It’s 5 a.m. in early January, still pitch dark, and a dusting of snow will become 10 inches by day’s end. Temperatures are in the teens, and Dennis Johnson is heading out in search of homeless veterans.
Every Thursday morning it’s the same routine. Working with a driver and a van from the National Association for Black Veterans, Johnson searches little-known hideaways – bridge underpasses, urban forests, abandoned warehouses. This outreach is part of an innovative program, the Milwaukee Homeless Veteran Initiative, begun in June 2008.
“Hello, anybody there?” Johnson gently announces at “Tent City,” a forested spot along a South Side industrial area. “Coffee and sandwiches available,” he adds, his flashlight briefly shining on a squatters’ camp, complete with a shanty, domed tents and a snow-covered Weber Grill.
National surveys estimate about 25 percent of the homeless are veterans, so Johnson figures there are almost 400 homeless vets in Milwaukee. Many are on the street, and some stay at the Milwaukee Rescue Mission or other agencies providing short-term housing. “They might have shelter,” Johnson says. “But they don’t have homes.”
And they may have trouble getting to an office that provides help for veterans, notes Mark Foreman, who along with Johnson launched this initiative under the auspices of the Milwaukee chapter of Veterans For Peace. “So we decided to go where the homeless are and take them by the hand, literally, to bring them to the services.”
It’s a trailblazing program, its two leaders say, noting there’s nothing like it within Veterans For Peace, which has more than 120 chapters nationally. As for this metro area, Jim Duff, acting director of Milwaukee County Veterans Service Office, says, “I’m not aware of any other group that actively goes out and seeks homeless vets.”
Foreman, a retired elementary school teacher, was in Vietnam only five weeks before his hip was blown off. Johnson, a door gunner in Vietnam, came home with less-visible mental scars. He knows all too well that today’s vets will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, often masked as “readjustment” to civilian life. There’s difficulty relating to people, broken marriages, job layoffs. “Before you know it, you can be on the street,” Johnson says.
The homeless vets initiative is 100 percent donor-funded. In 2009, it received about $20,000 from individuals, enough to keep the effort alive and pay Johnson $500 a month for 50-hour workweeks. In January, the initiative received an anonymous donation of $5,000. The recession makes future funding unpredictable.
The initiative’s first goal is to establish contact, not easy given that homeless vets are skilled at living in the shadows. And then to build trust. The ultimate goal: help the vets find shelter and access the VA system, but also get other necessities, such as cell phones, transportation, jobs and bank accounts, so they can become self-reliant.
Since it started, the initiative has helped about 75 vets get back on their feet, Johnson estimates. Its newest effort involves working with local landlords who are renting several homes to vets, with the goal of also hiring them to do construction and maintenance.
“This all just started out with two guys taking guys to the VA, or helping with whatever they needed,” Johnson recalls. “And not just dropping them off, but sticking by them in a personal way.
“In Vietnam,” he adds, “you learned that you never leave your buddies behind.”
