Some of Our People who need us the most are our homeless American Veterans and Their Families.
If we are going to continue to be a Great Country, then we need to show Tremendous Respect for, and take care of, Our American Heroes who have found themselves homeless.
96% of our homeless Veterans are from low income, disadvantaged neighborhoods, which causes them to not have a financial safety net if something causes them financial difficulties.
This causes considerable homelessness among Our Veterans who come from lower income families, which contributes to 37% of the homeless population identifying as Black, and 24% of the homeless population identifying as Hispanic.
Since more than 1.5 million of Our Veterans are below the government poverty line and spend more than 50% of their income on rent, then they are classified as at-risk for homelessness.
We need to treat Our Veterans with the Greatest Amount of Respect and Dignity by helping Our Veterans to overcome their hardships, and by working together to create opportunities for them to have Success in Their Lives.
It is far easier for people to become homeless than we realize because when people do not have the benefit of a family safety net, as 96% of our homeless Veterans do not, then it often only takes one financial mistake, or one medical injury or problem, or one mental health issue, to cause them to become homeless.
In addition, Our Veterans often become homeless because of the mental traumas they have suffered during their deployments, and half of homeless Veterans have been diagnosed with mental issues.
When someone becomes homeless, then it is very difficult for them to get themselves back on track because after becoming homeless they often do not have a place to keep their clothes for work, or to take a shower to look nice for work and for a job interview, or to have access to the internet to look for jobs or to communicate with their work, or to even have access to a phone.
Our Veteran’s Affairs office has done a very good job reducing the number of Our Homeless Veterans since 2010, but we still have a long way to go because Veteran homelessness increased by 7% in 2023, with homelessness in the general population increasing even more at 12% in 2023.
As we design and act upon Our Plan to help Our Veterans, it is very important that we realize how similar the situations are for Our Veterans who are homeless, for Our Non-Veterans who are homeless, for Our People who are in severe poverty, for Our People who have mental health difficulties, and for Our People who have drug addictions.
It is crucial for us to understand and appreciate how Our Military Veteran, or anyone, can often be categorized in more than one of these disadvantaged groups.
This is because the hardships and challenges that Our Military Veterans have to deal with in one category, often cause Our Veterans to fit into some of the other difficult categories.
For example, Veteran homelessness can result in unemployment, poverty, a lack of medical care, and drug addiction.
More than half of Our Homeless Veterans have disabilities, and more than 65% have substance abuse problems.
Likewise, when Our Veterans are not able to pay medical costs, then this very often results in bankruptcy, homelessness, unemployment, and poverty.
Drug addiction often requires medical care, and it can also result in unemployment, poverty, homelessness.
Unemployment causes poverty that can result in homelessness and a lack of medical care.
Therefore, as we formulate Our Plan for solving these issues, we want to design and build the foundation and infrastructure components so that every component of Our Plan will solve more than one of these categories of Our People at the same time.
A huge mistake that our government has made is that they have been treating each of these categories as a separate issue, which results in our government trying to design aid programs for each of these groups individually.
However, trying to deal with each group individually stretches the government’s finances too thinly to be effective, and also stretches the government’s manpower far too much because the government is trying to cover every small area of Our Country.
By the government treating these problems as separate issues, then a huge amount of government and taxpayer money is being wasted on all the duplication of services.
Treating these problems as separate issues also requires the government to subcontract many of these services to outside companies, such as for medical care and drug addiction.
As a result, the government is then forced to pay hundreds of thousands of outside people and companies to provide these medical and addiction services across Our Country, which causes the costs for these services to be much higher than they should be because the costs are being paid to outside non-government personnel.
Many areas across the United States have severe homelessness problems, but San Francisco, and California as a whole, have been the worst.
The California government has done a far worse job than anywhere else in America taking care of their homeless people, because 50% of all the unsheltered homeless people in the entire United States are in California.
The California government has spent $24 billion over the past five years to try to reduce homelessness, however they did such a bad job managing and monitoring their homeless programs, and managing and monitoring where they spent their taxpayers’ money, that they did not reduce homelessness at all.
The fact that California charges and collects the highest amount of taxes, but still does the worst job in America taking care of its residents, proves that the California politicians are following policies that are not the correct policies to solve America’s problems and challenges.
They fail to realize that developing a solution is 1% idea and 99% daily hard work to make the idea successful.
The government leaders in California make the mistake of being ideologues, who think their job is done after the 1% idea because they do not want to do the 99% hard work. The result is that all of California’s policies fail due to a lazy work ethic.
As we look at Our Veterans who become homeless, a very large percentage of them become homeless because of debts they owe that caused them personal bankruptcies.
Statistically, more than 60% of personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills that people could not afford to pay.
These bankruptcies often result in foreclosures on their homes, or a loss of credit that keeps them from being able to rent an apartment, each of which can cause homelessness for them.
Once our people are homeless, then it is far more difficult for them to get or keep a job because they do not have access to what they need.
Unemployment rates for homeless people range from 52% to 90%, depending upon the state and city they are in, with California, Los Angeles, and Washington DC having the highest rates of both homelessness and unemployment.
The facts are that 30% of homeless people have mental health issues, and 50% of homeless people have substance addiction problems.
These percentages are even higher for Our Military Veterans.
Very sadly, the life expectancy of a homeless person in America is between 20 and 38 years less than people who have homes.
Homeless Veterans often have their children with them, and this results in our American Heroes and their Wonderful families having lives that are two to four decades shorter than they should be.
The ideal way to solve all of these problems at the same time is for us to create Village communities that combine housing, employment, education, personal development programs, career development programs, career guidance, medical care, daycare for children of military veterans, mental health care, substance abuse care, protection from abuse, protection from trafficking, and protection from domestic violence.
