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TEMPLE — Last spring, on his first night of homelessness, Izay Ramos and his wife slept in his van. Then came nearly a month in a homeless shelter in Copperas Cove, where he battled depression and chronic sleeplessness and searched in vain for a job.

It wasn't supposed to be like this for Ramos, a father of three and a decorated former sergeant in the U.S. Army. A year earlier, he'd been repairing missile systems and fixing tanks and Humvees in Baghdad as he finished a military career that included two tours of Iraq. He said he left Fort Hood in March 2009 filled with hope, embarking on the next chapter in his life with his wife and three children.

"I was very positive when I first got out," said Ramos, 27. "I thought I would get a job quickly." Instead, Ramos and his wife, forced to leave their children with relatives in Mississippi, watched their savings evaporate and their options dwindle.

In Central Texas, Department of Veterans Affairs officials say Ramos is part of a troubling trend. They have begun seeing more younger veterans, often with families, living on the streets or facing eviction than they have before.

As of mid-January, the VA's homeless program, which covers a 39-county swath of Central Texas, had helped 31 veterans with families, said Paula Wood, the Central Texas VA homeless health care coordinator. The program has seen 27 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in Central Texas, but officials say they haven't counted all of the post-9/11 veterans in need of housing assistance.

According to the VA, as of 2009, more than 3,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans had sought housing assistance in the past four years, up from 1,800 in 2008. And the number of female veterans who are homeless has doubled in the past decade.

But officials say getting an accurate number of younger Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have become homeless is difficult because many are too embarrassed to seek help or avoid the streets by house-surfing with friends and family.

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans continue to represent just a fraction of the nation's homeless veteran population, estimated at 131,000. But the numbers are unprecedented.

"We haven't really dealt with (homeless families) before," Wood said. "Before, we would see maybe one per year. ... It's just unreal. It's not substance abuse; it's unemployment."

Ramos and other recently discharged veterans have returned from war only to run up against some potent forces.

Like an estimated 20 to 30 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Ramos came home with psychological scars, in his case a major depression fueled by a tough second deployment in which the former mechanic says he was unexpectedly pressed into a combat role.

And new veterans face a grim economic picture: The unemployment rate for all post-9/11 veterans is 11.6 percent, compared with 10 percent for the general public. Unemployment rates are particularly high for veterans younger than 24, at more than 20 percent.

And the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization says it's concerned about another trend: Recent veterans are ending up on the streets faster than veterans of other conflicts. Most Vietnam veterans didn't wind up homeless for five to 10 years after that war, yet some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are becoming homeless within 18 months of coming home, according to the VA.

Advocates hope an array of services and programs will help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans avoid the fate that befell tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans, who had few resources to help them avoid homelessness.

For some experts, homelessness among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remains remarkably low, considering the numbers returning with psychological injuries.

"I'm surprised the numbers aren't higher, given the nature of the conflict," said John Driscoll, president of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "This generation has proven itself something special."

For Ramos, the seeds of homelessness were planted during his military service in Iraq. During his first deployment in 2003, he rarely left the huge Baghdad base Camp Liberty, where he repaired fighting vehicles. He saw little action or bloodshed. All that changed on his second deployment in 2006, when he was part of a task force that conducted missions in dangerous Baghdad neighborhoods during a particularly violent phase of the American surge there. Though Ramos was still a maintenance worker, he said he was often pressed into service with the infantry battalion he accompanied.

At the same time, the situation at home was growing difficult. His wife was diagnosed with a painful bladder syndrome that made it hard for her to care for their children. Family members from their native Puerto Rico had to pitch in.

"I couldn't come back, and that was a stressor," he said. "Every single day I was going on missions that I wasn't supposed to be on. It was very bad, very stressful."

When he did come home, Ramos said he found himself unable to sleep, and for a period he withdrew into himself, avoiding other people and social situations. When his depression led to thoughts of suicide, he said, he spent two weeks at a psychiatric hospital in San Antonio. After he left the Army to care for his wife and children, Ramos said, he and his family stayed with friends near Fort Hood as he looked for work. A few months later they left their children with relatives in Mississippi. When Ramos and his wife returned to Killeen, the friends didn't want them staying with them anymore, he said.

The couple soon landed at a homeless shelter in Copperas Cove, where administrators estimate that one out of 10 homeless veterans are recent returnees from Iraq. He despaired of finding a job and getting his life on track.

The good news for homeless veterans like Ramos is that they have an array of VA and community-based programs to help them find permanent housing. A number of bills before Congress would dramatically increase funding for the VA's homeless efforts and allow the department to help veterans with emergency cash payments to help stave off eviction.

