Eddie Hickey had just found a studio in an East Harlem building this past summer that was perfect for him. He went downstairs to the building’s offices, only to learn that the building had a credit check requirement.  That scrapped any moving plans for the 64-year-old Vietnam veteran who has bad credit because of debts totaling between $2,000 and $2,500.

“It would be silly of me to give them $75 since I knew the result, so I just turned around and withdrew my application,” said Hickey, who now lives in transitional housing for homeless veterans on 119th Street in Central Harlem, just south of Marcus Garvey Park.

Hickey ran into the same problem when looking for apartments in Washington Heights. The landlord of those properties refused to deal with Hickey because it had kicked him out of an apartment it owned in Queens. Hickey has not been apartment hunting since.

“It’s a general standard for an employed person making $40,000, $50,000 a year,” Hickey said of credit checks with his raspy smokers’ voice, noting he only has to cover 30 percent of the rent with his Section 8 voucher. “It’s holding me to a standard that I don’t think I should be held to.”

Hickey’s difficulties in finding permanent housing are not uncommon among veterans — nor are they going away as a fresh round of veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans account for one-third of the homeless individuals nationwide, according to Department of Veterans Administration data.

Of the 380,000 veterans living in New York City and Long Island, just over 5,500 are homeless, according to a 2008 report from Community Homelessness Assessment, Local Education and Networking Groups, a VA program working with community agencies to coordinate services for homeless veterans. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer  (D-N.Y.) cited the report in a recent press release about the introduction of several veterans-related measures. There are more than 600 homeless veterans within the approximately 44,000 Manhattan veterans, according to Schumer’s release.

Meanwhile, soldiers coming back from current conflicts give a new urgency to the matter. The latest crop of homeless veterans are winding up that way after around 18 months, compared with many homeless Vietnam vets after trying to readjust to civilian life after five to 10 years, Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a 2007 Boston Globe article. The Veterans Administration and community providers have called permanent housing one of the top two unmet needs for the past three years, according to a report on veterans housing. A spokesperson for the Veterans Administration declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs did not return calls.

Just a quick look around the block from the 174-unit SRO, standing for “single room occupancy,” offers a snapshot on the barriers veterans face in finding housing uptown. Across the street stands an approximately 20-story residential building of exposed brick and brushed metal that’s nearing completion. A banner boasts “160 superbly designed” apartments and amenities, like a lap pool and valet parking. A sales representative for Fifth on Park, one of the two companies managing the building, said the building was not accepting Section 8 vouchers, noting that a one-bedroom rental would be more than $2,000 while a three-bedroom would cost $4,000. The representative would not identify himself, saying he didn’t want his name tied to a story on the lack of veterans housing.

Just around the corner on Fifth Avenue, a smaller-scale building is under construction. A sign in the window announces an October lottery for 43 affordable rental housing units in the site. Residents living within the borders of Community Boards 10 and 11 are given a preference for half of the units, but a city spokesman said that without knowing the address of the center, he could not determine if the veterans at the center were eligible. Management is still reviewing the almost 2,500 applications and renters are expected to start moving in this month, he said.

But some at the veterans residence do move on. Walter Edwards, 63, is in the process of moving out to live with his 84-year-old mother in her Staten Island split-level home. He’s lived in the SRO for five years and has been clean for the past 15 months after a more than 30-year drug addiction. He became addicted to painkillers in the late ’70s and the habit escalated to cocaine and heroin. When he retired he could no longer pay rent for his Brooklyn apartment and buy drugs, and ended up losing everything.

On Veterans Day, Edwards and  several other veterans from the residence visited  the Vietnam War memorial on Water Street in downtown Manhattan. The day’s event was a far cry from the official parade in midtown, with its uniformed color guards marching in lockstep and its snare drum rimshots and bass drum thuds from New Jersey and Virginia high school marching bands echoing up Fifth Avenue. Instead, the assembled veterans spoke with a microphone attached to a karaoke machine. After the ceremonies, including the National Anthem and “Taps,” the machine crooned velvety ’60s and ’70s soul classics like Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.”

Edwards, who served as an airman from 1964 to 1968, wore a black leather jacket that day with a large POW-MIA patch covering the back; it’s the only day of the year when he wears the jacket. Edwards helped lay the metal foundation for the same monument back in the early ’80s. Being there on Veterans Day, on the verge of leaving the SRO, was a powerful experience, he said.  Some veterans settle for a life in the SRO, he said, comfortable with their drugs. Not him. “It feels great. Now I’m straight, I can’t wait,” Edwards said of moving out. Looking to stay busy, he’s now training to work as a security guard through the American Association of Retired Persons and is preparing for an upcoming job interview.

Edwards and Hickey both attend a weekly meeting in the residence’s main lounge for Veterans Action Group, a support group aiming to get homeless veterans back on their feet. Anival Barrett, chairman of the group and recreational coordinator at the center, leads the meetings. “If you’re under the thought this is a place to come and die, it’s not,” he said during one recent meeting. Meetings are part  pep talk,  part information session as Barrett keeps members up on benefits open to them or upcoming events with his booming and dynamic delivery.

Surrounded by badges, pictures and gym equipment in his office upstairs, Barrett — who served in the military from 1962 to 1973 and fought in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966 — explains that many homeless veterans are badly hobbled by bad discharges or lack of information regarding the benefits open to them. A dishonorable discharge shuts down access to certain housing loans, vendors licenses, small business loans, medical benefits and vocational training, he said, adding: “A bad discharge is a form of stigmata. It shouldn’t but it does affect a lot of the hiring.”

Residents at the 119th Street center, run by a social services organization called Black Veterans for Social Justice Inc., have already worked their way through the shelter system, starting out at Bellevue Hospital and passing through places like Borden Avenue Veterans Residence in Queens. The uptown housing — a single room with a shared bathroom, kitchen and lounge with three other residents — is intended as a last step toward permanent housing. But some get comfortable, said Barrett, having their rooms decked out with computers and flat-screen televisions. “I always tell them, ‘Try to live as spartan as you can because you don’t want to set up like you’re here for life,’ ” he said. “Don’t get too damn comfortable. Nobody’s going to kick you out, but you deserve more than that damn room.”

Looking back, Hickey has both fond and gruesome memories as a former private first class. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” he said. “But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else,” he said. Back in civilian life, Hickey once planned on becoming a teacher but got into bartending and singing Frank Sinatra tunes while waiting to take his teaching exam and made a career of it. He overcame a drug problem in the ’80s but still copes with post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. He’s now in the process of appealing to the Veterans Administration for larger benefits while selling pants at Macy’s.

Just before explaining his housing search, Hickey attended a memorial service for Zackary Foster Marchmon, a 47-year-old former lance corporal with the Marines who had been living at the center since 2005. Marchmon died in November. “A lot of people go out of here feet first,” said Hickey, adding that he’s seen three or four such memorials in the past six months. He’s resolved not to stay long enough to see many more and it’s only a matter of time before he finds an apartment, he says. Hickey plans to resume his search soon, saying: “I want an apartment. I want out.”