After serving their country for several years, veterans come back to their lives to only find themselves lost in a life with limited options. Anthony Ortega served the military for 10 years and he came back to a life of drugs and into the streets.

By MARLENE PANTALEÓN
EL NUEVO SOL

Walking the streets of skid row is a daily struggle for Anthony Ortega, a 30-year-old Latino homeless veteran who had been homeless for 10 years and has made the decision to seek help at Union Rescue Mission upon realizing he can do more than live a life filled with drugs.

On skid row, everyone has their own unique story, like the woman wearing three jackets and dragging a cart behind her or the old man in a wheelchair passing out in front of the trash can. Countless people sleep on the streets of their own battlefield and yet they’re all connected.

Ortega thought he had left the battlefield in the past once he left the military, but living on the streets of Los Angles was a war in itself. There he got addicted to marijuana and lived each day looking forward to the next hit.

“Living in the streets of skid row is a daily battle. It’s America’s own inside war,” Ortega said. “It’s poverty, and what better way to fight it than from the inside.”

Joining the military at 17-years-old was Ortega’s way of making a first attempt at changing his life style that included drugs and gangs. He ended up serving the Army until the age of 26 when he was injured after taking a rocket propelled grenade to the left side of his body. The grenade blew up while he was still in the building, resulting in Ortega’s injury. He’s never fully recovered.

“I am constantly reminded that I am not 100%. Standing for a long period of time is very difficult, walking for a while is also difficult,” Ortega said.

After leaving the Army, Ortega found himself on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. While he looked towards the government for help, he was constantly rejected.

“I figured if my own government doesn’t want to help me out after the sacrifices I’ve made, why should I even care?” he said.

Ortega is one of the 131,000 estimated veterans that are homeless each night—20,000 of them in Los Angeles. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs Web site estimates that about 45 percent of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness and more than 70 percent suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems. About 56 percent of these homeless Veterans are either African American or Latino.

At the Union Rescue Mission, out of the 200 homeless men that are enrolled in the one year program, 60 of them are veterans said Rev. Andy Bales, CEO of the mission.

Jennifer Giles, a media specialist for the Census Bureau said homeless veterans are an important group of people that need to be accounted for, but also difficult to count and nearly impossible to count all of them.

“It is very important for everyone to be included in that (census) number. Everyone depends on public goods like clean water, parks and services like that,” Giles said.

What they have been trying to do for the past three censuses is develop a partnership, Development Partnership, which goes out to communities that the Census believes are hard to count, such as shelters.

“Homeless veterans are one of the most important groups to count because of the money the government can give them,” Giles said. There is money allocated for Veterans, but the number the Census counts matters when it comes to the amount of money and where that money will go, Giles added.

According to a study conducted by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Los Angeles County lost about $636 million over a period of ten years because of the undercount in the 2000 census. The estimated undercount for California was over 500,000 people.

As for the data collected by the census, nonprofits like New Directions say they do not use it extensively. The number accumulated is merely a snapshot of one days count of people who have no home, said Cindy Young, director of development at New Directions Inc., an L.A.-based non-profit organization serving veterans in the area.

For homeless veterans, being counted by the government is not something they all want.

“Some of these veterans in the streets don’t want people to know they are veterans because they are ashamed and embarrassed. They believe people will think, ‘You are here and you served this country?’” Ortega said.

As for Ortega, he wants answers from the government. He believes a change will begin to happen when people take action. “As a homeless veteran, I want the state to get involved, to do something more than take surveys,” Ortega said. “For the state to create plans, to create programs that will take action.”

Ortega is currently living at the Union Rescue Mission located in the middle of skid row. He is attempting to stand on his own two feet. After being in the streets he’s made the decision to help others who might be going down the same road as him.

“I would like to be a youth counselor. I would like to talk to kids who feel they have no choices and let them know they do have a choice,” Ortega said

Tags:  Anthony Ortega Census 2010 Cindy Young homeless veterans Jennifer Giles Los Angeles Marlene Pantaleón New Directions Inc. PriceWaterhouseCoopers Rev. Andy Bales skid row Union Rescue Mission United States Department of Veterans Affairs