Build a VA Hospital in St. Albans

Democratic State Committeeman Matthew Silverstein submitted the following as a letter to the editor:

On February 10, 2011 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly published an analysis of the extent of homelessness among our nation’s military veterans. The results were very troubling.

The analysis reported that as of 2009 there were 76,000 veterans who were homeless on a given night and roughly 136,000 veterans spent at least one night in a shelter during that year. Veterans now make up 12% of our nations homeless population and Veterans are 50% more likely to become homeless compared to all other Americans. The risk of homelessness among our veterans is even greater if the veteran is under the poverty line.

Our veterans deserve better from government. Queens County has a very large veteran population, and as a grandson of a World War 2 Navy Veteran and brother in-law to be who is currently serving in Afghanistan and as someone who works on a day to day basis helping find employment for veterans, I feel that we are shortchanging our veterans.

A few weeks ago Congress Member Ackerman wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric  Shinseki urging the Secretary to stop plans to redevelop the current VA Hospital in St. Albans. The Congressman suggested that instead of redeveloping the land privately, a new state of the art full service VA hospital should be built. I couldn’t agree more with Congressman Ackerman.

As the war in Iraq and Afghanistan comes to an end our Veteran population is soaring and Queens will become home of many of these veterans. I urge all Queens residents to contact Secretary Shinseki and tell him not to leave any veteran behind. Let’s honor our Veterans by building a new facility that will serve the Queens County Veteran population for years to come.

Matthew Silverstein

Democratic State Committeeman, 26^th AD