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Needy vets
to have home
at old base

Barbers Point barracks
will be used for housing
and treatment programs

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

Homeless veterans may soon have a place at Barbers Point they can call home.

A fledgling program for the Department of Veterans Affairs will take over three large barracks at the old base.

A nonprofit group, U.S. Vets, will manage the effort, working with concerned organizations such as the Salvation Army.

Tim Cantwell, managing partner of U.S. Vets, said he expects a first increment of 50 veterans to enter the program at Barbers Point next spring.

They all have to be off alcohol and drugs for 90 days, he said. A residential treatment program will ensure that.

"We're going to be taking three buildings out at Barbers Point, convert one of them to residential treatment and job program development, and two of them into long-term housing," Cantwell said.

A veteran would enter a month-to-month rental agreement after getting a job and some stability. Rent for one of the program's efficiency apartments would be paid from the veteran's earnings.

Veterans with dependent children are guided into a process that includes discussion with government attorneys about child-support payments, Cantwell said.

"In other words, our role is all about self-determination, taking responsibility for yourself and organizing a career activity, education activity and psychosocial intervention to develop the capacity to maintain yourself independently," he said.

He hopes for a 65 percent success rate at Barbers Point.

"We're firm on abstinence," he said. "If you already have 90 days of sobriety, then you don't need to go into any of the treatment programs. If you already have a job, you don't need job training."

But such a participating veteran still could use other support services: legal and educational services, a career center and clinical help.

U.S. Vets, headquartered in Los Angeles, has had success helping veterans, Cantwell said.

Westside Residence Hall in Los Angeles houses 400 veterans, and 100 are in a Veterans in Progress job program, he said. Once in this program, 86 percent are placed in jobs in roughly 35 days.

"We test everyone that enters (Westside) for reading and math," Cantwell said.

"Anyone with educational deficiencies that score out at less than ninth-grade education on either one of those will be dropped into an on-site reading and math literacy program that's conducted by the local community college."