Organization has increased its outreach to homeless veterans in rural areas
By Anamika Roy
BridgeTower Media Newswires
BALTIMORE, MD — Brad Johnson is a combat veteran who served in the U.S. Army in Grenada from 1981 to 1985. When he came home, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, had nightmares, problems in personal relationships and was unable to keep a steady job.
“I kind of lost myself. I didn’t really understand who I was,” said Johnson, 58.
Johnson became homeless in Cecil County and was unsuccessful in appealing his low disability rating, meaning he only received $407 a month from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Then Johnson heard about the Homeless Persons Representation Project’s Veterans Legal Assistance Program through the Perry Point VA Hospital. Since 2014, the organization has increased its outreach to homeless veterans in rural areas, offering pro bono legal assistance by connecting them to volunteer attorneys in the Baltimore and Washington metro areas.
“This isn’t welfare these guys are getting. They earned these benefits through their service,” said C. Peter Dungan, an attorney and Army veteran who has taken pro bono cases since the program’s inception. “That’s what makes it so much better than requesting (Social Security) for these former soldiers because they earned it, they should be getting it.”
Working with HPRP, Johnson was granted an 80 percent disability rating. Last week, he received $44,000 in back payments and will receive $1,556 per month in disability benefits moving forward.
Johnson’s appeal was initially denied, it turns out, because the VA ratings adjuster did not believe he had PTSD.
“We reviewed the medical records, which showed all the symptoms of PTSD,” said Michael Stone, staff attorney at HPRP who runs the veterans program and handled Johnson’s case.
Stone appealed to the Board of Veterans Appeals, the last available administrative appeal, and the board agreed that Johnson had PTSD.
“The process was a whole other language to me,” Johnson said.
When HPRP took over Johnson’s case, it pulled additional records about his combat duty and medical history that weren’t in his file before.
“Once those records were pulled they could see the evidence more clearly,” Johnson said.
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Skype meetings
Stone started the program as the Rural Veterans Legal Assistance Project, a two-year fellowship program that identified a large homeless population in Cecil County unable to access the legal resources found in urban areas.
The HPRP travels to Perry Point twice a month to do client intakes. Stone meets with the clients and connects them to a volunteer attorney via Skype. The lawyers (who have to take a three-hour CLE course before taking VA cases) also have the option to coordinate in-person meetings, Stone said.
The program has led to more pro bono legal work in rural counties. Veterans like the set-up because they get two attorneys looking at their case at the same time: Stone by their side, and a volunteer attorney over Skype.
“It creates a good relationship between the volunteer and the veterans,” Stone said.
The program partners with volunteer attorneys at Lockheed Martin and Hogan Lovells US LLP.
Dungan coordinated the program with HPRP while at Hogan Lovells. Now a principal at Miles & Stockbridge PC in Washington, Dungan has done pro bono work with veterans through several organizations and has seen the greatest impact for veterans through the HPRP program, as a lot of programs only do case intakes instead of connecting clients to volunteer attorneys, he said.
“Everyone coming through the program is in desperate need of your services,” he said. “They’re either homeless or about to be homeless because they don’t have reliable income.”
One of the largest barriers the veterans face when bringing their case to the VA is the agency does not allow attorneys to receive a fee for preparing a claim. Attorneys can only get a fee if the case is denied and goes to appeal, Dungan said. That means during the evidence-gathering phase, veterans have to get their claim together by themselves and are unable to put the best case forward about their disability.
“That is the most crucial stage,” Dungan said. “When they go through the system, if they don’t have an advocate, they don’t have someone to push them.”
It can take over a year to get a decision from the VA. If a veteran is denied the level of benefits requested, the appeals process can take two to three years, and sometimes over a decade to get the right documentation together, Dungan said.
