CONCORD, Mass. — Not far from where the Boston Massacre helped sow the seeds for the Revolutionary War, David Dyer points toward the underpass where he’d score crack cocaine by day and the train depot where he’d sleep some nights.
Now, he has a family, a home and a job — helping homeless veterans get off the streets, like he did.
Dyer is part of a team of veterans, some formerly homeless themselves, that the state of Massachusetts has hired to get veterans off the streets in the Boston area. Typically, they spend one day a week roaming the city’s storefronts, alleys and shelters, which is what he was doing one recent morning outside Boston’s South Station. “I guess you could call this my home for about a month,” he reminisced.
The rest of the week is spent making sure those who have found housing are staying the course.
The Veterans Affairs Department, which funds the effort, is considering doubling the size of the team in the coming year.
President Barack Obama’s administration has pledged to eliminate homelessness among veterans by the end of 2015. And while the rate has been dropping, time is running short.
So communities such as Boston are aggressively hitting the streets with offers of housing, treatment and hope. Using formerly homeless veterans such as Dyer and team leader Christopher Doyle helps them make inroads with a community that often is distrustful of people who haven’t experienced what they’ve been through.
“When they say, ‘Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ I can say, ‘Yeah, I do, because I was there myself,'” said Doyle, who at one point lived in a VA homeless shelter with about 180 other veterans before landing a job with the state.
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