Homeless veterans: Trying to find help and hope

This story was first published Oct. 17, 2010. It was updated on June 21, 2011.

One weekend a year, nearly a thousand military veterans assemble in a camp in San Diego. What brings them is what they have in common: they're all homeless. The vets gather for something called "Stand Down," started in 1988 by a soldier turned psychologist named Jon Nachison.

Then, it was an emergency response to homelessness among Vietnam vets but, all these years later, Nachison is welcoming the generation from Iraq and Afghanistan.

As we first reported last October, Stand Down is a three day campout that's part jobs fair, part health clinic, part sobriety meeting. The name is a military term for the time when a solider can put down his weapon and stop fighting. The homeless go for a shot at redemption.

"60 Minutes" and correspondent Scott Pelley went to understand why so many people who've served their country find coming home so hard.

Homeless vets: Does anyone care?
Scott Pelley was skeptical when this story crossed his desk. Three days at a San Diego camp for homeless veterans changed his mind.

It's was a Friday morning in July when Nachison was greeting his troops as they waited in line - homeless vets and their families who had waited all night to get in.

They were literally a battalion, 947 men, women and children.

"When people come in, they're instantly transported back to the military, a time when they wore the uniform, where they were proud, where they were walkin' tall," Nachison told Pelley.

"You want them to remember a time in life when they were proud of themselves," Pelley remarked.

"I wanted to evoke that person in them," Nachison replied.

Nachison does that by putting them inside a military-style base on a San Diego high school athletic field: 30 sleeping tents, erected by Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton.

Extra: Helping veterans
Extra: Back on the streets
Extra: Homelessness among vets
Link: Veterans Village of San Diego
Link: Services for Homeless Vets

Also at the campout, there was hot chow, warm showers, clean clothes and fresh hope.

Asked who he can save, Nachison told Pelley, "People can save their self, I can't save anybody."

"You don't expect a miracle to happen when they came here for three days?" Pelley asked.

"Oh I do," Nachison said. "I do."

The chance at that miracle came with over 3,000 volunteers who helped the vets check into VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) benefits and look into jobs. There was medical care, dental care and even a temporary municipal court where they could clear tickets for loitering or sleeping on the street.

Why are these people on the street?

"There must be some gap that exists between military service and becoming a civilian," Nachison explained. "You're told what to wear you're given everything and then suddenly you've lost your entire family, you've lost your identity."

"You think some people fall through that gap between military life and civilian life?" Pelley asked.

"And for some people it's a chasm," Nachison said.

It was a chasm for Charles Worley, who served with the Marines in Iraq. He's still in the reserves, subject to being recalled. Based on his clean-shaven appearance, we mistook him for a volunteer until we heard a volunteer coordinator ask him how long he had been homeless.

"A few months, about six," he replied.

Worley left the Marines in 2008 and joined the "Great Recession." Like everyone at Stand Down, he had his service record verified by the VA, then he was assigned to one of the tents that go by the names "Alpha," "Bravo," "Charlie," and so on.

"Delta" tent was Worley's first home in a long time.

The night before he came to Stand Down, he told Pelley he slept in Old Town Park in San Diego.

Produced by Henry Schuster

Worley hadn't imagined that leaving a war could be risky. "I got used to the structure and was havin' a hard time adaptin' to civilian life. Because if you change commands or you move from job to job in the Marine Corps, they give you a checklist," he explained.

"Life gets pretty simple," Pelley remarked.

"Yeah, it's pretty simple. It's, you know, they say turn right, you turn right as fast as you can without bumpin' the guy next to you. You know, I didn't have a checklist when I got out," he replied.

Without a checklist, Worley burned through the combat pay he had saved before he looked for a job. It turns out unemployment among young returning veterans is double the national rate, about 20 percent.

The VA tells "60 Minutes" that, already, there are more than 9,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets who've been homeless.

Asked what it's like living out there as a homeless man, Worley told Pelley, "As sad as it is to say, I've gotten good at being homeless. When you have two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts and three shirts, and you don't have any money to wash 'em, after a while you start to smell. And you know you smell. And so you try, I just try to what try to avoid people."

"So you keep moving?" Pelley asked.

"Yes, sir," Worley replied.

It's a familiar story for Nachison, who, as a clinical psychologist, has been working with vets for almost 30 years.

"It's a new generation of homeless veterans," Pelley remarked.

"It is," Nachison agreed. "This group is becoming homeless quicker than the Vietnam veteran. Vietnam vets came back, it took about eight to ten years before we started really seeing them on the street homeless. This group is coming back and within a year they're ending up on the street. And my best hunch is that for many of them it's these redeployments again and again."

Over the last ten years, almost 900,000 troops have been "redeployed," sent back to combat at least once.

"Getting redeployed two, three, four, even five times, why does that make a difference?" Pelley asked Nachison.

"When you go back and you are re-traumatized it also brings up all the old stuff. Go back again, and it layers over the top of that. And so, now we're getting to the point where it's going to be difficult for the person to function," he replied.

