PHOENIX — The population of female veterans in the U.S. is small, but the challenges the women face to stave off homelessness are significant.

Sandra Keeme, 35, served in the Navy for seven years. She was deployed three times — twice to Iraq, once to Japan.

During her deployment to Japan, she was sexually assaulted by a fellow service member. She developed trust and anger issues and quickly spiraled into alcoholism after she left the Navy. She eventually became homeless.

Keeme is one of six women living at a transitional housing facility for veterans in downtown Phoenix that is run by the Madison Street Veterans Association, a local nonprofit that helps homeless vets. She has post-traumatic stress disorder as a secondary effect of military sexual trauma. PTSD and military sexual assault are common among women in the military and are increasingly gaining national attention as more women step forward.

“We’ve all been through kind of the same situation. Being a part of the veteran community is like you have automatically an extended family,” Keeme said, sitting on her bunk bed in the veteran women’s center at MANA House, which stands for Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force.

“We don’t know how many women veterans are homeless in the Valley. I think one of the biggest reasons we don’t know is because of the domestic violence that is prevalent in the veteran world.”

...At the Dayton [OH] VA, spending has risen to a projected $285.3 million this year compared to $131.2 million in 2001.

Two factors more than any others have driven health care costs higher at the Dayton VA Medical Center, officials said. Aging Vietnam veterans who have more health needs as they grow older, and the return home of thousands of veterans from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s the number of veterans returning from the war, but it’s also the conditions they are returning with,” said Dr. William J. Germann, Dayton VA chief of primary care service and a retired Air Force brigadier general. “There are a number of veterans coming back dysfunctional and as a result may not be able to hold a job.”

Straining under the national debt, budget cutters have slashed billions in federal spending and ordered unpaid furloughs of hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense civilian employees, but the VA’s spending has more than doubled in little more than a decade and keeps climbing.

“It’s a tricky issue because you want to make sure we are keeping our compact with men and women who have served and been in harm’s way … but you also recognize we’re not doing those men and women a service if we’re not spending that money wisely,” said Stephen C. Ellis, vice president of the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., and a former Coast Guard officer.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will not put a price tag on how much a punitive U.S. strike against Syria might cost, but says it will come up with the money.

“I wouldn’t be able to offer details on costs at this time,” Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said at a Thursday briefing. “We don’t know precisely what the military operation would look like, so I can’t give a precise cost estimate.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 4 that the cost of a military strike against Syria would depend on the type of operation chosen by President Obama.

“We have given some ranges of this,” Hagel said. “It would be in the tens of millions of dollars, that kind of range.”

The United States and its allies say the Syrian government recently used chemical weapons that responsible for killing about 1,500 civilians. Obama wants to launch a punitive strike against Syria, however he is seeking congressional approval beforehand.