Dear Future President,

More than 180,000 brave men and women join the armed forces every year. 13,650 of those men and women are deployed to Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Forced to endure what typical men and women are not willing to do and what makes it worst is that half of those men and women come back home, homeless.

Now, there are many ways to fix this problem and yet many people don’t know or care that this happens in our country way too often. So ask yourself, “Do I know what homeless veterans are?” hopefully you say yes. Now ask yourself a second question, “what are the causes of homeless veterans?” and the answer is the lack of affordable housing, livable income, and access to health care. A large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with the lingering effects of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder: A mental illness that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault) and no one is willing to house them or take them in.

The effect of this is that many Veterans don’t feel needed or wanted which causes suicide and depression. It also affects the families of the homeless veterans, and what makes this epidemic worse is that 87% are female. Now, the veteran homeless rate has decreased since 2010. So Mr.President, the best way that we could fix this is we could have more support groups and increase the V.A, (Veteran affairs: A government-run military veteran benefit system with cabinet level status) and loans. Then hopefully, one day all the men and women that come from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq protecting this lovely place we call home can actually come to a home and live the rest of their lives in peace.

Sincerely,

Treyvion Thomas