Veterans living at new Chuck Austin Place in Yakima finally have somewhere to call home | Local
[ad_1]
One recent afternoon, 64-year-old Air Force veteran Robert Bacon sat in the lounge at Chuck Austin Place in Yakima to share how grateful he is to have a home.
“It’s good – I like it,” he said. “They have free laundromats, two kitchens, neighborhood health has a clinic up front. There is a library. It’s a pretty nice place. “
The recently built center in the former armory on the corner of Tahoma and 16th Avenue provides affordable housing, dental, and other services to homeless veterans.
The grand opening is scheduled for Veterans Day.
The center is named for the late local veteran Chuck Austin, who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Austin died on January 25th at the age of 95.
The center has 41 studio and two-room apartments, a fitness room, laundry facilities and two communal kitchens.
Yakima Neighborhood Health Services operates a dental and health clinic there. Rent is based on income and American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars service coordinators are available.
The centre’s need is undisputed.
According to the 2020 annual Point-in-Time Survey, the number of unprotected veterans in Yakima County more than tripled in 2020.
Of 48 homeless veterans surveyed nationwide, half were chronically homeless and 17 were unprotected, up from five in 2019, the report said.
The center was completed in August and has already occupied 20 units. The rest are expected to be occupied over the next month, property manager Maritza Dimas said as a man in her office filled out an apartment application.
“It’s been a life-changing experience for many of them,” she said. “I’m happy.”
Bacon said he joined the Air Force in 1974 and was stationed at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base south of Kansas City, Missouri. He was honorably discharged after his hitch was fixed.
He moved into his studio two weeks ago.
Life took a sharp turn for him last spring when his wife, Linda, died.
“When my wife died last April, everything went to hell – pretty bad,” he said.
Bacon gave his stepson Chad the double-width motor home he shared with Linda outside of Selah and lived in a trailer in Vancouver.
Months later, Chad died of a fentanyl overdose. Bacon returned and had to sell his double-width house because he couldn’t afford the rental space.
“It wasn’t even a year later,” he said of his wife’s death.
He spent the next month in his Ford van. Bacon said he had kidney failure and was on dialysis.
Bacon went to the Veterans Affairs Office on Fruitvale Boulevard in Yakima to seek help.
Bacon said he thought the VA would give him a voucher for a couple of months to stay in a motel. Instead, the VA secured him an apartment on Chuck Austin Place.
“And they kind of got me in here very quickly,” he said.
Air Force veteran Crystal Weston, 54, shares a similar story.
She said her husband, Dean Cusick, died about five years ago. She moved to live with her parents to look after them.
Her father, Dean Weston, also a veteran, died in early 2019. Her mother Sue died in December.
At that point Weston said there was nowhere to go. She said she had Parkinson’s disease and lived on meager monthly VA and social security checks.
“What I get from SSI and the VA wasn’t enough to rent a space,” she said. “Tell me where you can rent an apartment with utility costs for $ 800 a month. That doesn’t exist – not in today’s world. “
She spent the next several months hopping from motel to motel. Then a VA social worker in Walla Walla took her to a substance abuse center until her apartment on Chuck Austin Place was ready.
“This place is a godsend,” she said. “Everything is brand new.”
Weston said the facilities at the center and roommates create a sense of community.
“A couple of us talked about it – those who don’t have families here – about potlucks,” she said.
Weston said property manager Dimas and service coordinator Nathan Gano are always there to help.
“You’re good,” she said. “Every day I see one or the other and they will ask me how I am, how is my health.”
[ad_2]