More than two million troops have already served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The VA believes there could be thousands more homeless in part because of the combat stress and brain injuries that roadside bombs inflict. Already more than 300,000 have asked for mental health treatment.

"The troops that are gonna come back from Afghanistan and from Iraq, is this country prepared for that?" Pelley asked.

"I don't think so," Nachison said.

Saturday morning, we met Marguerite Somers and learned about something else that's new: there are more women among homeless vets because women now make up 14 percent of our forces.

Somers is a former sailor who served until 1999, and she too had trouble making that transition from military to civilian life. Shortly after getting out of the Navy she got divorced and began drinking heavily. Now, homeless three months, she's desperate for help for her alcoholism and meth abuse.

"I have more potential than that. And I don't want to waste my life anymore. I'm tired of it. And this has given me new hope," she told Pelley.

"You said that you'd lost everything. And your family," Pelley remarked.

"I lost my son a year ago because of my abuse issues. I owned a home. I lost that. I lost my family's support. I lost my job. Wound up with a bunch of legal issues. You know, I was facing prison time. Just nothing good came out of it," she said.

Addiction is a big reason some vets remain on the street for years.

It's part of the deal at Stand Down that they come to meetings that might be the first step to recovery.

The best shot at rehab attracted Marguerite Somers to one of the tents: it was a chance to go to Veterans Village of San Diego (VVSD), which sponsors Stand Down. Nachison, Van Keuren and several others founded VVSD in 1981. At the time, it was known as Vietnam Veterans of San Diego.

Now, Veterans Village is an $8 million-a-year program, much of it funded by the VA. Among its services is a recovery program that offers nearly a year of inpatient rehab.

But that's overwhelmed: funding is limited, and those running rehab programs were taking applications because they could choose only 68 patients out of the 947 at Stand Down.

They were looking for people who seemed motivated. Somers wouldn't find out whether she made the cut until the next day, Sunday.

As we walked around the camp, we found some of the reasons that homelessness among vets is a chronic problem. Although the VA says the number is falling, there were some quarter of a million who experienced life on the streets last year: a lot of it is addiction and debilitating illness.

Bill Yarling was more typical of those at Stand Down. Older, an Army medic during the 1980s, he been disabled by years of epileptic seizures. At the campout, Yarling knew what no one else could see: that the soldier inside hadn't surrendered.

He washed off a year of homelessness and, if nothing else, enjoyed a ceasefire from the struggle on the street.

"It's hard to explain. It really is. But it just makes you feel better about yourself," Yarling told Pelley, after getting a haircut, a shave, and a clean change of clothes. "You get back in touch with reality."

"The person you were before you were homeless," Pelley remarked.

"Exactly. And as you can tell, I did, you know? But, it's not easy living on the streets, okay?" Yarling said.

Yarling came looking for housing but he found what Charles Worley discovered: sometimes, the programs don't match the need.

When he was applying for temporary housing at VVSD, Worley was asked if he had an alcohol problem.

"No, I have a bed problem I need somewhere to sleep and if telling them I have an alcohol problem gets me a place to sleep, I will sit through the AA meetings and the classes so I can go to sleep at night and not have to worry about anything," Worley said.

Worley and Yarling couldn't get into available housing because they don't need rehab. There are other programs that provide housing for thousands of vets but they cover about 20 percent of the homeless.

Stand Down can't track a thousand homeless vets, so there's really no way to know how many might have picked up a lead on a job or a home or how many decided, finally, to stick to their recovery meetings. What we could count were those chosen to go into that Veterans Village inpatient rehab program.

Sunday morning, the vets came in one at a time and most heard there was no room for them. But Marguerite Somers, who had no place to go, got a spot.

"Why do you think you can do it now?" Pelley asked.

"I know I have that hope restored in me. And I have the resources. And I just know that's what I need to do now. And I want it for myself. You know. I'm done living like this," she replied.

On Sunday afternoon, Stand Down ended with what they call "graduation."

As a bagpiper played, they marched with military pride for one last shot of self-esteem. Bill Yarling raised the flag for "Bravo" tent, Charles Worley for "Delta."

They joined hands in a closing prayer. And then, it was time to leave.

"And when you see them leave you think what?" Pelley asked Jon Nachison.

"It's hard. It's like, you know, God speed, you know. And there's so much that people need to do to be able to reach that escape velocity from being homeless. I hope that they get it. I hope that they have it," he replied.

Recently the VA set a goal of ending homelessness among vets in five years. And the government will spend a billion dollars this year on housing and rehab. But, the 23rd annual Stand Down turned out to be the largest ever.

Marguerite Somers was among 68 who drove to rehab, while 879 others including Bill Yarling and Charles Worley, picked up their burdens to rejoin their battles.

Fresh troops fell in with a column that spans generations.

Next weekend, Veterans Village of San Diego will hold its 24th Stand Down. Charles Worley plans to be there, this time as a volunteer.

He's gotten back on his feet and is now in college. Bill Yarling will also be there, but again as a participant. He still hasn't found permanent housing.

Marguerite Somers spent more than eight months in rehab and left clean and sober.