Under the deafening highway noise of the Pontchartrain Expressway in central city New Orleans, Ronald Engberson, 54, beds down for the night. Engberson got out of the Marines in 1979, plagued even back then by problems with drugs and alcohol. He says that's mostly the reason he's been homeless the past 10 years.
"My longest stretch sober was 14 months," he says. "Being out there on the streets, it's tough."
About 50,000 vets are homeless in America. In 2009, then-Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki declared that all of them would have housing by this year. At the time, even inside the VA that goal was considered aspirational at best. But last year, cities across the country said it was looking achievable. New Orleans was the first to declare, in January, that the city had done it. (Jump to the bottom to see how your state stacks up.)
So if New Orleans has zero homeless vets, why was there a Marine sleeping under the expressway?
[For more of this story, written by Quil Lawrence, go to http://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/...t-actually-could-win]
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