It was, back then, a joke Luis Pinto shared with his Army buddies in Iraq. As they were all eating food out of tin cans, living out of rucksacks, moving constantly from place to place, Pinto cracked, "If I become homeless, I'm ready."
But five years later he didn't actually expect to find himself sleeping in alleys in Whittier or in friends' cars, too busy getting high to hold down a regular job. A suicide attempt on March 16 was the shock he needed to start putting his life back together.
His mother drove him to the , where he has been living and taking classes on drug addiction and coping skills since the end of March.
"I had a lot of issues from my time in the service and I had not dealt with them," said Pinto, a soft-spoken 27-year-old who still sports a military crew cut. "I felt, when I came out, 'I deserve time to relax and party.' It got out of control."
While veterans and homeless advocates have long grappled with homelessness in previous generations of veterans, Pinto appears to be part of a new, building wave of the problem among those coming back from the latest wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Though most of the Bell shelter's veterans served in Vietnam, executive director La Rae Neal said last week that she was deeply saddened to see the number of clients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars multiply from two last year to eight so far this year.
"I think we were doing well as far as vets from the last war were concerned," she said. "But we've got to start all over again."
Toni Reinis, the executive director of New Directions Inc., another organization that offers substance abuse treatment and other services to homeless veterans, said the number of clients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars grew from 12 in 2007 to 24 in 2008. In the first six months of this year, the group has already seen 20, she said.
"I think that we've got another couple of years before we say it's a crisis," she said. But, she added, "we're still on an uphill climb."
New Directions and other organizations said they are working to put programs in place to deal with the expected increase in veterans needing help.
Last year, New Directions opened a transitional house for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans in the Del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles with 24-hour support staff.
