Veteran Homelessness in a Global Perspective

Here is a quiet coming out for a book chapter manuscript that, as far as I know, is the first look at veteran homelessness from a global perspective.

I, along with a former research assistant, Emily Moore, wrote what I thought was a final draft of this chapter in 2019 for an edited volume on homelessness. It sat with the editor for awhile, then COVID hit, and it sat some more. The book project was supposed to move last year, so I updated it. It sat for another year until two weeks ago when the editor said that the book manuscript was imminently headed to the publisher. So I updated the manuscript one more time.

As I updated the manuscript I noted how it has been so long since we’d written in that, in reading it, it felt like I was reading someone else’s work. And, to my pleasant surprise, I enjoyed the read and some of the insights that I put into it that I had forgotten about. I especially like the way we closed the piece with: “veteran homelessness in the US offers a lesson in how a positive attribute such as “veteran” can assume a master status over the more stigmatizing status of being homeless and can thereby rally public empathy and remove barriers to receiving assistance. In an ideal world, the injustice and incongruence that the specter of veteran homelessness elicits in the US should be extended to homeless populations universally.”

I want to make the manuscript available, as its been sitting in my [electronic] drawer too long in the publication process. So if you are interested reading a piece on veteran homelessness that is written for a lay audience and that takes a unique approach to the topic, I invite you to click through to the manuscript.

And for those of you who do, let me know your thoughts. ~SM