Number of homeless veterans is declining

Veterans Affairs across the country have been trying to help homeless veterans not live on the street anymore. Some people expect the numbers to increase again in the next 10 to 15 years.

Tim Rich, executive director of Welcome Home, said about 30 percent of all homeless people in America are veterans. According to the U.S Census, there were about 650 homeless veterans in Missouri in 2015.

Rich said the number of homeless veterans will most likely increase because of the large amount of people who joined the military in the last 10 years. He said many of the homeless veterans that go to his shelter have been to either Iraq or Afghanistan and are still in their early 30s.

The unemployment rate for veterans in Missouri was 5.7 percent in 2015. According to Rich, veterans have a hard time finding a job years after their service ended because of emotional, mental, or physical scars that don’t show up right away.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, among the 495,000 unemployed veterans in 2015, 57 percent were age 45 and over, about 37 percent were age 25 to 44, and 5 percent were age 18 to 24.