Letter to Disabled Veterans of America

Dear Members of the Disabled Veterans of America:

I am concerned about the poor treatment of some of our veterans at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter. Please bear with me as I shed some light on this concern, and seek your help in righting this wrong.
As you probably know, the Veterans Administration Medical Center leases one of its buildings to Volunteers of America, which operates its own independent community homeless shelter. Volunteers of America is under contract with the VAMC to provide at least 16 beds to serve homeless veterans in our area.
I worked at the homeless shelter for one year as the service coordinator. During my year of employment there, I witnessed unfair, improper and poor-quality treatment of disabled veterans – mostly through the director and another disabled veteran on staff at the shelter (both employees of Volunteers of America).

A veteran was dismissed from the shelter because he said, “I am not like the other people here” . . . The director talked about charging a veteran for the food he ate at the shelter because he had a job at the VA . . . Veterans are placed on the shelter’s Not Welcome Back List for no more reason than that the director is tired of them . . . A veteran’s diabetic diet was not followed by the shelter . . . A Black Beret Veteran with PTSD was accosted by staff and this brought on a difficult episode on the part of the veteran . . . A veteran was promised a bed upon his return from taking care of personal business in another state, but, when he returned to the shelter, he was told he was not welcome back . . . Veterans are routinely told by the director that they are mentally ill, and are ordered to treatment they do not want or feel they need . . . Veterans are told they can help shape their goals while at the shelter, but, in truth, they are told what their goals will be and must follow directives accordingly or be kicked out . . . Veterans are arbitrarily dismissed from the shelter by the director, who gives them no more reason than, “This is not working out.”

In general, veterans and civilians at the shelter are treated in an authoritarian, dictatorial manner. They are scolded like children and brow-beaten as though they were incarcerated. (Veterans have personally told me they feel that they are either in kindergarten or prison during their stay at the shelter.)

I could go on, but I hope that these examples will suggest to you that there is a problem in the way disabled American veterans are being treated by the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.

I discovered, and you probably know, many of our disabled veterans do not feel empowered enough to register an official complaint about their poor treatment. Some of them have even become accustomed to poor treatment at shelters and elsewhere.

I have continued to work on my own time with disabled veterans who have been kicked out of the shelter, or who have found places to live in the Sheridan area. This is follow-up that the shelter is supposed to provide, but does not. I have worked with enough disabled veterans in Sheridan to know that the quality-of-care problem persists at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Shelter.

I am personally outraged at the shoddy treatment that our injured protectors have had to endure at the hands of a few poorly-trained and authoritarian individuals at the shelter.

So concerned was I about this treatment that I angrily confronted my supervisor about this back in December, and she saw to it that I was fired. I wanted you to be aware of this because VOA tends to vilify me as a man who is merely angry about losing his job. I am still angry about the same thing that angered me in December: The poor treatment of homeless individuals, especially disabled veterans, at this shelter.

I suggest that it could help improve the quality of care at the shelter if the DAV were to offer itself to the veterans in the Sheridan shelter in the following ways:

Advertise that any veterans with concerns about their treatment at the Sheridan Community Shelter may be addressed to the DAV, or an individual or committee of the DAV.

Secondly, I advise that you set up a monthly meeting with the veterans at the shelter where vets can safely air their concerns by meeting one at a time with a representative or a committee of representatives from the DAV. I am honestly concerned thatthe social workers who act as liaisons between the VA and the shelter have a tendency to dismiss vets’ concerns and look the other way when serious questions are asked about the shelter. They are good people, but they tend to “side” with the shelter.

I suggest a monthly meeting, because there is a certain amount of natural turnover in the veteran population there, and because different issues regarding poor treatment of people at the shelter crop up fairly routinely. The information obtained in these meetings should be forwarded to someone trustworthy at the VA.

Your presence as something of a quality-control entity I believe would greatly reduce the uncalled-for treatment of disabled veterans at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter, as the corporation is extremely image-conscious. This slight pressure from you could make the director think twice about her treatment of disabled veterans at the shelter. The director is a responsive person, but I don’t believe she realizes how difficult and dismissive she is being, nor the anxiety she is causing some vets at the shelter.

Please advise me as to your response to my concerns and suggestions. I would be happy to meet with anyone who wishes to follow up on this with me. I hope it is clear that I do not intend to ask to be a part of whatever process the DAV wishes to implement in this matter. I just wanted to bring it to your attention and suggest a means by which the DAV could make a significant difference.

Thank you for your time and your attention to this matter.

Welcome to the Shelter! Welcome! Did We Say 'Welcome?'

Welcome to the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
We are glad you are here, but, please don’t bother us while we are working.
We realize that you might be from a background that makes it difficult for you to follow every little rule. In order to make your stay here as short and un-troubling as possible, we have a spate of rules that we show you on paper, another rash of additional rules scotch-taped to the walls and doors, and a flood of decrees that are hidden in the recesses of the shelter director’s mind.
We will make it so difficult and so weird for you to be here that you will want to leave by the time we kick you out, and you will embrace the underside of a bridge or the opportunity to sink unnoticed into the silent, homeless mob.
We fire the staff members who believe you are a miracle, and prefer to consider you somehow involved with drugs.
Those big hugs we give you are just our way of searching for weapons and detecting beer on your breath.
We are really looking for 30 or 40 perfectly behaved, well-groomed, rule-abiding and cowtowing homeless people.
If you are not such a one, don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.

– Management