Posted on 04/26/2004 8:46:03 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Home From Iraq, and Without a Home
By DAN BARRY Published: April 24, 2004
"THIS is how Nicole Goodwin travels these days:
with her 1-year-old daughter pressed to her chest in a Snugli,
a heavy backpack strapped across her shoulders ..."
Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times Nicole Goodwin,
a homeless Army veteran who served in Iraq,
and her 1-year-old daughter, Shylah.
The Times writes:
CUT
..."She pushed her stroller a few blocks to the Emergency Assistance Unit, the city's flawed point of entry for homeless families. She explained her situation to a staff member who, she says, yelled at her for not having the proper paperwork handy. "I killed her with kindness," she said. "I've been yelled at before by the best."I got that attitude from Iraq," Ms. Goodwin added. "If this isn't life and death, it's not that serious."
(Bio: Goodwin, 23, graduated early from Morris High School in the Bronx. January 2001, she entered an Army recruiting station.. basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C.; classes in supply support at Fort Lee, Va.; and then a flight to Germany, where she was attached to Company B of the 501st Forward Support Battalion at a post in Friedberg. A relationship with another soldier ended after she became pregnant, and in early 2003 she flew to the California home of some friends from the military - the Bronx was not an option, she says - to give birth in March of that year. A few weeks later, she did the hardest thing she has ever had to do: she left Shylah with her California friends and returned to Germany to complete her service. Four months after giving birth, Ms. Goodwin was sent to Iraq. She served food rations at Baghdad International Airport for several weeks, then spent a few more weeks at the sports arena known as the Olympic Stadium, helping to supply soldiers with things like toilet paper and small armaments. After nearly four months in Iraq, Ms. Goodwin returned to Germany to finish the tail end of her three-year hitch. "I wanted to get back to my daughter," she said, "but I didn't want to leave Iraq.")
Then there will be no doubt that the rest of the so-called homeless are bums.
...is the daughter of Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbig.
No agenda or pattern in hiring, no sir.
CUT
"On April 17, the Department of Homeless Services denied housing to the Iraqi war veteran on the grounds that she could live with her mother. Beyond the overcrowding that such a return would create (four women and two small children in a two-bedroom apartment), she says that the decision ignored the untenable situation between mother and daughter.
MS. GOODWIN immediately reapplied, thus entering a limbo world known as fast track, in which families who have already been denied housing return within 48 hours to the Emergency Assistance Unit to apply again, and to wait, again, for that late-night bus to somewhere."
"City officials say that under the fast-track process, the applications of the recently rejected are expedited to see whether any new information might make them eligible. But according to Ms. Goodwin, fast track seems designed to generate so much frustration that the applicant gives up and goes away."
"Two days into her fast-track odyssey, Ms. Goodwin got a four-hour pass from the Emergency Assistance Unit - keeping her application active - and made her way to the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The Department of Veterans Affairs does not have housing for homeless veterans, but it does have a comprehensive plan for homelessness that includes assistance with employment and counseling."
"Jim Connell, a spokesman for the Bronx center, said staff members tried to find housing for the Goodwins. "They started calling alternative shelters, but a lot of them don't take women," he said. "One was full, another wouldn't take a child." He added: "They were not particularly successful."
"Before the staff at the medical center could help Ms. Goodwin further, Mr. Connell said, she had to leave "because her pass was running out." But someone in Veterans Affairs managed to call her cellphone and refer her to the Coalition for the Homeless for legal help."
"By last evening, officials in Veterans Affairs were vowing to make sure that Nicole Goodwin receives the assistance she needs, and Jim Anderson, a spokesman for Homeless Services, was delivering the official city explanation." (the press got some results?)
(Damage control)"It is a disgrace that soldiers experience instability as they return home and, sadly, hundreds of homeless vets today call municipal shelters their home," Mr. Anderson said.
She chooses to get her 15 minutes...as you say. I bash the Times just like the rest of the Freepers but there is a real problem..that a vet can serve his or her country and then come back to a pile of bureaucratic bs paperwork pushed by "garbarge in garbage out" employees to coin your phrase, and be next to homeless. The system doesn't work now nor has it ever; government gets bigger and bigger and squeezes the taxpayer more and more no matter what party comes to office. Sadly neither candidate will ever address this problem. Talk is cheap.
Exactly. And they did, but were overshadowed by those inconvenient (for Democrats) terrorist attacks on 9/11/01. This is so transparent.
Hmmm....so what was the scheme to get more than her unemployment benefit provided? Was she planning on getting off unemployment before implimenting it?
The story is strangely lacking in detailed facts, and the facts provided just don't add up.
"The homeless is increasing faster than right-wingers to a KKK rally."
An attitude toward vets aided by the propaganda of the left.
I would venture to say she'd rather have her 15 minutes of fame than work within the system.
Massive and historical amounts of our money is alloted to education as well..shows the system even when funded in figures that out of the realm of reason still lacks adequate implementation right down into the State levels.
Jim Connell, a spokesman for the Bronx center, said staff members tried to find housing for the Goodwins. "They started calling alternative shelters, but a lot of them don't take women," he said. "One was full, another wouldn't take a child." He added: "They were not particularly successful."
I don't think from reading these quotes she is homeless by choice. What a perfect world this would be if the money we dish out constantly would go to where it was intended. Our military should have the best of everything..on and off the battlefield...they do not! Thank God for our patriotism ..helps block out the ugliness of it all!
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