.
On Sept. 16, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan to end homelessness among former service members living in the Windy City by 2015. A $5 million program providing housing and other assistance to veterans will be funded through a federal grant, along with $800,000 from the city’s 2015 budget. Chicago will also donate four acres of land for new housing facilities.
In a press conference, Emanuel said, “By the end of 2015, there will not be a homeless veteran in the city of Chicago.”
Emanuel spoke at Hope Manor I, a supportive housing complex for veterans that provides free places to live for up to 50 homeless veterans and affordable housing for 30 more veterans. On the first floor of the building, veterans and their families can take job-training and employment-readiness classes, learn how to use a computer, attend peer support groups and benefit from counseling and case management services. Residents can also gather in a multi-purpose room designed to foster a sense of community among them.
During the press conference, Emanuel announced that a new center Hope Manor for Families — a facility that will accommodate entire families — will open soon.
Since Hope Manor I opened, two other similar facilities have started welcoming needy vets: Hope Manor II and Veterans New Beginnings. According to Fran Spielman of the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago took a census of its homeless veterans in January — a “point-in-time count” measuring how many people were out on the streets on one night. The researchers found 721 homeless veterans — 465 lived in shelters and 256 had no place to call home.
The same day that Emanuel announced this program, another Midwestern mayor publicly committed his administration to the cause of ending homelessness among veterans by 2015: Mayor Carl Brewer of Wichita, Kansas. KSN TV reports that Brewer announced at a City Council meeting, “Veteran homelessness is not an intractable social problem that can’t be solved”
“By focusing our resources and renewing our communities’ commitment to this issue, we can end veteran homelessness in our city and our country. I’m proud to join mayors across the country as we work toward the important goal of honoring the service of our veterans by making sure all of them have a home to call their own,” said Brewer.
According to KSN TV, since 2010 when the federal government launched Opening Doors (a comprehensive plan to end homelessness) homelessness among veterans in America has decreased by 24 percent.
If the plans of these mayors succeed, Chicago and Wichita could join Phoenix, Los Angeles and other cities who are striving to make homelessness among veterans a thing of the past.
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Tag: the Midwest
This Award-Winning Veteran Is a One-Woman Giving Machine
The Veterans’ Voices Award is an honor given by the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC) that recognizes former service members giving back to their communities in a way “that is going above and beyond the call of duty,” MHC Communications Director Christi Shortridge tells William Loeffler of the Southwest Washington County Bulletin.
Recently, 28-year-old Amber Manke of Milaca, Minn. was honored with this distinction for her incredible record of service.
“I’m incredibly humbled and wondering why I was selected over all the other candidates that were nominated,” Manke says. But those familiar with all of the good work that Manke does in her community aren’t surprised.
In addition to her school and military duties, Manke volunteered over 100 hours last year at Second Harvest, Habitat for Humanity, Feed My Starving Children, Make A Wish Foundation and the Mission Continues (a nonprofit that supports veterans as they transition to civilian life). Additionally, she coaches a team for Girls on the Run, an organization that helps girls — especially low-income ones — learn about running and healthy behavior.
She also took time on Veterans Day last year to speak to elementary school students about what the holiday means. “I like being a soldier,” she told a group of third graders, according to Lesley Toth of the Mille Lacs County Times. “I love going out and making sure you guys are safe back here.”
Manke helps others in part because she knows what it’s like to be in need of assistance. She grew up in poverty with an out-of-work mother, living on a farm with 13 brothers and sisters, often visiting food banks when they were hungry. Manke began working when she was 15 years old and worked two jobs while attending college.
In 2012, Amber Manke was selected from among thousands of applicants to become a Tillman Military Scholar. The scholarships, sponsored by the Pat Tillman Foundation, help military members pay school expenses that aren’t covered by the G.I. Bill. Manke is using her funding to pursue a Ph.D. in organizational leadership and policy development at the University of Minnesota.
And that’s not all she’s been up to. Somehow, she found the time to complete the 2013 New York City Marathon, raising money for the Pat Tillman Foundation.
“Everyone says that they don’t have enough time,” she says. “I truly believe that you make time for the things that are important to you.”
It’s a safe bet that we can expect to hear about more accomplishments from this dynamic veteran in years to come.
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This American Hero Was the Victim of a Scam, But These Volunteers are Saving the Day
After sustaining arm and leg injuries from shrapnel and a traumatic brain injury from a suicide bomb attack while in Afghanistan, veteran Everett “Alex” Haworth thought that life was on the upswing: He and his wife Mallorie closed on a house in Olmsted Township, Ohio and moved in with their baby daughter.
