The follow national statistics are from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, which was released on February 28, 2007.

On any given day in the United States, there are approximately 754,000 homeless people. (This number includes those in shelters and transitional housing as well as those who are unsheltered.)
Approximately 334,744 people among those who are homeless on any given day are sheltered. (The remaining people are not.)
65% of the adult homeless population is men.
66% of the homeless population on any given day is single while the remainder are people in families accompanied by children.
59% of the homeless population on any given day are minorities.
75% of the homeless population on any given day reside in central cities. The remainder live in the suburbs or rural areas.
19% of the adult homeless population on any given day are veterans.

No Choice of His Own

He was sent of no choice of his own
To serve the country that he loved
To defend a principle of democracy.
He was told to leave all that he knew behind
To tell family and friends that he hoped to return
But never knowing when or how.
He went from familiar to unfamiliar,
From home to shared barracks,
From family to soldiers,
From office to company.
Training only prepared him to be shipped--
Shipped to a land that was not his own,
But to defend the principle of democracy.
Nothing prepared him for what his eyes would see;
For what his mind wouldn’t comprehend;
For everything lacked the notion of humanity.
He watched friends and soldiers fall-
Faces that were familiar in passing;
Names that were known only by roll call.
He heard the cries of pain,
He felt the tremors of shock,
The blasts of shells,
The fall of casings.
When he returned, it was all he knew.
He tried to be normal;
To laugh at nonsense;
To talk of nothing;
To feel the shallowness of every day life.
But he warred with the last six months
That would be the rest of his life.
Expectations were for him to forget
The permanent ink of war
For him to step back into his shoes
Left behind for those boots.
Yet there was no one to deprogram
The internal computer of his mind;
To repump life into his dying heart;
To massage his strained, broken spirit.
No one attempted to understand that
He was sent there of no choice of his own
To serve the country that he loved
To defend a principle of democracy.
So as he began to slip away--
One by one loosing friends;
One by one loosing family;
One by one loosing jobs;
One by one loosing his hold on life.
No one cared that he stood homeless
Dealing with his demons alone.
No one cared that he had served his country
Defending the principle of democracy.

Copyright 2007.  O. Maxwell.  All rights reserved.