Of the nearly 600,000 people who experience homelessness on any given night in the United States, more than 40,000 are veterans.
But in the city of Riverside, California, that number has dropped to something known as "functional zero."
The city has maintained functional zero — meaning the number of people experiencing homelessness is less than the monthly housing placement rate — since 2016.
Riverside Mayor Rusty Bailey says that as a veteran himself, he had to try to solve this problem. "Some of my own neighbors have become homeless, and they've been erased from society and ended up dying because of homelessness," he says.
Photo via Chris Murphy/Unsplash.
Bailey joined 77 mayors, four governors, and four county officials from across the country in committing to end veteran homelessness.
The movement is a part of former first lady Michelle Obama's program "Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness," an extension of the 2010 program Opening Doors. Opening Doors combined the use of federal resources and local leadership to help communities put a plan in place to ensure homelessness is prevented whenever possible. Or if it can't be prevented, it is a brief, and non-recurring experience.
Bailey attributes Riverside's success to the city's Housing First Policy.
"You can't end homelessness without housing," says Bailey. "Becoming homeless is a vicious cycle our neighbors without homes end up in, and the sooner we can take them out of that cycle the better, the sooner we can place them into housing, the better."
It all starts with the city's Homeless Outreach Team, who first gets to know people who are homeless and help them feel like they are part of the community.
The team assesses health care needs, learns about their family, and builds a relationship of trust with each individual until they are ready to accept help in finding housing.
The policy uses a combination of local, state, and federal resources to create enough affordable housing options to meet the amount of unsheltered persons living within city limits, along with wrap-around support services put in place to help those who battle with substance abuse and mental health issues.
Bailey says the first step is helping homeless veterans take advantage of programs that were already put in place through the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This means taking additional steps that often go overlooked, such as helping veterans obtain valid IDs and convincing landlords and accept housing vouchers. Bailey says the city even offers some landlords annual stipends of up to $250 to cover the cost of any repairs housing units may need.
Photo courtesy of Lechenie Narkomanii.
And the policy seems to be working.
Since the city first identified 80 veterans who were homeless in early 2016, Riverside has consistently maintained its veteran homeless population of functional zero.
"Now that we have this model, we can take it to the rest of the population," says Bailey. "They're all human beings, and we're all neighbors here in Riverside."
Now that veteran homelessness has been greatly reduced, the city is focusing on high school and college students without homes.
Riverside is home to thousands of high school and college students, many of whom have no place to live. Bailey says the city is working with schools to determine which students are currently homeless and create housing projects in areas of need, but with the stigma attached, identifying students in need is sometimes a difficult process.
Now that a potential solution to aiding people who are homeless seems to be working in Riverside, city officials are working with other regional leaders to spread their success to neighboring communities. The Western Riverside Council of Governments is made up of 18 cities, and members of WRCOG are optimistic that what works in Riverside can work in their communities as well.
"It's important for us to work on this together," says Bailey. There's no city limits to homelessness.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.