I read a short story by Ivan Moreno (Rocky Mountain News, September 27, 2006 - Veterans' plight is focus of rally) on a recent rally to raise awareness to the plight of homeless Veterans in Colorado and had two responses - the first being "duh" - it's only something Veteran Service Advocates have been saying for more than a decade! My second response was "Thank God" that someone is starting to listen!

Unfortunately, your article only touched the tip of the iceberg. Most people are unaware of the true deficit in services that exist for Veterans in our community. The general perception is that the Veterans' Administration is caring for the needs of vulnerable Veterans. Reality, however, is far from the truth. Consider the following:

 Almost one-half of the 2.7 million disabled U.S. Veterans receive $337 or less a month in benefits, which comes from the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration. Less than one-10th of disabled Veterans are rated 100-per-cent disabled. To an outsider, the VA benefit formulas can seem like a riddle. If, for instance, a vet is diagnosed as 70 percent physically disabled and 30 percent disabled as a result of post-traumatic stress, the total disability does not necessarily add up to 100 percent; it could amount to 80 per cent. And that means a monthly check of $1,277; $1,500 for a family of four - poverty level!

 The backlog of unprocessed claims has reached the astronomical count of 489,297, a number which is unfortunately increasing all of time. There are also currently 500,000 Compensation and Pension cases still pending. This means that close to a million Veterans and their families are at risk of financial ruin and homelessness, while the VA processes the paperwork!

 More than 1 million American soldiers serve in Iraq and according to a recent study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that 15 to 17 percent of Iraq vets meet "the screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety, or PTSD." Of those, only 23 to 40 percent are seeking help - in part because so many others fear the stigma of having a mental disorder. Those who do reach out often find long waiting lists for treatment within the Veterans' Service Network and a Civilian Service System that is ill-prepared to meet their needs.

 Over 1.7 million Veterans do not have any health insurance nor do they have access to health care through the Veterans' Administration. Another 3.9 million Veteran households do not have health insurance nor do they have access to Veterans' health care due to ineligibility.

 The Denver 2005 VA CHALENG Report acknowledges Colorado has 3,895 homeless veterans yet there are only 102 beds dedicated to meet their needs. The majority of these are operated by non-Veteran run organizations that may or may not have unique services for Veterans or even have Veterans on staff. In fact, while the growing body of research supports the fact that the most effective services for homeless Veterans are "Vet to Vet" - of the eight organizations listed by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans to be providing services in Colorado, only three are Vet run organizations. .

 According to the Denver Metro Homeless Initiative Point in Time Survey conducted on January 23, 2006, 813 homeless individuals indicated they had served in the US Military yet only 110 (or 1 in 7) were collecting Veterans' Benefits. The true picture of homelessness among Veterans in Colorado cannot fully be known as the only question asked was whether the individual served in the US Military. There was no exploration as to whether Veterans are over represented among the chronically homeless, although given 85% of those identified as chronically homeless are men.

 The FY 2005 CHALENG Report (the VA equivalent to the Point in Time Survey) indicated that long-term permanent housing is among the top three unmet needs and has been consistently over the past five years. As the author of the very first CHALENG Report in 1997 in the Denver-metro area, I can tell you this has been true for the past 10 years!

Contrary to the perceptions that our nation's Veterans are well-supported, the fact is that many go without the services they require and are eligible to receive. Neither the VA, State, or County Departments of Veteran Affairs, or community-based and faith-based service providers are adequately resourced to respond to these veterans' health, housing and supportive services needs.

For example, the VA reports that its homeless treatment and community-based assistance network serves 100,000 Veterans annually. With an estimated 500,000 Veterans experiencing homelessness at some time during a year and the VA reaching only 20 percent of those in need, 400,000 Veterans remain without services from the department responsible for supporting them. Likewise, other federal, state, and local public agencies--notably housing and health departments--are not adequately responding to the housing, health care and supportive services needs of Veterans. Indeed, it appears that Veterans fail to register as a target group for these agencies.

It is disconcerting and difficult to reconcile the Nation's call to "support our troops" with the systematic denial of benefits to Veterans and their families created by administrative barriers. These barriers are failing to fully fund the programs or even honoring the most basic assurances of Veterans preferences in hiring and contracting work.

Even more disconcerting is the given the number of Veterans from WW II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War who are still fighting for recognition and benefits they earned. We are willing - as a Nation - to subject another generation of soldiers to the same fate. Already community-based organizations from across the Nation are seeing returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans in their shelters, soup kitchens and food banks.

After spending months in a war zone, many of the 170,000 soldiers who've returned home are struggling with their transition to back-to-civilian life. They are dealing with everything from coping with a maze of red tape and contradictory messages on healthcare to finding affordable housing and jobs with adequate incomes to accessing disability payments.

One of the biggest problems, according to advocates and a report by the Government Accountability Office, is a lack of resources to deal with battle fatigue, or posttraumatic stress disorder, as it's now called. Another is providing support for Reserve and National Guard troops, who make up 45 percent of the troops in Iraq.

"The bottom line is that the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] wasn't prepared for the 33,000 troops that have come back and gone to the VA needing care," says Paul Rieckhoff of Operation Truth, a nonprofit advocacy group for Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. "They're definitely not ready for the flood that's going to come back next year."

Operation Truth and the Circle of Friends for American Veterans mentioned in your article are National efforts to bring justice to our Veterans. Locally, the River of Light Enterprise, Inc, Veterans Justice Alliance Project has joined in partnership with the American GI Forum, Veterans for Peace and Veterans Faith Based Village to raise the level of awareness and justice for Colorado Veterans.

The project will kick-off on October 4th from 7-9 pm with a lecture and book signing by local author John DeVore at the Tennyson Gallery in northwest Denver (44th & Tennyson). John, a combat Vietnam Veteran, will share his story from a soldier of war to a warrior of peace, in his lecture the "Myth and Reality of War". While the event is free, proceeds from the sale of John's book "Sitting in the Flames: Unleashing Fearlessness to Serve Others", will support services to homeless and incarcerated Veterans living in the Denver-metro area.

We encourage Veterans who are seeking their own journey back to a sense of peace as well as people who really want to both understand how to support Veterans in their lives to attend. To quote one Veteran I met recently: "If people really supported our troops they'd do more than throw a parade…they'd make sure Veterans received the benefits they were promised!"