More on the homeless Iraq veterans.
Jan. 12th, 2005 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingPcf. Herold Noel, 25, wasn’t expecting a parade. But when he and his fellow soldiers from the Army’s Expeditionary Unit 37 arrived home from Iraq in Hinesville, Ga. they got what one might call less than a hero’s welcome. Waiting for them as they deplaned were local police officers. In their hands were lists of names of soldiers with outstanding warrants, mostly for traffic and parking tickets left unpaid while off fighting the war.
"I had a couple [of unpaid tickets]," Noel recalls. "I told my family to meet me in the parking lot and I went out the side door."
According to Noel, several soldiers were hauled away in cuffs as their families looked on.
The scene was an ominous sign of things to come.
Noel, who received several medals for his actions, left Hinesville shortly after his less-than-heartwarming homecoming, heading back to his native New York City. The reception there was even more bleak. When he tried to apply for public housing, he was told there was a freeze on new applications. When he went to the city’s Emergency Assistance Unit, he was told there nothing they could do for him either.
He is now homeless, traversing the city with his two-year old son, Anthony, caught in a so-far fruitless search for housing. For the last six months, he has been lost in a Kafka-esque maze of public and private service agencies, living out of his car, a 1994 Jeep. He’s moved from friends’ and family members’ couches trying to keep his son off the street. He sent his two other children, twins aged six, to Florida to stay with their grandmother.
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And he can't get a disability cheque, because they're more than a year behind in processing those.
"I had a couple [of unpaid tickets]," Noel recalls. "I told my family to meet me in the parking lot and I went out the side door."
According to Noel, several soldiers were hauled away in cuffs as their families looked on.
The scene was an ominous sign of things to come.
Noel, who received several medals for his actions, left Hinesville shortly after his less-than-heartwarming homecoming, heading back to his native New York City. The reception there was even more bleak. When he tried to apply for public housing, he was told there was a freeze on new applications. When he went to the city’s Emergency Assistance Unit, he was told there nothing they could do for him either.
He is now homeless, traversing the city with his two-year old son, Anthony, caught in a so-far fruitless search for housing. For the last six months, he has been lost in a Kafka-esque maze of public and private service agencies, living out of his car, a 1994 Jeep. He’s moved from friends’ and family members’ couches trying to keep his son off the street. He sent his two other children, twins aged six, to Florida to stay with their grandmother.
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And he can't get a disability cheque, because they're more than a year behind in processing those.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-12 06:34 pm (UTC)