CNN — THE SITUATION ROOM — Aired November 8, 2007 - 18:00 ET
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go to Jack Cafferty. He's got "The Cafferty File" in New York — Jack.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, let's keep that war going.
With that in mind, here's something that our country should truly be ashamed of. Veterans make up more than 25 percent of the homeless people in this country, even though they only account for 11 percent of the general adult population; 25 percent of the homeless people in this country are veterans. They are only 11 percent of the adult population.
A new report by an organization called the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that on any given night in the United States, 196,000 veterans sleep in the street, in a shelter, or in transitional housing. The states with the highest numbers of homeless vets, Louisiana, California, Missouri. Washington, D.C., also has a high rate.
The study found homelessness isn't just a problem among middle-aged or elderly veterans either. Younger vets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding their way into the shelters and the soup kitchens. Experts say it usually takes several years after leaving the military for veterans to wind up on the street. But some say that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seem to be turning up sooner than Vietnam veterans did.
One official says they expect a tsunami of veterans from the Iraq war because the mental health toll from this war is enormous. In order to reduce the problem, the group suggests building 25,000 housing units over the next five years and increasing by 20,000 the number of housing vouchers targeted for our veterans.
Here's the question. This is just disgusting. How does the U.S. treat its veterans if they comprise more than 25 percent of our nation's homeless population? E-mail us at
CaffertyFile@CNN.com or go to CNN.com/caffertyfile — Wolf.
BLITZER: Jack, I got to tell you, this is a national disgrace. It's a national disgrace, what's going on. I don't know what to say.
CAFFERTY: Well, you said it. It's a disgrace. And the veterans have been getting short shrift around here since Vietnam, I suppose. But it's getting worse.
And the long combat tours that these kids are putting in, in Iraq are causing this post-traumatic stress disorder to show up in more severe cases more often. There are more of them coming home. I am embarrassed to be a citizen of a place that treats people like we do.
BLITZER: It is a disgrace.