Advocate hopes to help homeless female veterans struggling to 'get back on their feet'
Canadian inspired by Final Salute, a U.S.-based organization that's helped thousands of homeless vets
A Canadian veterans' advocate is looking to the U.S. for advice on how to help female veterans living on the streets.
Jim Lowther, the founder of Dartmouth, N.S.-based Veteran Emergency Transition Services or VETS Canada, says more female former service members — many of them single mothers — are finding themselves on the streets, looking for help.
"We're seeing a lot of female vets with children, and it's growing. We have three this month alone," Lowther said.
It's hard to gather precise data on the homeless, but a 2015 report from Employment and Social Development Canada found there was an estimated 2,250 veterans using homeless shelters in Canada every year.
The vast majority of those people were men, though the study found female veterans of all ages using the shelter system. There was a "particularly high rate of episodic homelessness among female veterans," the report said.
"What's happening, we think, in some cases they are getting out of the military because of injury and they can't make it," Lowther said.
"You know, they just can't make it because they have kids and they can't get back on their feet."
Lowther has turned south of the border to Jaspen (Jas) Boothe for advice. He loves her way of thinking and her organization, Final Salute.
U.S. under fire
The U.S. armed forces have been under fire for several years for not doing more for female veterans in trouble.
Those who can't cope or can't get help spiral downward. Many end up losing everything, including their homes and families.
Boothe was one of those people. She served for 15 years in the U.S. military and was deployed during the Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom campaigns.
In 2005, she was a single parent in the Army Reserve, living in New Orleans. Her life was dealt three crushing blows that year.
In August, her home and all her worldly possessions were lost to Hurricane Katrina. The very next month she received a devastating diagnosis of an aggressive head, neck and throat cancer.
The final shot came when the army downsized and she lost her job and landed on the streets with her son.
Next to no services
It didn't take long for Boothe to find out there were next to no services for women veterans who were on the streets. She felt there was little sympathy for them compared to their male counterparts.
"People will see a woman veteran with her kids — she immediately becomes a poor excuse for a mother. 'Why does she have children she can't take care of? She is a disgrace. She needs to lose her kids,'" Boothe said.
"They don't look at her as a soldier or service member who fell on hard times because she is a woman. Whatever she did, it is something she did to put her in that position."
But Boothe decided this is no time for a pity party. She found a job with the reserves and a place to live with her son.
Next, she rounded up some volunteers and founded Final Salute.
The organization rented a large home in Virginia, which houses female homeless veterans for up to two years while they get back on their feet. Boothe said Final Salute does what the government can't — cut through the red tape and offer a helping hand without delay.
Final Salute has assisted more than 2,000 women veterans and children in over 30 U.S. states and territories.
Laconda Collins, one of those people, did two stints in the U.S. Army.
But a bad marriage and debts brought on by being a single mom with a disabled son forced her onto the streets and into a shelter she said was dirty and dangerous.
'Almost like being deployed'
Final Salute gave Collins another option that changed her life — the chance to live with a community of people going through the similar hardships.
"We are used to living in a shared community area, so it makes things a lot better," she said. "I like it. It's almost like being deployed again."
In Canada, Lowther is hoping to one day set up a similar operation with housing for homeless veterans. The problem of homeless veterans — of both genders — is growing, he said.