Coming Home Well
EP:207 Veterans Villages: Providing Housing for Veterans
Have you ever wondered about innovative solutions to end veteran homelessness? We're bringing you an inspiring conversation with Dana Spain, the founder and president of Veteran Villages. This visionary organization is reshaping the concept of housing for veterans, redefining the roadmap from homelessness to self-reliance.
Let's explore together the ways we can help our brave veterans truly 'come home well.
veteransvillages.org
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
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Have you ever wondered about innovative solutions to end veteran homelessness? We're bringing you an inspiring conversation with Dana Spain, the founder and president of Veteran Villages. This visionary organization is reshaping the concept of housing for veterans, redefining the roadmap from homelessness to self-reliance.
Let's explore together the ways we can help our brave veterans truly 'come home well.
veteransvillages.org
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Welcome to the Coming Home Well podcast, the show that educates, supports and advocates for the veteran community. Your host, Dr Tyler Pierron, US Army retired, will bring you exciting conversations with amazing guests about resources, research and military history, all geared to helping our warriors to come home well. Here's your host, Dr Tyler Pierron.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Coming Home Well. I'm your host, tyler Pierron, and today we're going to continue with a discussion that we've had before about veteran homelessness. We're not going to talk about all the tragedy that is veteran homelessness. We're going to talk about some solutions that are out there, and we have a great organization, veteran Villages, and we have Dana Spain, the founder and current president of the Board of Veteran Villages. They changed their name recently, so if you go looking for the website, which we will give you, it may say something else, but that's okay, because we want you to have the most up-to-date information about this great organization. Thank you so much for joining us, for Coming Home Well and talking about your great organization.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here so let's start with easy stuff.
Speaker 2:What is Veteran Villages?
Speaker 3:Veteran's Villages and just changed from VVC Giving Foundation because nobody really knew what VVC Giving Foundation did. What we do is we build villages for our veterans who are housing insecure. So, to get right to the point, in the old-fashioned Keep it Simple Kiss principle, we changed our name to Veterans Villages and you can see one of them behind me.
Speaker 3:For those of you watching, for those of you just listening, a village concept is just that Veterans, although they all have their individual stories of service and separation from service, all have a common thread and enjoy a camaraderie that is ever-present in the veterans community. So we built a village so that brothers and sisters can live together in independent living in an apartment building just like a market-rate apartment building, but it is affordable. And if somebody's having a bad day and maybe choosing to make a bad decision that was a reason that they were housing insecure or homeless in the first place they have 46 other doors to knock on and say hey, I'm having a bad day, can we have a cup of coffee, can we have a chat? And the village concept is really about building communities but providing safe, respectable, affordable housing for our heroes.
Speaker 2:So the village that you have, the one that's behind you, is an apartment building and what is the village? I understand, like a lot of veterans together. Is there any other components to that besides the housing? Is there communal spaces or something that sort of brings them all together there? Sure, is.
Speaker 3:There is a community room specific for large screen television, for example, if they want to watch a ballgame or have breakfast or have an AA meeting or even do yoga. The veterans village concept was really sort of evolved from another organization that I founded and ran for a number of years called Haven, which was a small but mighty shelter for our female veterans who were transitioning from addiction recovery programs and sheltering programs on kind of a way station on the way to independent living. And the ladies who joined us lived in a sorority style group home and had a lot of enrichment programs. We use a mind, body spirit, so it's everything from fitness and eating well and having a sober environment, but also financial literacy programs and you know, and fun stuff and celebrating holidays and really having a sense of family. And then when our ladies were ready to graduate the program, they were being put by agencies, whether it was local or federal, into abject squalor. So we're putting them in scattered sites with no foundational resources, with in buildings that were absolutely disgusting and vermin filled, drug use in the hallways, no full appliance suites, black mold, all of it in these terrible neighborhoods. And then what happens? They get depressed, their PTSD or their MST kicks in and then they start making poor decisions and self harm and the whole cycle repeats itself.
Speaker 3:So I was running Haven and Elise came across my desk and I was familiar with the neighborhood and I was familiar with the building and I was just like. This is unbelievable. We're doing the work, our ladies are doing the work, we're all on private donations, not federal, city, state funded. And then the agencies are taking people who valiantly served for our country and our freedom and throwing them away as if they're a number on a chart and not a human being with needs. And so I went to my father who was alive at the time, an army veteran from the Korean War era, and said I just, you know, I'm at my wits end. We work so hard, they work so hard. And he looked at me square in the face and said, Danny, you build buildings for a living. Why don't we build a building and show the government how it should be? And so that was the genesis of veterans villages.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, yeah, the, the ancillary services and sort of getting all the people back up to where they need to be to be able to survive and thrive after service. And then you do all these things and then, hey, go live in the ghetto and all these different places where people are doing bad things and making bad choices. It only stands to reason that people would then choose to do bad things and bad choices.