But unfortunately, their troubles were just beginning. Their remodeled ranch home passed its inspection, but once the family settled in, they discovered rampant mold behind the new drywall — rendering the house unlivable.
The family relocated, moving in with Mallorie’s mom, but they still had to pay the mortgage on their ruined home, a difficult proposition with Alex still in rehab and Mallorie completing her master’s degree in psychology, all the while raising their daughter.
“We put money in our house and in our attorney. We ran out of money both ways,” Mallorie told Regina Brett of the Cleveland Plain Dealer back in February. “It hurts. It’s been a few months of no hope. We’re not the kind to ask for help. We want to be the ones helping.”
But this month, a group of volunteers from the Home Depot, the Carpenters Union and members of the VFW are tearing out the damaged parts of the Haworth’s home and refurbishing it, providing new bathrooms, paint and even landscaping.
Alex tells Enrique Correa of Fox 8 Cleveland, “We are gonna have more than a home; we are gonna have our lives restored…It’s amazing and very humbling to know that people you never met a day in your life before, are coming to help you out.”
These very deserving homeowners should be able to move in by the end of October.
MORE: This Community Wants Veterans as Residents, So it’s Providing the Down Payment on New Houses
How This Group is Cultivating Small Farms in America
Due to high costs of management and competition with corporations, the small farm could soon become an American relic.
But not if FarmLink has anything to say about it. Through funding and resources, this group is connecting generations of farmers to ensure that these modest-sized plots of land don’t go by the wayside.
Currently, the age of the average farmer is 58 years old, and 19 percent of farms are operated by people around 65 years of age. Additionally, there are very few young farmers taking the place of retiring ones. In fact, only six percent of farmers are under the age of 35, and since 2007, the number of new farmers dropped by 20 percent.
Most of these numbers can be attributed to the lack of land access and money, which makes entering the business difficult.
So FarmLink decided to step in. The group has multiple chapters across the country that connect experienced farmers with young novices. These older farmers pass on knowledge and expertise and in some cases, the actual farms themselves.
The group’s website offers a range of practical tips and a guidebook to help owners create succession plans. Most importantly, FarmLink is helping to sprout the next generation of farmers. Carol Ptak and her husband own Blacksmith Ranch in Rochester, Wash., which they’re looking to sell because of Ptak’s husband’s medical condition.
They hadn’t had much luck until they contacted the Washington FarmLink chapter who helped put their ranch on the map. “They have provided the opportunity to get the word out about our farm to a different audience,” Ptak tells Yes! Magazine.
And the Ptaks are just one example. With so much history imbedded into these farms, it’s about time someone started preserving their future.
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How Competing in a Horse Show Gives Disabled Veterans a Sense of Belonging
When serving their country, members of the armed services display their expertise on the battlefield. Back at home here in the U.S., some veterans are putting their skills on display in a different type of theater: the equestrian show ring.
Recently, a group of more than 20 veterans gathered at the Tulsa, Okla. fairgrounds to show off everything they know about horsemanship for a panel of judges at the National Snaffle Bit Association’s World Championship. All are participants in Heroes on Horses, a nonprofit providing equine therapy to disabled veterans. Some, like Army veteran Matthew Evans, are lifelong riders, while others had never been on a horse before they became involved with the program.
“It’s kind of like a milestone, you know?” Evans tells Tony Russell of News On 6. “Some of these people have never seen a horse before and they step up to a horse for the first time, and now here they are competing in a world show, you know? That just goes to show how far they’ve come and how great they are.”
While horse riding is meant to be therapeutic, there’s something about the thrill of competition that gives the disabled vets an extra boost. The judges evaluated them according to the stringent standards they use to measure other riders before announcing the winners. Still, Evans tells Russell, “Being able to compete with other veterans again isn’t so much a competition, it’s more of a camaraderie and a brotherhood. It’s kind of like a reunion.”
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As for the value of equine therapy, Marine veteran James Mincey says, “They always say that the best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse, so there’s a lot to that.”
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The Surprisingly Simple Actions Helping Veterans Visit the Memorials That Honor Their Service
Collecting cans and recycling them for cash can yield a person quite a large amount of money. For one man, however, this bounty doesn’t go into his pocket; it goes towards helping out veterans.
Each week, Warren Vincent of Hutchinson, Kan. straps a towering pile of garbage bags bulging with cans to the back of his pickup with an elaborate web of bungees and cables and drives them to Midwest Iron and Metal Inc., where he usually receives a couple hundred dollars.
Every cent Vincent raises from his can-hauling missions goes to his program Cans 4 Kansas Honor Flights, which helps fund Kansas Honor Flight, an organization that flies veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to Washington D.C. to visit war memorials.
