Stand Down For Our Veterans

Hi Joe,

Thank you so much for spending the time you did with me this morning even in your poor state of health.

Joe, our organization is called the National Addiction Therapy Research Association or NATRA…We are a Maryland 501 (c) 3 nonprofit corporation devoted to providing alternative addiction treatment and education programs. As I said I am the grey building between the two draw bridges down from your building. Our organization partnered up with the Veterans Administration and Veteran Affairs late last year with the desire of becoming involved with their grant per diem program or GDP. The GDP program basically helps cover some of the acquisition and renovation costs and then provides a minimal per diem of around $34.00 a day to care for our homeless veterans. We did submit a proposal for the 2009 funding round but were passed over…our proposal was asking for two million in acquisition funding which was about two million more than the VA wanted award; we are rural and don’t qualify for any serious money.

Interestingly enough the USDA office in Dover after meeting with certain still hopeful VA personal back in June stepped up and earmarked over $2 million for this project that would have financed the remaining costs of the acquisition and renovations of the soon to be ill fated project. The USDA had designated this project as a “Signature Project” for the USDA…too bad the VA didn’t want to get into the deep end of the pool. Had we won an award we would have been able to house 200 veterans…

With that said the year and the over $40K I personally invested in this project were not done so in vain or at least I hope not. We gained a lot of support from our representatives like Congressman Kratovil, Senator Cardin and Mikulski and Stoltzfus and more. We found a terrific friend and supporter in Deputy Secretary of Maryland Veteran Affairs Wilber (Bill) Forbes and the Director of Outreach Bob Sharps….these two men have been unwavering in their support for our mission. We learned what the VA will allow us to shoot for on the next round for the GDP and we found a fantastic partner with the Maryland Center for Veteran Education & Training/MCVET found at: www.mcvet.org . MCVET has been designated by HUD as the National Model for Transitional Housing and is the only 100% military transitional veteran program in the country…they are located in Baltimore. They are going to mentor us by providing the technical assistance for several funding vehicles that they use to help fund their highly successful program. We are going to closely emulate their program with the exception of their use of the AA Disease based addiction model….we will be substituting this with our “Resolution Behavioral Based” model…more on this for a later discussion.

We actually thought we were going to be able to establish the our Transitional Veterans Education & Training Center out at the old Boot Camp Facility…the county was all about the project until the National Guard here in town slipped in the back door and offered to lease it for the next two years; effectively throwing our at risk veterans out on to the street. Their Armory is being renovated…why I don’t know…the damn thing is as solid as the proverbial brick outhouse. It makes even less sense with Governor telling us he has run the state into a defecate of over $400 million…I can save him a couple million…stop renovation projects that can wait for better times. It seems very unlikely that the County Executive, Rick Pollitt will accept our proposal when he has the state standing there with a check…so our veterans are again left to fend for themselves…and this time we are shot down by our own National Guard. I have to wonder why they can’t move in those temporary mobile offices and classrooms onto the Armory Grounds like every other school system in America does in the country while they are a “renovating the armory?”

The new Secretary of Veteran Affairs , Edward Chow is looking into the situation but I am not holding my breath….he is hoping that maybe we can get one of the dormitories and share the grounds.

Joe, I am sorry if I have spilled my guts but I am so damn frustrated now that I could eat nails!!!

Now for the reason I have sent this email…our upcoming Stand Down for our Veterans!!! See Stand Down at: http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=6

Stand Downs have been held for homeless veterans since 1988 with the first one being held in San Diego over 20 years ago. The term Stand Down is a military term used to when pulling a soldier off the front lines to effectively “stand down” and get some R&R…There a soldier would receive a bath and hair cut, clean uniform, medical attention, hot food and time to decompress. Today an event called a Stand Down is a one to three day Veteran Administration sponsored event usually partnering with a local agency or nonprofit. The idea is to provide basically the same services with special attention being devoted to enrolling these veterans for the VA benefits. Getting into programs that could help them come in off the streets and get their lives back on course as productive members of Society. Our event while recognizing the need of our veteran homeless community is opening this event up to all veterans especially those who have not enrolled for their VA benefits. It is not surprising to find that our OIF and OEF veterans are not enrolling for the benefits…saying let someone else who needs them have mine. The problem with this mentality is that the government doesn’t give them to someone else it simply takes away the funding as enrollment drops. These young hero’s of today’s military are not showing up on the “radar” they are not homeless because they do have resources. They are couch surfing at a friend’s house, staying with their parents or family…but these resources do eventually run dry…in fact they begin to largely dwindle about 18 months later. Our OIF & OEF veterans are reporting a higher rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than that of the Vietnam War era veteran and sadly to bare this fact out so is their rate of suicide.

Our Stand Down being held October 24th and 25th is being geared to reach out to these young warriors, providing services and the much needed recognition that they so very much deserve. There are over 28 million veterans in this country with only 15% of that number having enrolled for their benefits. I believe that with current discussion about where our health care system is going that our veterans should make the safe play and enroll for their benefits. We are going to offer good food, showers, haircuts, clean cloths if needed, entertainment and will have some of political representatives there to address the crow.

Joe, we need clothes, transportation and PR…I have attached a copy of the flier and poster we are going to circulating throughout the Delmarva for your review. Please contact me with any questions you may have. October is the month to get the word out and to let our community know to about the plight of our homeless veteran community here are the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Please call me when you are ready and I will drop by to discuss our Stand Down. I would also like to invite you personally to attend our event and meet some of our veterans.

Joe, we are still hoping to establish a transitional center for our veterans…but have suffered a couple of hard blows that are almost show stoppers. I believe you and your subscribers can be our ace card to pull this thing off. I would like to discuss with you further some of our ideas and desires in a meeting yet to be scheduled…maybe over a cup of coffee or lunch.


Revealing the wholeness of you,



Jerry R Black
Executive Director
NATRA Inc.
Email: jrblack@natra7.org
Phone: 443-497-9731
Website: www.natra7.org