Even though the city and the state offer multiple services and benefits for veterans, there are still 10,000 homeless veterans in New York, New Jersey and Long Island, according to the latest report from the Office of Veterans' Affairs. Luis Ricardo Munroe, 30-years-old, is one of them.
Munroe was one of the first Hispanic soldiers to be deployed to the war in Iraq, as a member of the Third Battalion of the Seventh Company of the U.S. Marines. He returned physically intact, but with psychological and memory problems that prohibit him from being the same person he was before he went to war.
This week he will lose the room where he lives, and he doesn't think he will be able to find another. Everything is very expensive, but he cannot leave New York – the city where he was born and grew up in – because his six-year-old son lives here, with his ex-wife's the parents; his ex-wife is now serving in Iraq.
Munroe lost the benefits he was receiving from the city when he failed to attend the required F.E.G.S. Sessions – a program for re-entering the labor force – because he was enrolled in school. He received a letter telling him where and when to arrive at the meeting, but he forgot. Without benefits, he had to drop his studies for lack of tuition money.
This is not what Munroe expected of the future when he returned to New York on June 14, 2003. El Diario/La Prensa was there, when people received him as a hero at the airport, on the very day he met his newly born son for the first time. There was a banner with the words "Father and Hero."
"His weapons left behind and now with a baby's bottle in his hand the Marine begins a new stage of his life, full of tasks, which he hopes to carry out in the company of his wife Jazmín, an Army reservist," wrote the newspaperwoman who reported the story at the time.
But it didn't turn out to be that easy. Munroe felt that he could not talk to anyone about the nightmares and the scenes of war that played over and over in his mind. He took refuge in alcohol. He did many things he now regrets: he lost his wife, and several times he attempted suicide.
Munroe was diagnosed as suffering from depression, from the confusion of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and from cerebral lesions caused by explosions. He also suffers from an inability to concentrate and memory loss, for which he takes medications. Often, he loses the thread of a conversation, and falls silent or stammers.
"I used to be happy. I was married, I was going to have a baby, my time in the Marines was almost up, and I thought that from then on I'd be living the life I dreamed of when I was a kid. Now I can't even explain to you something even if it's basically simple," he said in frustration. "It makes me angry; I wasn't like this before," he said.
Another source of his anger is how difficult everything is for veterans. He feels used. He feels like he made a sacrifice for this country and now, when it has no more use for him, he's thrown out into the street with no support at all. "They put you in a system where they cause you more depression that pushes you deeper into the hole you were trying to climb out of," he charged.
"I'm not sorry I joined the Marines, but I am sorry I got used in a war that's got nothing to do with freedom. I am trying to live my dreams, and I can't," he confessed.
Munroe did try. In 2003, he entered New York University, where he also worked as a security guard, to study digital communications. In August 2008, he quit both his studies and his job. In March of this year he decided to begin again, this time at Old Westbury, but he quit again due to a lack of money. He has gone to several veterans affairs offices. This week he tried once again at the James J. Peters Hospital in the Bronx. He has communicated with the offices of Bronx City Council member James Vacca and of Congressional Representative Joseph Crowley, but no one has been able to help him, he stated.
"I'm not a bum; I'm trying to do something. I've applied for low-income housing, but the veterans don't want to help me," he said.
This past November 11, on Veteran's Day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the city was going to improve its financial, housing, health and job services for veterans. The city has received 1,000 Section 8 vouchers especially for veterans.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York and Senator Robert Menéndez of New Jersey have proposed legislation creating a housing program for veterans, which they have called Homes for Heroes. "That veterans who have risked their lives for us should come home, and not to have even a roof over their heads is a disgrace," they charged.
In the meantime, Munroe will have to go into a shelter and to stop seeing his son on weekends. His ex-wife Jazmín is in Iraq and does not answer his letters. He does not know what to do, but he keeps on struggling.
"In Iraq I made a list of the things I wanted to do if I survived. One was to graduate from college and another was to have my own business. I was 23 then, and now I'm 30, and I've got barely 50 approved credits. You'd think that right now I'd be living happily with my family," Munroe said.
