In rural Georgia, with no mass transit available, vehicles are essential to get children to school, visit the VA Clinic up the road in Jasper, travel down to the Atlanta VAMC hospital or just to get to work. If you are a homeless veteran and want to better your life but cannot afford a vehicle, this program has given away its third vehicle in 2023 and marked giving away its fifty-fifth vehicle in seven years of the program.
This program was started seven years ago to help three classes of veterans, those being (1) 70% or greater VA SC Disabled veteran, (2) a veteran with small children who cannot afford a vehicle or (3) a homeless veteran who has a job offer and needs a vehicle to get to work, according to Jim Lindenmayer, Director of the Cherokee County Homeless Veteran Program, which is a subunit of American Legion Thomas M. Brady Post 45 in Canton, Georgia.
It all started with a call from a 100% SC P&T disabled Air Force veteran who had been granted a vehicle grant from the VA 22 years ago and his truck rolled over and died from old age. When the veteran went back to the VA he found out that the grant he was given was a once in a lifetime grant. He had a house payment, three children and now no vehicle as he could not afford a vehicle payment on his VA disability payment alone. According to Lindenmayer, the call came to him to see if our program could help and after researching many of the commercial vehicle donation programs, we discovered that the vehicles donated were scrapped and the monies generated all went to other programs, but no one ever got a vehicle.
After researching and discussing the program with lawyers and the county Tax commissioner, it turned out that since we are a 501c19 veteran non-profit organization we could offer anyone who donates a vehicle to us a tax donation. All that we are required to do as a veteran non-profit is retitle the vehicle to the Post, pay any taxes due to the state then find a deserving veteran.
Qualifying for a vehicle by a veteran is not a guaranteed event. According to Lindenmayer, veterans must be honorably discharged, have a valid driver’s license, provide their DD214, for those who are disabled, they must provide a copy of their VA award letter, and they must be able to afford insurance on the vehicle, pay for any emissions and get a free veteran car tag. We have disqualified more veterans than we have approved.
