BUTLER TWP — VA Butler Healthcare and community agencies are working to reduce the number of homeless people in the county.

The health center on Tuesday hosted its annual meeting of the VA and agencies to discuss the cooperation needed to limit veteran homelessness.

Titled the Veterans Community Homelessness Assessment Local Education and Networking Groups (CHALENG) Forum, the meeting included several speakers discussing homelessness in the county and nationwide.

Christina Beaver, a VA clinical social worker and organizer of the event, said the meeting allows the groups to combine their resources and knowledge.

“It’s an important part in reaching our goal,” she said. “We can’t do it alone. We need help from all these community agencies.” The county has a growing homeless problem, said Amanda Feltenberger, the co-chair of the county’s Local Housing Options Team.

Feltenberger used statistics of Catholic Charities, a nonprofit group that works closely with the housing options team, to show the rise.

“In 2009 Catholic Charities served 350 individuals and families that were homeless or close to being homeless,” she said. “Last year that number was over 1,000.”

Feltenberger said the higher number could be attributed to both the increased awareness of the options available for the homeless, but also to an increasing number of homeless individuals and families in the county.

She said the country’s economic struggles have had a significant impact on the rise of homelessness, particularly in families.

“I think the downturn of the economy had an impact on families that were just making it by,” she said. “If a family’s (work) hours were cut or they lost their jobs, suddenly they didn’t have the money needed to stay in their apartment.”

Susan L. Kane, director of operations for the VA National Center on Homelessness, agreed this is a problem in the county.

“Butler is not a county where you see a lot of high wages,” she said. “It doesn’t take much to cross that line.”

While the economy has impacted homelessness as a whole, veterans must deal with even more issues. Kane said veterans, who make up roughly 10 percent of the homeless population, must deal with deployment schedules and the potential of mental health diseases upon their return from combat.

“During the Vietnam War, soldiers were deployed for about three years then came home,” Kane said. “Now they come home and have to get ready to be redeployed. They’re constantly leaving jobs to go on deployments and not having the same job when they return.”

Kane added the increasingly diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder makes it challenging for many veterans to readjust to everyday life.

Beaver said there are 125 veterans in the HUD-VASH supported housing program that the VA and the county’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority run to provide veterans affordable homes.

One of the key aspects of the meeting was spreading the awareness of homelessness. Kane said it is important for both big and small communities to understand the problems.

“People have the impression homelessness only happens in big cities,” she said. “That’s just not true.”

While Butler has a homeless issue that the VA and agencies are working toward fixing, Kane said the collaboration between all the groups certainly helps.

“Butler County has a great network,” she said. “Many big cities could learn a lot from them.”