http://www.canada.com/topics/news/wo...c6ecec&k=41285
NEW YORK (AP) - As a member of the U.S. army National Guard, Nadine Beckford patrolled New York City train stations after Sept. 11, 2001 with a 9 mm pistol, then served a treacherous year in Iraq.
Now, six months after returning, Beckford lives in a homeless shelter.
"I'm just an ordinary person who served. I'm not embarrassed about my homelessness because the circumstances that created it were not my fault," said Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at a base in Iraq that was a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks.
Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare - the risk of homelessness. The U.S. government estimates several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night across the country, although the exact number is unknown.
The reasons that contribute to the new wave of homelessness are many: some are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks and roadside bombs; some can't navigate government red tape; others simply don't have enough money to afford a house or apartment.
They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small from Washington state to Florida. But the hardest hit are in New York, because housing costs "can be very tough," said Peter Dougherty, head of the Homeless Veterans Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Former army Pte. 1st Class Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after returning from Iraq last year. He slept in his Jeep, parked anywhere in New York "where I wouldn't get a ticket."
"Then the nightmares would start," said the 26-year-old, who drove a military fuel truck in Iraq - one of the war's most dangerous jobs.
At one point, he saw a friend's leg blown off.
"I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a truck. I relived that every night," said Noel, who walks with shrapnel in his knee and suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.
To help people like Noel, the VA gives grants to non-profit, private housing organizations that offer about 8,000 free beds across the country. The space isn't always enough to accommodate everyone in desperate need of shelter among the more than 500,000 vets of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been discharged from the military so far.
When Noel returned, the shattered soldier couldn't immediately find a job to support his wife and children and all the housing programs for vets he knew of "were overbooked," he said.
The family ended up in a Bronx, N.Y., shelter "with people who were just out of prison and with roaches," he said.
"I'm a young black man from the ghetto but this was culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I almost died for."
"This is not what I was supposed to come home to."
Noel now attends a Brooklyn, N.Y., program to train for a job in studio sound production. He also is the protagonist of the documentary film When I Came Home, which was named best New York-made documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.
