Local News: Program Supports Homeless Veterans

Program Helps Families of Homeless Veterans
By Regina Dennis (Tribune-Herald staff writer)

From the Waco Tribune-Herald

For the men and women who fight to protect their country, it can sometimes be difficult to admit when you need help.

“Being a soldier, the core, basic thing you are taught is that when you have a problem, you suck it up and keep going because you have to keep fighting for your life and for your fellow soldiers’ lives,” said Timothy Pridey, 30, an Army veteran who served in Iraq. “It’s hard to show weakness and break down to say you need help.”

But Pridey found himself at that breaking point last year when he, his wife and their three children suddenly found themselves homeless. With no family help and little cash, Pridey turned to social workers at the Waco Veterans Affairs Medical Center for help and quickly received a housing voucher through the VA’s Veterans Assistance Supportive Housing Program to move his family into an apartment.

“Within about four days we were moving into our apartment,” Pridey said, shaking his head in wonderment. “It was just crazy. I didn’t expect things to happen like that.”

Pridey’s story is not unique. VA officials say a growing number of Central Texas veterans with families are turning to the VA for help after becoming homeless.

Paula Wood, homeless veterans health care coordinator for the Central Texas VA system, said that of the 145 veterans currently using housing vouchers in the Waco, Temple and Austin areas, about 32 cases — or 22 percent — include families.

“It’s a grave concern to me,” Wood said. “I’ve been the coordinator, it’ll be three years next month, and in the first year and a half I was here, we saw one family the whole year that was homeless, and that was it. . . . It is terribly unusual, and I think it’s very frightening.”

Vouchers Help Pay Rent

The Waco VA reserves 35 housing vouchers for homeless veterans that require the veteran to pay 30 percent of his or her income toward rent. Mike Ormsby, a social worker for homeless veterans at the Waco VA, said of the 30 veterans currently using vouchers, three are families, three are returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, two are single female veterans, and the rest are single males mostly from the Vietnam era.

“We don’t really see a lot of veterans with families who are homeless here in Waco, especially with the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans because often they are young and come back home to their families and some type of support system of friends,” Ormsby said. “But when we do see these cases where there is a family in need of shelter or even women veterans, we of course try to get them some help with shelter very quickly.”

A native of Louisville, Ky., Pridey joined the Army at age 21, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps to serve his country. He was nearing the end of his enlistment term and beginning the discharge process when he learned that his enlistment would be involuntarily extended for another year and that he would be among the 17,000 soldiers from Fort Hood’s 1st Cavalry Division deployed to Iraq that March.

“My daughter was just three months old at the time, and then this happened,” Pridey said.

Pridey’s wife, Deneva, a Waco resident who he met online while he was stationed at Fort Hood, moved the family into her grandparents’ house when he was deployed, an arrangement that allowed her to help care for a her partially paralyzed grandfather and have a stable home for the children.

“I worked a part-time job but ended up quitting that after two months because I was worried about missing his phone calls or any time they let him on the Internet because there were only certain times when he could contact home,” said Deneva Pridey, 27. “It was hard.”

In Iraq, combat took a toll on Pridey’s health. He was diagnosed with asthma from inhaling the toxic fumes from burn pits for waste around Iraq. After an improvised explosive device struck the tanker in which he was riding in August 2004, he suffered nerve damage in his right foot and two dislocated disks in his neck.

But the mental trauma from the war was most severe. Pridey recalls one instance of being hit in the face with a brick dropped from a roof.

“The worse thing was when I looked up, I saw this kid looking down and laughing at me,” Pridey said. Parents would give their children rocks and bricks to throw at soldiers, he said, and as a result, he began to dislike children.

After Pridey returned home in 2005, the couple remained at Deneva’s grandparents’ house. Timothy Pridey enlisted in the National Guard and started looking for jobs, working brief stints at the Texas Youth Commission and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service.

But tensions grew in the crowded home, with Timothy struggling with his health issues and transitioning back to civilian life. He had difficulty in the workforce, eventually becoming diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and clashed with his in-laws. The problems came to a head last July, when Deneva’s grandparents told the couple they could no longer stay in the home.

“They said it would be best if we were to leave, but we didn’t have no money or savings to just up and move, so that put us in a really hard spot,” Deneva Pridey said.

Timothy Pridey started calling for help and reached out to Everlyn Trate, his transition patient advocate at the VA, and told her that he and his family were without shelter.

“It was like Friday at 5 o’clock and I had to put things into motion really quickly,” Trate said. “I just started calling around, and we were able to get them some aid really quickly.”

Trate called on local veterans’ organizations and activists to find some aid for the family. She was able to get food assistance and cash from local Veterans of Foreign Wars posts to put the family into a hotel for the weekend. The Prideys moved into an apartment complex in West Waco that Monday.

“She took care of us and put us in a hotel while they tried to get everything set up,” Timothy Pridey said. “I got to know so many different people in the VA and in the area really fast through that who have helped me tremendously.”

Challenges Ahead

Steve Hernandez, veterans’ services coordinator for McLennan County, said the need for more local housing and shelter for veteran families is likely going to increase when troops eventually return home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Waco VA’s mental-health focused Center for Excellence on Research for Returning War Veterans, combined with the city’s proximity to the Temple VA hospital and Fort Hood, will likely draw many new veterans to Central Texas, he said.

“There’s going to be an influx, and we are not prepared for it,” Hernandez said. “A lot of times, I think we focus so much on the veteran that we forget about the family. The family unit is part of his support component of transitioning back, and the family is going to help him mentally and physically begin to recover, so we can’t forget that.”

More Vouchers Possible

Wood said she recently submitted a request for the VA to award an additional 140 housing vouchers to the Central Texas region — 35 for Waco, 35 for Temple and 70 for Austin. If awarded, the new vouchers would be available for disbursement around June.

“Some of the veterans that don’t have strong family connections will stay around this area,” Wood said. “I know all the (veterans’) families I’ve dealt with I’ve asked them ‘Do you have family somewhere?’ . . . and they say, ‘No, I don’t really have any family,’ or ‘I don’t want to go back to them,’ or sometimes ‘Well the economy is much worse where my family is so it won’t do me any good to go back.’ ”

For the Prideys, having their own place has brought some stability. Deneva Pridey said even the relationship with her grandparents has improved since the move.

Still, Timothy Pridey is still facing issues with his mental and physical health that make things rough for the family. He avoids watching TV news so that he doesn’t hear about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that can cause flashbacks.

Timothy Pridey was rated 80 percent disabled through the Veterans Benefits Administration, a designation that qualifies him for some disability aid but excludes him from certain jobs, such as anything with heavy lifting.

“I’d rather not be 80 percent disabled,” Timothy Pridey said. “I’m 30 years old, and there’s so much stuff wrong with me that shouldn’t be happening to me right now. I want to be active and be able to do more.”

Timothy Pridey said he and his family are truly grateful for the help that the VA has given him. He continues to use other VA programs, including services like the Serious Mental Illness Life Enhancement (SMILE) program to treat his PTSD and therapy for traumatic brain injury to improve his memory.

“Anytime I meet a veteran who was recently discharged or even an active-duty soldier who’s getting out soon, I tell them to go get registered with the VA as soon as they can,” Pridey said. “A lot of times people may go off of things they have heard about the VA, the horror stories, but once you’re in you realize that there are people to help and it somewhat becomes like a military family all over again.”

Published on Sunday, January 24, 2010