Pedro Jauregui, with the organization U.S. Vets in Long Beach, Calif., once spent a whole year getting one homeless veteran to come in from the cold.
"The first time I met him I had to walk away 'cause he gave me some choice words, waved a one finger at me and said he was gonna kill me," Jauregui said.
But a year of regular visits, including plenty of hot coffees and donuts, and Jauregui convinced the vet to come indoors. After that he sobered up and started using his VA benefits for college.
"We build relationships and then we use whatever we can to get the veteran the help he needs," Jauregui said.
More than 30,000 U.S. military veterans are homeless, according to the latest government data from an annual one night "point in time count." That number is down significantly in the past decade, which most experts credit to a straightforward combination of robust funding and a philosophy focused on offering housing without prerequisites, called housing first.
While the Trump administration has promised new housing for vets, President Trump also signed an executive order last year titled "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets," which leans heavily toward institutionalizing homeless people against their will. This winter, NPR obtained slides describing a proposed VA plan called "Safe Harbor," which would include veterans in that shift to involuntary treatment. Then in March, the VA put out a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department about state court guardianship for veterans.
But VA Secretary Doug Collins says the memorandum has nothing to do with the Safe Harbor proposal.
"We have veterans, not homeless, just veterans, who are in our facilities," he said at the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans annual conference last month,"They have no family, they have no representation and they really are not in a position to actually make competent choices for their own healthcare."
Collins said the memorandum will help those veterans get important medical decisions made.
"The court will find somebody in the community, not a VA employee, not a VA attorney, (who) will then represent that veteran with the respect to their medical wellbeing, moving them along, getting them the healthcare that they need," he said.
Collins says the leaked slide deck describing project Safe Harbor was still just a proposal, and he accused the lead Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Mark Takano, of distorting it.
"Somebody in our building leaked it to the Hill. And guess what? Representative Takano happily put out information that wasn't correct," Collins said. "I've got veterans who are sitting in hospitals who can't make competent choices for themselves to get better… next-level care. We're helping them do that. … When it came out that we were attacking homeless and going after homeless I wanted to puke," he said.
Takano claimed in a statement to NPR that the VA is withholding information about the program from the public.
"I've given VA multiple opportunities at public hearings and in congressional requests to clarify its intent, and it refuses to do so," Takano said. "Doug Collins repeatedly fails to recognize or plan for the risks associated with guardianship, an industry rife with fraud and exploitation."
Takano said his staff will continue to collect information from whistleblowers about courts putting veterans under guardianship.
A VA spokesman reiterated to NPR that the guardianship memorandum is not connected to the leaked "Safe Harbor" plan, which echoed President Trump's executive order about institutionalizing homeless people. Several veterans advocacy groups have expressed skepticism.
"I like to think that it's altruistic, like they really wanna help veterans in hospital situations have the decision-making skills that they need. But the fact that it also applies to homeless veterans and those veterans at risk of homelessness, I think is really a slippery slope," said Jess Finucan, director of policy and advocacy at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says the veterans service community is worried.
"What the administration has said publicly on this proposal is at odds with the documentation on the project and its pilot program. That original documentation was directly linked to the president's executive order, calling for involuntary commitment of people experiencing homelessness. I think it's disingenuous for anybody from the VA to say that this was meant for a completely different population," she said.
What proud vet wants to be a burden?
Back in Long Beach, NPR recently rode along with Pedro Jauregui and Veronica Hood, from the group U.S. Vets, as they did street outreach. They both served in the military, but at this point they've spent nearly as many years serving homeless vets.
"Rather than make it something traumatic where we're forcing you into it, let outreach workers like us build the relationship," Jauregui said.
Their aim was to track down an 87-year-old Navy veteran named Curtis Ervin who has been sleeping in his truck. Even though he's probably been homeless for decades, Ervin is reluctant to accept offers of housing, Hood said.
"He might think he'd be a burden on people. So he really just wants to do it on his own," she said.
"And what proud man or vet wants to be a burden on anybody?" Jauregui added from the passenger seat.
After driving to a few different places where homeless vets camp out, Hood spots Ervin's maroon pickup parked near a JackintheBox. She hands him a warm packed meal and some water through the driver's side window.
Ervin said he joined the Navy in 1956.
"I was a diesel engine mechanic. And on the ship that means you're everything," Ervin said.
His last ship was the USS Bainbridge nuclear-powered destroyer.
"I was aboard when they brought the nuclear fleet to Vietnam, when they brought the (USS aircraft carrier) Enterprise, my ship escorted her. We went around Africa," he recalls.
Ervin said he's been bouncing between hospitals for years, and he can't remember the last time he had a home. Sleeping in a seat has made his legs swell up.
"Right now I'm in the truck. For the last two, three years I've been dancing from hospital to hospital. … I finally got out because they tried to keep me," Ervin said.
He doesn't like being ordered around.
"I got enough of that in the Navy," he said, even though he's been out for 60 years.
But Veronica Hood seems to have built a rapport, and Ervin said he'll be here tomorrow to go with her to the hospital, and then get a roof over his head.
" I have never used the VA, but I am scheduled to go to the VA tomorrow," he said, "and I hope they don't keep me there."
Driving back, Hood and Jauregui said they know some homeless people are a danger to themselves and maybe others, but for the most part they wouldn't want to see vets forced into treatment.
"As you saw with Ervin it could be both beneficial or it could be extremely traumatic," said Hood.
"My husband is also a veteran. He just retired and I would be worried for him, too, if I wasn't around, if someone would show him the same compassion. It's how I would want Pedro to be treated. I'm sure how he would want me to be treated," she said
By phone after the visit, Hood told NPR that Curtis Ervin came in the next day, and he's now in housing for the first time in more years than he can remember.
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