Within these Village communities we will provide housing for Our Homeless Military Veterans, For Our Homeless People, for Our Foster Care Children, for Our Unemployed People who have become homeless, for Our People who have medical and mental health issues, for Our People who have drug addictions, and for Our Homeless Families with Children.
We will also partner with large corporations who will place corporate office locations within Our Villages that we have created, and these corporate offices will provide employment for Everyone in Our Villages.
We will also provide medical care and drug addiction solutions right within Our Village communities.
We will also provide the teaching of independent living skills to all Our Veterans and residents so they will increase and improve their personal self-development skills, which will allow them to become even More Successful than they would have been otherwise.
The Village community model we will emulate is similar to the outstanding work communities that were built in America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, some of which are still going today.
These were built by corporations in locations like Hershey, Pennsylvania with the Hershey Chocolate Company, and in Corning, New York with the Corning Ware Company.
These work communities became wonderful neighborhoods for individuals and families, and the communities expanded to include excellent housing, athletic fields, boating, bowling alleys, recreational facilities, tennis courts, libraries, museums, and sometimes even an amusement park.
By combining all these services for Our Veterans, and for all our other groups of People in each of Our Village community locations, then we will be able to provide far better personal services for every resident.
In addition, we will also reduce our costs tremendously because by centralizing our services in Our Villages, then we will not need to provide services to every inch of the United States like our government is unsuccessfully trying to do now.
We will also save very large amounts of money because we will provide all these services ourselves in one location, instead of needing to pay higher prices to outside companies who are spread out across the United States.
For any of us to be very successful in Life, then it is extremely important for us to be able to take a difficult problem that has caused a negative situation for us, and Find A Way to turn this negative situation around into a Positive situation for us.
It is Always Possible for us to do this in any situation because it is Always Possible For Us To Find A Way To Win in anything.
To turn around a negative situation into a positive situation, we just need to keep persevering and working toward Our Goals while we look for the Opportunity that is Always hidden in Every Challenge.
“Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.” – Joseph Sugarman
Our Villages will be perfect for Our Military Veterans who are homeless, for their Families, for Our Foster Care Children, for Our Unemployed Homeless People, for Our People who have medical and mental health issues, for Our Veterans who are homeless and who have medical problems, and for Our People who have drug addictions.
We will save all of these Wonderful People, and we will get all of them back on track to again living very Successful Lives of Happiness and Purpose.
While we are Saving Lives and providing these tremendous services, we will also be saving hundreds of billions of dollars for America because we will be providing services in central locations with fewer workers, instead of trying to provide services across every inch of our Country.
We will also not be wasting money by paying outside medical care workers like our government is currently doing, because we will have our own medical personnel on site to provide services to everyone.
This will save a huge amount money that we will spend to Benefit You and America in many new ways.
In addition, we will be providing a well-paid and valuable job for Every Veteran Resident in Our Village, which will result in Our Veterans gradually being able to contribute toward the cost of the housing that we have provided, which will reduce and eliminate one of our largest costs.
We will be providing housing and a job for Our Veterans who were previously homeless and in poverty, and we will be developing Our Veterans so that we will be helping them to improve and develop their personal skills, and so we will be helping them to get back up onto Their Path to Great Achievement and Success.
In the process, we will drastically reduce and hopefully eliminate America’s Military Veteran homelessness problem.
And even more importantly, Our Village communities will Rescue and Save Our American Heroes who have found themselves in a homeless and very difficult situation, allowing Our Veterans to once again live Lives filled with Happiness, Purpose, Self-Confidence, Achievement, and Love.
Studies show that in the current homeless environment, it costs our government $32,000 per person, per year, to pay the costs of Each of Our People who is homeless and unsheltered.
However, it only costs our government $18,000 per person, per year, if Our Homeless Person is staying in government housing.
Therefore, because our homeless system is not functioning efficiently, then it is currently far more expensive for our government when Our Veterans are homeless than if we provide housing for Our Veterans.
With Our Villages Plan, we will reduce this $18,000 per person homeless cost even further because we will be centralizing and streamlining all our services in Our Village locations.
We will also be developing Our Veterans’ Lives in a very positive way so they will be able to work and contribute toward their own housing in the Villages, or in other neighborhoods when they choose to move outside of their Village.
Therefore, our government will save hundreds of billions of dollars every year compared to what we are currently spending in our inefficient, ineffective, and broken homeless system.
In addition, there are many American Corporations who are led by outstanding men and women, and so just like Hershey and Corning Ware came forward more than 100 years ago, many of our exceptional corporate leaders and corporations will choose to Partner with us on our Village Communities by these Corporations providing employment opportunities for our Village residents.
In fact, in some cases the Corporations are even going to choose to pay for the cost of building the Villages as Our Partners.
Our Partnerships with these outstanding American Corporations and Leaders will create tremendous United States government/corporate relationships that will Benefit America in many ways.
Our Corporations will also find that a very large number of Our Veterans living in Our Villages are Tremendous People and Outstanding Workers.
Veterans who have risen up to fulfill their vast potential when we created Our Village Plan that gave them a Second Chance to Save Their Lives.
As a result, Our Villages for Our Veterans will create a Winning situation for Everyone because we will be Saving Lives, Saving Families, Adding Happiness and Meaning to Lives, Adding Love, and Adding Purpose to Every Previously Homeless Veteran’s Life.
In the process, we will save hundreds of thousands of Our Veterans’ Lives, and we will be helping many Millions of Our Veterans to rediscover their Lives of Purpose and Happiness.
Our Veterans are Our Heroes, and so we owe them this second opportunity to be Our Heroes again.
