Homeless Veterans

QNT/275
05/16/2016
Joseph Krupka

Homeless Veterans There are too many homeless veterans living on the streets. Our American veterans have put their lives on the line, yet America still allows for its veterans to live on the streets with no shelter. I am on a mission still, a mission to help the veterans get off the streets.
The Star of Hope Mission is a nonprofit organization that was founded back in 1906. The founder Reverend Pevoto arrived in Houston with a vision. According to "Star Of Hope" (2016), Mr. Pevotos mission was to come to “establish a refuge for Houston’s lost community of men—men who had fallen on hard times and never recovered, men who were alcoholic, helpless and hopeless with no place to go. It was to be named the Star of Hope Mission” (History). I currently work for the Star of Hope mission as a homeless outreach specialist and veteran subject matter expert. As a disabled veteran myself. It saddens me to see that about 20% of the homeless people that I come across have served their country and still live on the streets. I have come up with the 20% based off of some sampling that I have collected while out in the field working. On every Wednesday, I hand out Hygiene kits and water at the (EAC) Houston Emergency Aid Coalition as I hand out goods I would ask each client if they are a veteran or not. Asking the clients allows me to determine if there are additional programs to get our clients permanent housing. My results where a steady two out of every ten homeless people where veterans. I fell that the data that I have collected is reliable because it was myself that was gathering the data.
Statistical inference was the best for summarizing my research. Because it is nearly impossible to find every homeless person on the streets, I needed to sample the homeless population in one area.
A nominal variable was the method used in the research. I used this because it was the most direct approach for studying the homeless population. Random sampling would not be the best way to collect data in this case because it would be too easy to have some bias while selecting the clients. Sampling was done by asking every person that came to the EAC; this was the only sure way to get accurate data.
Simple linear regression helped me find out a percentage of the homeless population in the Houston area. Knowing the percentage of the homeless veteran population is huge because it gives me the numbers to push forward to receive more grants and funding to help get the veterans into housing. The more people who know about this program and give support would mean the more funding that we have to help out our homeless population.
The proposed solution I feel is more outreach specialist. The more feet on ground would mean that we have more people collecting data and that would also mean that we would receive more funding to put more people in housing. The data collected will simply show in black and white how bad of a situation our veterans are in.
A time series will play a big role in the way things are done in the homeless population. It will help us understand if our project is effective or not. If we come back to the same place three years from now, we should see a total decrease in the population of Homeless veterans. If a time series is not noted down, then we would never know if we are making any progress in reducing the homeless population of veterans.
A homeless veteran is a term that should be forgotten. It is something that should never have been allowed to happen. The men and woman who put their lives on the line to protect our freedoms should never have to be forced to sleep on the streets. The long-term goal is to have the Department of Veteran affairs start providing better housing for the veterans that are retiring from the battlefield.

References
Star of hope. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.sohmission.org/about us/history/