Of 141,000 veterans nationwide who spent at least one night in a shelter in 2011, nearly 10 percent were women, according to the latest figures available from the Department of VA, up from 7.3 percent in 2009. In part it is a reflection of the changing nature of the American military, where women now constitute 14 percent of active-duty forces and 18 percent of the Army National Guard and the Reserves.

Regardless of the growing percentage of women in the military, this is an extremely troubling trend, especially when viewed alongside another growing problem, that of sexual assault on women in the military. More tragically, some of the women who have been sexually assaulted while in the military are now the victims of another injustice: homelessness -- sometimes as a consequence of the assaults and trauma they endured while in service.

According to Patricia Leigh Brown, “Even as the Pentagon lifts the ban on women in combat roles, returning servicewomen are facing a battlefield of a different kind: they are now the fastest growing segment of the homeless population; an often-invisible group bouncing between a soft air mattress, overnighting in public storage lockers, living in cars and learning to park inconspicuously on the outskirts of shopping centers to avoid the violence of the streets.”