Greg Walden

It was Christmas and Delbert Dungan was alone in his tent his home just east of Bend. The 54-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army was trying to fend off a familiar enemy: the unrelenting cold of yet another high-desert winter night.

To escape the chill, he turned to his portable propane cooker, the lone source of heat he had. The tank was leaking, but he didnt smell the fumes filling his tent. And then he reached for a cigarette.

The fire took everything from Delbert Dungan aside from his life, and he was lucky to escape with that.  The flames burned the exposed skin on his face, head and hands.

Dungan shouldnt have been in a tent that night. He was the first of dozens of qualified homeless veterans in central Oregon who signed up last summer for one of 25 federal housing vouchers that the Portland VA Medical Center was supposed to distribute but never did.

The national voucher program, a joint venture between the Veterans Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, aims to help struggling veterans put their lives back together. They are among the most vulnerable of Americas fighting men and women. They may suffer from alcoholism or depression or have run afoul of the law, symptoms of trauma experienced on the battlefield or elsewhere.

We like to say, We will never forget these are the cases that test the sincerity of that statement. Veterans put their lives on the line for this country, and we cannot turn our backs on them.

But thats exactly what happened. Assigned 25 housing vouchers in June 2010 to issue to veterans in central Oregon, the Portland VA Medical Center failed to distribute them, claiming that theyve been unable to find a single qualified social worker to distribute them and help administer recovery plans.

The VA claims that for more than six months it could not find one single person in central Oregon, the state or the entire country with a masters degree who wanted to work for the federal government earning upward of $90,000 in beautiful Bend.

I dont buy it, and I bet you dont either. But suspend your disbelief anyway. Assuming the VA couldnt find one person in America to take the job, why didnt it shift its resources to ensure homeless veterans in central Oregon had reliable shelter before winters onset?

I was a small-business owner for nearly 22 years, and I know that if you leave a vital position vacant for six months, you probably go out of business. So I asked why one of the many talented staff members from the Portland VA Medical Center was not sent to fill the gap.

Its a long way from Portland to Bend, I was told.

Tell that to Delbert Dungan.

Thanks to the good reporting in The Bend Bulletin, effective advocacy from groups like Central Oregon Veterans Outreach and the Partnership to End Poverty, and pressure exerted by myself and Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, the wheels are in motion finally to distribute the aid. Portland has assigned caseworkers to the region every day to screen applicants, and I understand that the VA has finally hired a full-time caseworker.

Still, more work remains. Twenty-five vouchers only go so far. Thats why I asked for and received from VA Secretary Erik Shinseki a commitment that, in the next allotment of 10,000 vouchers due for release nationwide in March, central Oregon will not be punished for the failure to distribute the previous round in a timely manner.

There will be plenty of time to apportion blame. While the Portland VA Medical Center and its staff regularly does excellent work for veterans in the Northwest, the system in this case failed and we need to fix it. House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller has already pledged that his committee will conduct rigorous oversight on the issue.

But for now, heroes that should have been in homes last summer will sleep in tents tonight. Its time to focus on fulfilling our promise that We will never forget.

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U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, a Republican, represents Oregons 2nd Congressional District.