In Central Texas, officials say one of their most powerful tools is the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, or VASH, which gives eligible veterans $650-a-month Section 8 housing vouchers to help pay their rent. Once reserved for chronically homeless veterans — typically older single men battling substance abuse — the program is now open to at-risk populations, including families and Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Since last summer, local Veterans Affairs officials have had two full-time outreach social workers visiting the Austin Salvation Army, the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and other homeless gathering spots in an effort to reach more veterans within Austin's homeless community.

"A lot of people say, 'I have a hard time asking for help; I just got out of the military,'" said VA social worker Molly Batschelet, who has an office at the Salvation Army. "When you are in this situation, it can be incredibly overwhelming. ... For some of the younger veterans or those who haven't been homeless before, the shelter is intimidating."

Homeless, with child

Last year, Brooke Warren, 30, used the program to get out of the Austin Salvation Army women's shelter, where the then-pregnant former Fort Hood soldier spent three months while she searched for work.

"It's not a place for a pregnant woman to be," said Warren, who was an aviation coordinator in Iraq. "In the shelter, I just felt like I was lost in a way. I didn't know where to turn, where to go." With her family in Wisconsin, Warren said, she didn't have anyone to lean on in Austin.

Despite being homeless, Warren continued to report to her once-a-month duties with the Texas National Guard at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Every time she donned her camouflage uniform, it drew stares and questions from the other women at the shelter.

"But I liked going," she said. "I felt better because I was working. I felt productive."

Eventually, a social worker told her about the VA's supportive housing program.

"That's the main thing: People don't know about it," she said. "I would have gone directly if I had known."

At first she moved into the VA's transitional housing program, an Austin group home with other homeless veterans. Two weeks before she gave birth to her son, she moved into an apartment on William Cannon Drive with a $650-a-month Section 8 voucher, one of 105 available to veterans in Austin.

Today she's hoping to attend college through the Post 9/11 GI Bill , which pays tuition and a housing stipend for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. "I am blessed really to have an opportunity to be in (the homeless) program," she said. "Without it, I don't know where I'd be. I'm not going to fail anymore. I've got to get it together."

Tyreena Mendez ended up at a homeless shelter in Copperas Cove after leaving the Army in 2007, when she was pregnant with her first child. After a fruitless year-and-a-half search for work in the Killeen area, she found herself homeless, with another baby on the way.

"I was really, really stressed" while at the shelter, said Mendez, who has since moved into an apartment through the VA's housing program and found a job at a day care. "I had the baby; I was pregnant, no job, no food, no money for anything. I did not think it was going to be like this. If I would have known, I would have stayed in the Army."

Rising tide of women

Experts say Mendez and Warren represent another troubling trend: Though the number of homeless veterans in general has fallen sharply — from about 250,000 in 2004 to 131,000 at last count in 2009 — the number of female homeless veterans has doubled over the past decade to an estimated 6,500.

Many, like Mendez and Warren, are single mothers and were part of the unprecedented presence of servicewomen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The issue of female homelessness was addressed by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki in November, when he announced a five-year plan to end homelessness among veterans. Advocates generally lauded the plan, which calls for measures to keep veterans from becoming homeless in the first place.

"If we do not have a definite time frame, we'll never work as hard to achieve it," said Driscoll, the homeless veterans coalition president. "If Congress comes through, it probably won't drive the number down to zero, but it should give an opportunity to every veteran that's threatened with homelessness to link to services to avoid it."

A variety of bills wending their way through Congress would provide specialized assistance to single mothers, allow the VA to provide direct financial support to very low-income veterans and triple the number of Section 8 vouchers available to the VA supportive housing program to 60,000 by 2014.

The supportive housing program has been the subject of debate among homeless advocates since the VA ruled it could be available to all homeless veterans and not just the chronically homeless. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and other groups argue that the vouchers should be reserved for the chronically homeless — people who may need supportive services for the rest of their lives — which could free up transitional housing programs for more recent veterans, who are more likely to require short-term help.

Ramos said he learned about the VA's homeless program while he was at the Cove House Emergency Homeless Shelter in Copperas Cove. By October, Ramos and his family had moved into a townhouse in a Killeen fourplex, a three-bedroom, two-bath peace of mind.

"Now it seems like everything is going back to where it's supposed to be," he said. "I feel better; I can take care of my family. ... The kids seem happier. They know — you think they don't, but they do."

Ramos is repairing electronics from home and searching for a part-time job. He hopes to enroll in college through the GI Bill and study software engineering. With his life less chaotic, he said he plans to focus on getting treatment for his depression, which he neglected during his brush with homelessness.

"Right now," he said, "I'm getting at the point where I'm getting back on my feet."

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