Each vet’s trip costs $700, and Vincent keeps that amount in mind as he travels around the town collecting cans wherever he sees them and picking them up from two drop-off stations he’s set up in McPherson County, Kan., including one at the NCRA Refinery, where employees have been especially generous with their leftover soda cans.
Since May 2013, he’s raised nearly $10,000 — enough to send 14 veterans on an unforgettable trip.
Vincent told Katy Hanks of the Hutchinson News as he drove her in his can-crammed truck that he could haul even more if he had a trailer. Later that day, some good news came through. “The workers at NCRA are going to buy me a trailer,” Vincent tells Hanks. “That’s the best news of the entire four years I have been doing this.”
Vincent’s efforts to help veterans are remarkable, and he’s not the only Kansan providing assistance to our former service members. According to Hanks, there’s a group of youngsters — made up of Kristin and Rikkie Estus and Connor and Katherine Nilson — that have raised $550 for Kansas Honor Flight by running a lemonade stand for the past three years. Thirteen-year-old Kristin Estus tells Hanks, “The best part of having the annual lemonade stand is hearing the veterans’ stories.”
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When Suffering From Drought, Being Inspired by Nature Can Lead to a Solution
With its mountains, green hills and Mount Rushmore, South Dakota is idyllic. But don’t let the lush parts of the state fool you. For the past 15 years, some of its regions have been suffering periodic droughts, leaving the land and its residents depleted.
This is especially the case for the Cheyenne River Reservation, home to half of the Lakota tribe. Located in Ziebach County, this is also one of the poorest areas in the country.
That’s why a group from the tribe is looking to the beaver (yes, the animal) to get things flowing again. They call themselves Mni which means “water,” and they’re working to rehydrate the land and their lives.
Fifteen years of on-and-off drought has left the soil in the region very dry, so now, when it experiences steady rainfall, the ground is too dry to absorb the water. The rainwater runs off the land and into the creeks along the Mississippi River causing flooding but no quenching replenishment of the land.
The Mni’s plan? To build thousands of beaver-like dams in creeks and gullies all over the reservation, which will slow the rainwater long enough so that it can be absorbed into the ground. Beavers have been the ones controlling the water flow for centuries, so Mni is looking to the experts.
Comprised of the Duchenaux family and headed by matriarch Candace, the Mni is starting small — constructing the dams on their land initially. If it’s successful, the group plans to spread it to other parts of the reservation and train workers to build them.
They aren’t stopping there, though. All of their work is part of a larger goal to bring sustainable water programs to the reservation. Their first step was to bring Environmental Prize-winning hydrologist Michael Kravcik to speak to the tribal leaders about ways to improve the area.
They also organized a group of volunteers, teachers and students to survey, design and build 19 dams. The project was funded partly through a grant from the Colorado State University’s Center for Collaborative Conservation. Additionally, they worked in partnership with the university’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders. The process was a trial-and-error effort to find the best places to build the dams. When a flash flood destroyed the first one, the team was encouraged because they were one step closer to finding the perfect spot and understanding the water flow.
For Candace Duchenaux, she feels that you have to start small to make the biggest impact on the world.
“We have a million acres of tribal land here,” she told Yes! Magazine. “If we could convince the indigenous nations to begin water restoration — to unite in it — not only could we have a huge impact on the hydrologic cycle, but we could also set an example for the rest of the world.”
Through their work, Mni is showing that it isn’t the size of a project that matters, but the know-how and perseverance to make a difference.
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This Community Wants Veterans as Residents, So It’s Providing the Down Payment on New Houses
In Braidwood, a town of about 5,000 people in northern Illinois, sit vacant dilapidated homes and empty lots full of weeds growing taller than fire hydrants. The roads are so rough and pothole-riddled that the post office threatened to cut off delivery.
Back in 2009, a developer started construction on a new housing subdivision — the Townes of Braidwood — but filed for bankruptcy before its completion. This left those who’d already purchased houses in a major jam, so the homeowners appealed to their town for help.
This year, the village of Braidwood finally purchased the vacant lots in the subdivision and came up with a plan to fill them and stabilize the neighborhood. And it’s a good one: They’re offering to supply the down payment on a home for any veteran or first responder that wants one.
Through the Illinois program Welcome Home Heroes, Braidwood will give veterans who want to buy a lot in the subdivision a $10,000 state-funded grant, and any firefighters, police officers, or other first responders will be provided a $7,000 grant. According to Jessica Bourque of the Morris Daily Herald, all veterans in Illinois can receive an $18,000 grant to be put toward housing on top of the $10,000 that Braidwood is offering.
