Veterans and Homelessness

[Excerpt] The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan brought renewed attention to the needs of veterans, including the needs of homeless veterans. Homeless veterans initially came to the country’s attention in the 1970s and 1980s, when homelessness generally was becoming a more prevalent and noticeable phenomenon. The first section of this report defines the term “homeless veteran,” discusses attempts to estimate the number of veterans who are homeless, and presents the results of studies regarding the demographic characteristics of homeless veterans as well as those served in VA homeless programs. At the same time that the number of homeless persons began to grow, it became clear through various analyses of homeless individuals that homeless veterans were overrepresented in the homeless population. The second section of this report summarizes the available research regarding the overrepresentation of both male and female veterans, who have been found to be present in greater percentages in the homeless population than their percentages in the general population. This section also reviews research regarding possible explanations for why homeless veterans have been overrepresented. In response to the issue of homelessness among veterans, the federal government has created numerous programs to fund services, transitional housing, and permanent housing specifically for homeless veterans. The third section of this report discusses these programs. The majority of programs are funded through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Within the VA, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which is responsible for the health care of veterans, operates all but one of the programs for homeless veterans. The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), which is responsible for compensation, pensions, educational assistance, home loan guarantees, and insurance, operates the other. In addition, the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) operate programs for homeless veterans. Several issues regarding homelessness among veterans have become prominent since the beginning of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fourth section of this report discusses three of these issues. The first is the VA’s plan to end homelessness among veterans. A second issue is ensuring that an adequate transition process exists for returning veterans to assist them with issues that might put them at risk of homelessness. Third is the concern that adequate services might not exist to serve the needs of women veterans. This report will be updated when new statistical information becomes available and to reflect programmatic changes

The Greatest Book You Will Never Read: Public Access Rights and the Orphan Works Dilemma

Copyright law aims to promote the dual goals of incentivizing production of literary and artistic works, and promoting public access and free speech. To achieve these goals, Congress has implemented a policy that acknowledges the rights of both the copyright holder and the public, which vest with the fixation of the work. However, as Congressional action has strengthened copyright protection, the rights of the public have been narrowed. Orphan works – works to which the copyright owner cannot be located or identified – present a unique problem, in that achieving free access and use of the works is often impossible. This note argues that the public has a recognizable right in both gaining access to and using orphan works – a right which emanates from, but is tangential to, the First Amendment right to free speech

Lessons from Vermont: 132-Year-Old Voucher Program Rebuts Critics

For more than a century, Vermont has operated a viable and popular voucher system in 90 towns across the state. During the 1998-99 school year, the state paid tuition for 6,505 students in kindergarten through 12th grade to attend public and private schools. Families chose from a large pool of public schools and more than 83 independent schools including such well-known academies as Phillips Exeter and Holderness. As more attention is given to vouchers in mainstream discussions about education reform, critics contend that vouchers are a new, untested concept and therefore must be implemented, if at all, on an extremely limited, experimental basis. Critics also argue that vouchers will lead to the establishment of fringe schools, skim the best and brightest students from public schools, and drain public schools of revenue. Vermont's long-standing program has done none of those things. Vermont's voucher program has been running since 1869, nearly as long as the monopolistic public education model. It is worth noting that the voucher program has been a welcome part of the educational landscape for so long that the state collects no more information on voucher students than it does on students generally. And no hue and cry has been raised for more information to be compiled to justify the system's continuation. To the contrary, Vermonters generally assume that it is a parent's prerogative to select a child's school, and the burden of proof is on those who seek to take that choice away. This paper describes Vermont's voucher system and draws numerous lessons for education reformers and policymakers

VA Housing: Guaranteed Loans, Direct Loans, and Specially Adapted Housing Grants

[Excerpt] The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) administers several programs that assist individual veterans in purchasing and/or rehabilitating homes. The specific ways in which the VA assists veterans include (1) guaranteeing home mortgages from private lenders (through the Loan Guaranty Program, a form of insurance) to help veterans obtain financing for home purchases, improvements, or refinancing; (2) providing direct loans for home purchases to Native American veterans and to purchasers of homes that are in the VA inventory due to default and foreclosure; and (3) extending grants and loans to veterans with service-connected disabilities so that they can adapt housing to fit their needs through the Specially Adapted Housing Program. This report discusses some of the legislative history behind each of these housing programs, and provides details about how the programs currently operate. There is a separate section on funding for VA loan programs, and the final section of the report discusses VA efforts to assist borrowers who face default and foreclosure. While the VA also provides housing assistance for homeless veterans, this report does not address these programs

A Fast Algorithm for Determining the Existence and Value of Integer Roots of N

We show that all perfect odd integer squares not divisible by 3, can be usefully written as sqrt(N) = a + 18p, where the constant a is determined by the basic properties of N. The equation can be solved deterministically by an efficient four step algorithm that is solely based on integer arithmetic. There is no required multiplication or division by multiple digit integers, nor does the algorithm need a seed value. It finds the integer p when N is a perfect square, and certifies N as a non-square when the algorithm terminates without a solution. The number of iterations scales approximately as log(sqrt(N)/2) for square roots. The paper also outlines how one of the methods discussed for squares can be extended to finding an arbitrary root of N. Finally, we present a rule that distinguishes products of twin primes from squares.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Moving data into and out of an institutional repository: Off the map and into the territory

Given the recent proliferation of institutional repositories, a key strategic question is how multiple institutions - repositories, archives, universities and others—can best work together to manage and preserve research data. In 2007, Green and Gutmann proposed how partnerships among social science researchers, institutional repositories and domain repositories should best work. This paper uses the Timescapes Archive—a new collection of qualitative longitudinal data— to examine the challenges of working across institutions in order to move data into and out of institutional repositories. The Timescapes Archive both tests and extends their framework by focusing on the specific case of qualitative longitudinal research and by highlighting researchers' roles across all phases of data preservation and sharing. Topics of metadata, ethical data sharing, and preservation are discussed in detail. What emerged from the work to date is the extremely complex nature of the coordination required among the agents; getting the timing right is both critical and difficult. Coordination among three agents is likely to be challenging under any circumstances and becomes more so when the trajectories of different life cycles, for research projects and for data sharing, are considered. Timescapes exposed some structural tensions that, although they can not be removed or eliminated, can be effectively managed