ONE VET GETS ONE HOUSE FOR HOME; THE MAJOR-PART DOES NOT SO 'SERVE' AND NEED 'SERVICE' FOR MATTERS-DIRE AS WELL!!!
WLKY reports last night that local trade-unions are banding to rehabilitate a house for a homeless veteran; these seem to be in connection with Habitat for Humanity and other NPO agencies. . . laudable efforts and quite rendered in a spirit of needed and uncommon altruism.
BUT!!!! In Kentucky, veterans constitute just under 10% of the state homeless population, in 2020 estimated to be 399 persons of a total homeless population of 4011, according to a federal report. In Louisville, it would appear from a comparable-period report by the City and The Coalition for the Homeless, veterans constitute an even smaller portion of the total homeless-demographic=> just under 6% (5.9%, 85 persons of a total there-counted of 1421-- noting well that other City reports have it that more than six-thousand people are homeless here).
THE NEED in the Big Picture would the-better consider not just fixing a home for one person/family, which in the sort of case as usual with Habitat for Humanity is for a person/home with EXCELLENT CREDIT and thus some solid standing in the community, BUT FOR A HORDE (if I may without pejorative describe our cohort, the homeless in/out-of shelters) but FOR THOSE WHO JUST DO NOT HAVE AN IMMACULATE CREDIT RATING, AS WELL AS THOSE WHO HAVE SERVED THEIR COUNTRY IN OTHER WAYS THAN MILITARY SERVICE. . . I do not wish at this point to mention that the not-uncommon lot of a person with a 'good conduct' discharge from the army might have just spent time filing docs State-side or in chasing Fraueleinen in Germany, utterly at no risk to life or limb; yet in such ways there are other Kentuckians/Louisvillians who have for the sake of decency and family sacrificed 'taking a bullet,' 'enduring capricious loss of liberty at the hand of police,' or 'tithed' to help a struggling woman with children alive and fed.
It could be that a major portion of union membership is of military-veteranship; now absent the draft/conscription which was the VietNam-era bane of my generation, we see 'vets' who 'signed up' merely to have a job in a phase of unemployment, or for such thrill/excitement that warring can bring for certain people. Then, war is no longer the common denominator for people here, although this venue has a strong history for 'volunteering' when national necessity calls. I will not judge the vet, albeit to shun warring I did my best and in legal ways to avoid my war, VietNam; I cannot in all see that the veterans of VietNam era are totally victims of society, any more than a mother who-- married to a VietNam vet-- had to do with beatings or lack of child support-- regardless of this vet's PTSD or other sorrows that the Mom-- now without home-- must face every day in the 'asphalt/concrete jungle' in which we so-plighted must endure.
THE NEED IS LARGER THAN THE NEED FOR ONE PERSON WITH AN HONORABLE DISCHARGE AND CONNECTED TO HABITAT FOR HUMANITY TO 'SATISFICE'=> JUST AS THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN FIGHTING, EVEN 'FIGHTING FOR ONE'S COUNTRY,' THERE ARE THOSE WHO HAVE NO SHELTER FROM RAIN/SNOW/HAIL/LIGHTNING, AND THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS AS WELL NEED ATTENTION, SERVICE, PROTECTION. . .
(what I say here means no disparagement of those who are getting the attention of the Veteran's Administration; I merely must incline to feel that there are OTHER MINORITIES who deserve prime social attention as well.)
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