Restoration America, a nonprofit that helps revitalize abandoned properties, will build 35 new houses in the subdivision that will first be offered to veterans and emergency responders, though anyone can purchase them.
Braidwood Mayor Bill Rulien told Bourque, “Veterans, as a group, are people that are good at volunteering, that are good at teamwork, that will help their neighbors. They are people you want in your community.”
Braidwood is located 18 miles south of Joliet, Illinois, where the new Edward Hines Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic has just been completed. Charles Konkus of Restoration America told Bourque, “Our goal here is to get veterans into new housing and have them serviced by the new veterans hospital in Joliet.”
Rulien and Konkus will visit nearby veterans events in the coming months to let former soldiers know about the housing available to them. And with any luck, the once-beleaguered Townes of Braidwood will become a great place to live in.
After Losing Her Marine Son to PTSD, This Mom’s Mission Is to Save the Lives of Other Veterans
Wendy Meyers’ son Brandon wanted one thing in life: To be a Marine.
Once he graduated from high school in Plainfield, Illinois, Brandon immediately enlisted and soon deployed to Iraq for nine months. He briefly returned home and then returned to Iraq for 19 months.
When he came home a second time, in 2012, Meyers knew something was deeply wrong with her son. “My husband woke up one night and heard him on the roof,” she told Fox 17, “He went out and talked to him, and he was doing sniper duty in the middle of the night on our roof. He never left Iraq.”
Brandon sought help from the VA, who judged him 70 percent disabled due to PTSD. The VA prescribed him medication and gave him counseling via teleconference. Still, things weren’t improving. Meyers said that Brandon told her, “When he died, just scatter his dust back in Iraq, because that’s where he died anyway.”
Sadly, Brandon took his own life in June 2013, becoming one of the estimated 22 veterans a day who commit suicide.
Meyers has turned her grief into a new mission. She aims to start a charity called Bubba’s Dogs for Warriors, which will provide service animals to veterans suffering from PTSD — a treatment she thinks might have helped her son better than the therapy he did receive. “We have lost more men and women to suicide than the wars themselves from start to today,” she told Brad Edwards of CBS 2 Chicago. “We can help. Every penny and dollar we give can save a life. They have done this for us. Let’s not forget.”
Meyers launched a GoFundMe campaign with the target of raising $30,000 to fund two service animals. So far, she’s collected more than $7,000. On the page Meyers writes, “We’ve poured our broken hearts into research and found the highest degree of treatment success can come in the form of a constant companion — a dog, a service dog. Training these PTSD dogs is expensive, up to $15,000 each. In our son’s memory, we’d like to save lives.” She notes that service animals are not covered by the VA, which is why so many nonprofits are stepping up to provide them.
Brandon achieved his goal of becoming a Marine; now, his mother works toward her mission of helping her late son’s comrades. If you’re interested in helping Meyers hit her target, click here.
MORE: This Service Dog Has A Mission Beyond Helping Just One Vet
Play the Lottery, Help a Veteran. Yes, It’s That Easy
Buying scratch-off lottery tickets might not be the best use of a person’s cash, but since there’s little chance that everyone is going to cease playing their lucky numbers, many states are smartly dedicating a portion of money earned from lottery proceeds to vital programs.
In Colorado, for example, the state lottery funds bike and hiking trail maintenance, parks and recreation construction and maintenance, wilderness education for kids and more. New Jersey’s lottery benefits a variety of schools and education programs. And Missouri legislators recently proposed that lottery funds be dedicated to helping veterans.
Missouri State Representative Sheila Solon decided to sponsor the amendment when she learned that the state’s Veterans Commission was operating at a loss. “The lottery ticket would be one way that we could cover shortfalls for our veterans homes, to help with the upkeep of our veterans’ cemeteries, and also to restore full funding for the outreach programs which are so important for our veterans,” Solon told Linda Ong of Ozarks First.
The amendment proposed that those playing the game of risk be given the option to buy a special veterans ticket, which would generate funds for the Veterans Commission Capital Improvement Fund. Currently, lottery funds benefit education in the state.
Ong spoke with one local veteran, John Dismer, who disagreed with the idea. “It’s going to take away from education, because there’s only so many dollars in the lottery system, so you’re going to take some of it away. Now if the education system was real fat and everything, that might be alright. But I don’t think it is.”
In a close vote, many Missouri voters agreed with him — on August 6, 55 percent of voters rejected the amendment.
But this probably isn’t the last we’ll hear of this funding idea. After all, since 2006, a veterans lottery ticket in Illinois has generated $11,000,000 for that state’s former service members.
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