Messenger: How a female veteran in #StLouisMO became one of the ‘ #HiddenHomeless ’
‘They get missed in the counts’
By Tony Messenge, Jul 18, 2022
"Patricia Buskuehl texted as it was getting dark.
"It was a little after 9 p.m. in late May.
'I’m in a bad way,' she wrote me. 'I’m forced to sleep in my car tonight. I just want someone to know.'
"We had met earlier that month. Buskuehl called me after I wrote a column about the city of St. Louis giving a reprieve to the #RiverfrontCommunity, a #TentCamp of homeless people along the Mississippi River, near Laclede’s Landing.
"When most residents think of the homeless, Buskuehl told me, they think of people on the streets, living in tents, walking downtown asking for change, or flying a sign near a highway intersection.
"But there’s a whole lot of homeless people like her who never show up in the statistics — the 'hidden homeless,' she calls them.
" 'Americans tend to go by what they see,' she says. 'They turn a blind eye to others in the middle.'
"According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, female veterans are the fastest growing segment of the unsheltered population in the country. Buskuehl’s story helps explain why."
Read more:
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_6ecaaac1-25c3-5479-9cf8-e117bfe578a0.html
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/V8PA6
#HomelessVeterans #Homelessness #USPol #VeteransDay #Veterans #Illegal2BHomeless #InvisibleHomeless #Unhoused #HousingInsecurity