Stephen Metraux, PhD

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Blogging on Homelessness among (US) Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans

A couple of weeks back I tried to get the word out over social media about a webinar I was doing based on my and Tyson Smith's recent post-9/11 veteran homelessness manuscript.

The pattern with my modest forays into social media has been that they get less response than I hope for but do lead to good new contacts. I should probably accept that material on veteran homelessness, skid row, and the like will never go viral, and in retrospect I am happy if the efforts lead to getting to know some new virtual friends with shared interests.

One of the social media acquaintances I struck up from passing the word around on the webinar was with Sidra Montgomery at Veteran Scholars at the University of Maryland, who solicited a post from me about post-9/11 veteran homelessness for the Veteran Scholar blog. That came out today. Link is here:

https://veteranscholars.com/2018/03/29/the-myths-and-truths-about-homelessness-among-iraq-and-afghanistan-veterans/

The blog post is a much condensed version of the manuscript, and focuses on OEF/OIF-related homelessness. Sidra did a much better job with the presentation (graphics, pictures, etc.) than I would do here. It’s been a fun experience, and I’m grateful to her and Meredith Kleykamp for giving me the space on their blog. Hopefully we can do this again sometime.

In the meantime, I’ll wait for the post to go viral and be happy if I get to meet a few new folks out there.