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Recovery in the News
Veterans help other vets
Marcus Green
The Courier-Journal
January 21, 2008
VA taps experience, aids homeless
In a tiny office sheltered from the din of the St. John Center, Tony Cobbin leans closer to the homeless man in a wheelchair and listens to a familiar story.
Darrell Briggs, a 53-year-old Army veteran, tells Cobbin that he is once again trying to get sober.
It's a story that Cobbin, a counselor with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, knows well.
He was homeless before seeking help for drug and alcohol problems more than six years ago. Now the former Army medic works with homeless veterans as part of a national initiative the VA launched two years ago.
Sitting across from Briggs, Cobbin relates how treatment helped him after several failed attempts. He talks about how his life changed when he entered a program at Interlink Counseling. He says he's been sober since June 16, 2001.
"All I'm doing is passing on information that was given to me," Cobbin says. "I'm just passing it to you because I know it worked for me, and I hope you can see that it worked for me."
"Oh, I can see that," Briggs says.
"And," Cobbin says, "I hope it is something in me that you see that will inspire you, man."
A new approach
The Veterans Affairs Department took an unusual step to help homeless veterans two years ago: It began hiring people who know the situation firsthand.
Nationwide, the department budgeted $5.9 million for about 124 full-time peer counseling positions in 2007, according to the VA.
The government created the program in part because of a successful initiative in Boston that pairs formerly homeless veterans with veterans looking to get off the streets and into housing, said Paul Smits, a VA consultant on homelessness issues.
"It's been so helpful," Smits said of the Boston program. "We've had such good feedback from veterans who've been able to benefit from it."
That's the goal of officials in Louisville.
"Sometimes the bottom line is somebody who has actually been there and can speak to that -- homelessness and the recovery process," said Todd Dedas, a VA healthcare coordinator.
Cobbin speaks openly about his experience on the streets.
He grew up in Flint, Mich., and joined the Army at 18. He served from 1979 to 1990, he says, and drugs contributed to a demotion from sergeant to specialist that eventually resulted in an honorable discharge.
Cobbin had used alcohol, hashish, heroin and other drugs, but he said his spiral into drug addiction accelerated in September 1987, when he was introduced to crack cocaine. He had arrived at a friend's house at Fort Sam Houston in Texas for training after being stationed in Europe.
"I walked into his house and he shook my hand with one hand and gave me that pipe with the other hand, and my life kind of went downhill from that point on," he says.
Once he left the Army, Cobbin worked as a firefighter in Flint during most of the 1990s, but his drug use continued. He used "whatever I could get my hands on."
During his Army career, Cobbin had been stationed at Fort Knox. After hearing from his ex-wife about a treatment program in Louisville, he boarded a bus from Michigan with a gym bag and $20.
From there he went to Interlink, and then to a halfway house.
Skip forward a few years to a day last month. Cobbin is imploring Briggs to seek treatment at Interlink.
"If I can do this, man, you can do it," Cobbin says.
Briggs agrees: "I can't keep doing what I'm doing." With his background, Cobbin believes he's able to relate to homeless veterans. He just doesn't know yet if he's making a difference.
But when Cobbin recently spoke at a mental health event at Louisville's VA hospital, he was approached by a man grateful for a new outlook inspired by Cobbin.
"To me that's what it's all about," Cobbin says.
Vet homelessness drops
Advocates for homeless veterans say little research has been done to gauge the results of such peer counseling, although a Baltimore study on housing assistance is to be completed this year.
"The idea that there is research being done … on the effectiveness of one-on-one mentoring or counseling -- we know that that has to be better than no help at all," said John Driscoll, vice president of operations and programs for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
Nationwide, programs designed to help homeless veterans appear to be working. A VA survey reported that an estimated 195,827 homeless veterans used its facilities each night in 2006, which Driscoll said is down from more than 300,000 in 2003.
But the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that the number of homeless veterans rose slightly from 2005 to 2006.
The news was better for Kentucky, where an estimated 425 veterans were homeless in 2006, down 56 percent from the year before. In Indiana, the number of homeless veterans dropped by about 100, to 1,200. The national drop is due to expanded care through counseling centers, VA staff who work closely with homeless veterans and an increase in locally based services, Driscoll said.
Most services for homeless veterans emerged after the end of the Vietnam War, and it took soldiers from that era about a decade to request help, he said. Now, there are hundreds more places where homeless veterans can get help.
For that reason, and because veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are getting early mental health assessments, "there is reason to think that the impact is not going to be as severe as it was after Vietnam," Driscoll said.
The vast majority of veterans who served in those wars have not experienced homelessness, according to the coalition, but Driscoll expects the numbers will rise in the years to come.
The reasons veterans become homeless are complex and can't necessarily be traced to their military or combat experiences, including post-traumatic stress.
A study funded by the VA shows that about 12 percent of homeless veterans were homeless before enlisting or had problems associated with homelessness, such as poverty, Driscoll said.
"In an all-volunteer force a lot of people do go into the military because it is the way out of poverty or out of compromised family situations. … For the great, great majority of people that go that route, the military is their salvation," he said.
Victory can be elusive
During a typical week, Cobbin sees a stream of homeless veterans. Some are looking to get warm. Others, like Briggs, want help getting identification cards.
Whatever the reason, Cobbin tries to find out why they are homeless and, when needed, prod them to seek treatment. He says the two most common causes of homelessness are substance abuse and mental illness.
When they spoke in December, Briggs said he struggled with drugs and alcohol and became homeless about 10 years ago after his mother died. He couldn't pay the mortgage because of his crack habit.
Briggs said he'd been to Interlink twice but hadn't completed the program.
"So this time I want to do what it takes to get my life back together," he said. "I can't take this no more."
But a month after talking to him, Cobbin hadn't seen Briggs.
"We don't know where he's at," he said. "We don't have a clue."