Press Room

The weather has turned dangerously cold in much of the country, putting homeless people at high risk of injury or even death. If you encounter someone and want to help, what should you do?

More than 813,000 military veterans live in Virginia, including more than 38,000 veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. And that doesn't include the families of service members who have been deployed. The Virginia Wounded Warrior Program is using a tiny budget to reach a big problem -- veterans with behavioral-health problems, ranging from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to traumatic brain injuries.

The Dutchtown Campus Apartments, a Union Mission program that provides permanent homes for the homeless, is a 48-unit complex on Middleground Road that provides supportive housing for chronically homeless individuals and families with mental health and addictive disease needs, HIV or disabilities.

Stefan Kertesz, MD, MSc, vividly recalls a patient he saw at a homeless shelter in the 1990s. The man had a mood disorder and hypertension. Clinical guidelines and performance measures called for aggressively managing the blood pressure. But Kertesz sensed that if he were to go that route during their initial meetings, it would drive the man away and stifle their budding patient-doctor relationship. Now Kertesz is studying what primary care for the homeless should look like. His findings confirm one critical factor is trust. He is comparing existing models within the VA system to learn which features work best.

The 511 Akard St. location sits smack in the middle of downtown Dallas. It is the city's first mixed-use housing development with units set aside for low-income residents and the formerly homeless. Central Dallas Community Development Corp. and partner Central Dallas Ministries engineered the project and will office in the building, along with several other companies and a 7-Eleven convenience store.

If any group of people could be said to have been the most shattered by Hurricane Katrina, it was those who were left in Renaissance Village and other temporary housing when the Federal Emergency Management Agency began to phase out housing aid almost three years after the storm. They were among the region’s poorest people before the storm hit in August 2005, their lives once supported in New Orleans by a dense web of family ties and familiarity. Many were elderly, sick, addicted, mentally ill or otherwise disabled, unskilled or uneducated, and traumatized. Their children were behind in school or acting out. The storm was initially hailed as an opportunity to give them a better life, but as time progressed, thousands of families disappeared into the yawning gaps in government aid.

For those struggling with depression or schizophrenia, the everyday goal of finding and keeping steady employment can seem like a Sisyphean task that begins anew every morning. And in this troubled economy, the slope they struggle against has become even steeper.

Between rising rates in unemployment and foreclosures, it's no wonder that families are now the country's fastest growing homeless population. In Arizona, the number of families experiencing first-time homelessness jumped by more than 10 percent last year. That's created a big challenge for homeless children, trying to balance both school and survival. Gillian Ferris Kohl of member station KNAU in Flagstaff visited with some homeless families and teens, and has this story.

Gov. Bill Ritter today joined the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and dozens of community members to break ground on a 98-unit apartment building for the chronically homeless and low-income. Future tenants who are currently homeless will help construct the building in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The Governor congratulated the Coalition for the Homeless for its new jobs program, Renaissance Works, which will provide homeless people with construction jobs building the new apartment project.

The dysfunctional Housing Authority of New Orleans may be unable to properly spend and account for the $34.6 million in federal stimulus money it received, according to an audit released this week by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.