A Place to Heal

For one year and four months, Bridget served in the U.S Army, and for 12 years she survived life on L.A.’s Skid Row.

Veronica joined the Air Force  a year after high school, dreaming of making the military a career. After nearly two years in the service, she left with an honorable discharge and a drug and alcohol “career.”

Lea joined the Air Force at 19 and stayed for almost five years, trained in radiology. She left with an honorable discharge and a slow unwinding of her life: addiction, living on the street.

Janice joined the Coast Guard at 26, after a few years in the work force. Assigned to a frigate with 175 crew members, she served in Alaskan waters and San Francisco, for two years, one month, 20 days and four hours. “I didn’t mesh well with the military,” she says, offering an ironic smile. She came to Los Angeles, got a job, lost the job, made bad decisions—drugs and PTSD ensued.

Familiar stories: drug addiction, sexual abuse, homelessness, but these women have more than that in common. They are all on the road to recovery through the New Directions Oasis for Veteran Women based in two residential homes in Mar Vista. These two facilities accommodate a total of 12 veteran women, six per home.

In the first phase of treatment, women attend parenting and anger-management classes, addiction and therapy groups and computer classes. All clients have on-site therapists. While New Directions provides a safe place for female veterans to turn their lives around, it’s not permanent.

“They move you along,” Lea says, “but they don’t want you to leave here homeless without a set income and uncertain survival skills.”

“We don’t want to say, ‘You can’t stay,’ but we want to fast-track them, slowly,” said Lynn Johnson, women’s case manager. “We have to set up an exit plan for them. At the beginning, New Directions was more structured, more substance-abuse based. Today, we’re more interested in treating the entire package—trauma treatment, legal support, money management—without coming on too strong; you don’t want to further traumatize the women.”

One of the first hurdles for these vets is to recognize that they need help, and that is often when they’ve hit bottom—destitute, ill and in danger.

For Bridget, life was a tent, a mattress and a cardboard box and selling her body for cash and drugs. “This outreach guy who used to give out sandwiches on Skid Row came around one day and asked if there were any vets who wanted help. He said, ‘You don’t have to live like this.’ I was the only one who said yes. He said, ‘When do you want to go?’ He put me in the New Directions van and took me to the West L.A. VA [where New Directions is headquartered] and said, ‘Here she is.’ I didn’t know that there was a place for vets to go. I was ready.”

Not one of the clients interviewed for this story realized that there were benefits for vets; some of them didn’t even consider themselves vets.

“I thought of vets as old-ass men who’ve been in wars and had body parts blown off, drug problems and mental problems,” Veronica says. “I was in my mid-20s, a ‘party girl,’ not a vet, not a crusty old guy.”

“I was living in Van Nuys,” Lea recalls. “I had addiction issues, certain traumas in my life. I lost my job, my place. I was trying to do it on my own but I wore myself out trying and failing. I wanted to start helping myself and made an appointment at the women’s clinic at West L. A., where they told me I had access to New Directions, so I got on the phone, asked a lot of questions. They were going to help me and it was a blessing. I am right where I should be—I’ve been here since August 1.”

Case manager Johnson first found her way to New Directions on the other side of the door by referral from Brotman Hospital in 2005. “When I came in as a dependent [her father was in the service] I was 44. I had lost a 20-year-old daughter and my world fell apart. I was an alcoholic.” Johnson was raised in the projects of Pittsburgh, and lost her father when she was 11. She married Brad Johnson, a member of the Johnson Tree Company family, who grew up on Friends Street. The couple had three children and a nice house in Mar Vista.

“Our family was torn apart, we had to sell our house, the kids went with Brad—all I had was a car.

“I had never had been in treatment before,” Johnson continues. “I had to take a look at my life, the people I have affected. I had to mourn the loss of alcohol and drugs for the rest of my life. Entering treatment at New Directions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Perhaps the most difficult humiliation for Johnson was recovering in her own neighborhood, just a few blocks from where she had lived in Mar Vista. “I spent a year here and didn’t know the end result. I was promised my life would change if I could manage to do the hard work to get through it.” She has been sober for eight years and moved steadily up in her work with homeless vets at New Directions, securing certification from the California Association of Addiction and Recovery Resources. She was promoted to case manager in October.

“This is something I needed to succeed in life,” she says.

The women in the New Directions program range in age from late 20s to 60. This is a small number, given the thousands of women veterans who are experiencing similar difficulties.

“The situation for women vets is distinct,” says New Directions president and CEO Gregory Scott. “Women play a major part in our thought process and program. This is more prominent now because of these issues: PTSD, sexual trauma, high divorce rate and suicide.”

Despite his experience at the Weingart center, which provides homeless services downtown, Scott understood right away. “My first week I went to the women’s house and they were cold, indifferent towards me. Despite being African American, I’m still a man—and that is a big issue with these women who have been abused by men.

­­“Men hit rock bottom before women, who can often be tolerated by family longer with a place on a couch,” Scott said. “Many of the women have a child in tow, so that makes it more difficult, although he adds that it’s often because of the children that women finally do seek help. “Survival on the street is something they can’t imagine; one night here, another someplace else. These challenges they carry into the building.”

There has been a 51 percent increase in the number of female veterans living on the streets compared to two years ago, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority’s 2011 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count Report. The long-term transitional program at New Directions is an important resource, but not a magic cure-all. “We have a big alumnae system,” Johnson says. “Women who have gone through the program are always welcome and come back to help the others. At our Christmas program, it’s a full house.” But, she adds, “Relapse is part of most of their stories. I see a lot of women come and go.  In my time here, 12 have come and gone, five are living a new life successfully and two have relapsed.”

   The nonprofit New Directions receives 55 percent of its revenue from government grants and contracts, supplemented by private grants and contributions. For more information, visit ndvets.org.