A home for homeless vets - Groundbreaking set for $20-million project

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit Free Press

A home for homeless vets

Groundbreaking set for $20-million project

BY ZLATI MEYER • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • June 1, 2008


When Army Spc. Robert Frazier returned to metro Detroit after the Persian Gulf War in 1992, he was physically and emotionally injured.

A helicopter crash crushed two discs in the gunner's back and ruined one of his knees. Combat shattered his spirit. In the 19 years since Frazier enlisted, the former Sterling Heights resident has lost his marriage, his ability to hold down a job and his home.

But this time next year, Frazier, who currently lives in a shelter, could be living in a Detroit apartment designed specifically for homeless veterans.

Southwest Solutions is to break ground at 10 a.m. Monday on a 150-unit apartment complex and commercial building called Piquette Square.

Veterans who will live in the one-bedroom apartments just north of I-94 and east of Woodward will have access to counseling and job-skills training when the complex opens in spring 2009. It will be the second permanent veterans housing complex in the United States and the largest of its kind, said Bob O'Brien, spokesman for the nonprofit.

Read more: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080601/NEWS01/806010645/1001/NEWS

[izquierdista]

1. High price tag

Twenty million is a high price for just 150 1-bedroom apartments. If you figure 800 square feet per unit, that's over $160/sq ft. Probably sole sourced to some Repub contractor who will manage to keep his costs at under $60/sq ft.

[LiberalEsto]

3. A tiny fraction of what the war is costing

I'd rather see money spent on life than on killing

[izquierdista]

4. That goes without saying

I believe I read somewhere that you could solve world hunger with what is spent on one month of the Iraq war.

[Doctor_J]

5. It also comes with job training and other benefits. This doesn't

seem unreasonable to me.

[psychmommy]

2. at least it is a start

we expect so much from our soldiers and give them our ass to kiss when they come home injured and and living with ptsd from the trauma our gov't plunked them into. sorry to rant. i am really upset about our national guard, too. they have been thrown into combat without the few benefits that our regular soldiers have. this is such an ugly situation. we have to get our kids home.

[Phred42]

6. Indeed - it's a start

[grilled onions]

7. The Healing Can Begin

If they had only been this aware of what "life" would be for those who came home from Nam many of those vets would not have ended up on the streets,with no one to listen to them, spending years having flashbacks and becoming alcoholics or addicted to drugs.
Again so many are unaware that the ones who come back--even those without any injury at all can still carry some very heavy mental baggage which can render them disabled in so many ways.
At least giving them the chance to have a roof over their head,along with education and counseling will be a big step--one of those "little items" that the war mongers keep forgetting to do as they continue expanding their war map!

[midnight]

8. Maybe this high price tag can be paid for by the military complex

that seems to have lost trillions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUKJNxdmX6Y

[elocs]

9. $20 million could easily be raised with donations

from the "Support Our Troops" bumpersticker crowd. But I'm guessing for many of them their hypocritical support ends when it might have a personal cost.

[LynnTheDem]

10. 150 rooms...and the other 30,000 homeless vets???

Why is the US "support the troops" government not taking care of all our vets?

With such "support" from republicans, our troops don't need foreign enemies.

[Posteritatis]

11. $4B to house 30,000 homeless vets

That price tag doesn't bother me terribly much considering who it'd potentially be going to.

Surely the ever so magnanimous, troops-supporting government could pony up that kind of (comparative) pocket change, right?

Right?

Is this thing on?

[Ellipsis]

13. 2 months in Iraq n/t

[Thothmes]

12. That is a question

for Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, & the currnt President.