Speaker 3:And most of, as you say, all of. But there was a push, and there still is, for the housing first model, which is really taking housing, insecure and homeless people in general, but veterans specifically, to this conversation and then just putting them in a box like that's going to solve something. Okay, now they're not sleeping on the street or in a train station or in a tent, but now they're sleeping in a plain vanilla white box without any supportive services, without any community, with maybe not even a bed mattress and a toothbrush, and we expect that these people are somehow going to be whoa. Hey, now I'm sober and making great decisions. Yay me.
Speaker 3:It doesn't work that way. There needs to be a path to independent living, and once you go down that path, veterans village is the independent living that allows you then to either age in place and be with us forever, or to have a taste of what it's really like to live independently amongst a community and then use that as a springboard to buy your home or rent a different condo or whatever it may be. But a lot of the residents that we're seeing now, some of whom are gentlemen from the Vietnam War era this is the first safe place that they've had in decades, and one gentleman in particular who I'm sure we're going to talk about because he's our resident historian. He told me that is not only a blessing but that he fully intends, if we allow him to, to take his final breath at veterans village because he finally feels like he's home and has a home.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely fantastic. So what are the mechanics of veterans villages? Like who's the audience? How did someone get involved? If you're a veteran experiencing homelessness, or you know somebody who's a veteran that is housing insecure, what's, what are the mechanics of getting involved or getting someone involved with the veteran villages, because I know you have a couple, one in Philadelphia and one, I guess, in Chicago or starting to and trying to get those up and running. But if you're in the area or you just want to know, like, how does that work?
Speaker 3:Okay. So, from veterans who want to come live in the village, we have a website that's specific to that, which is veterans village, the letter CRMcom, and, and. There's a full criteria. There's an application that you can fill out online, and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and and. You're not going to have a certain criminal background and we make sure, for obvious reasons, especially for the safety of our female veterans suffering from MST, that we do not have any violent offenders or sexual predators who are living amongst our residents. Short of that, we take everybody on a case by case basis. Not everybody has a great credit record or tenancy record, obviously, because we're dealing with a certain population whose housing insecure right.
Speaker 2:They probably wouldn't be a great credit. They probably wouldn't, be a housing secure.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. But having said that, we've just recently opened up. We have larger units, two and three bedroom units for families and we have opened that registration up to active duty families. So somebody's deployed and their family is left behind and in today's economy they can be struggling to survive without the spouse here and certainly welcome families, reservists and National Guard, so pretty much everybody. As long as you are military based or have been, you are welcome in our villages. Our Philadelphia village is almost full. Out of 47 units I believe we have nine left and of course the studios and one bedrooms are taken more quickly, both because vouchers for individuals are easier than vouchers and subsidies For people living together or families or individuals and their caretakers.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and hoops of fire that we unfortunately have to go through just to put our veterans in safe, secure, respectable housing. But we do them and I bang my head against the wall, unfortunately a lot. That's where these lines come from, but we're willing to do the work so that we can provide this environment. We also have green space in Veterans Village for outdoor activities in addition to our communal room. We offer a lot of programs. Almost all of the people living with us have case managers from some of our partner VSOs. We just make sure that everybody is living, living well and not falling through the cracks. If they have a need, we meet that. On the other side of it, if people in your audience want to get involved, we have funds specific to furnishing apartments and giving veterans every single thing that they need to be successful in that apartment, from a coffee machine to a mattress frame and bed. We have a partnership with Creative Bed, which is like Murphy beds that are ADA accessible and super easy to lift up and down their own hydraulics, but they're a little pricey. We get a discount because of our partnership, but people can buy a bed for people in need. They can buy sheets, towels, tableware, kitchenware.
Speaker 3:There's ways to help specifically and I say that because there's a lot of charities out there and so you give 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks. You have no idea where that money is going. In our case, you can specify well, I'd like to buy a coffee maker for eight veterans and two mugs, because no house is really a home without a coffee maker. Or you can say I want this restricted to buy somebody a television set or a laptop if they're going to work remotely, and so we offer that so that you know specifically where your money is going.
Speaker 3:In the general scheme of things, just for repair and maintenance, we have a fund for that, and 90 to 92 cents of every single dollar that is donated goes directly to the villages. We have very little overhead. We have no employees. Everybody is volunteer based. All of our board members not only give their time and money, but they are completely volunteer. So, yeah, we keep it really lean and mean, and that way you know that donation dollars are going where they're supposed to be and not to somebody's salary and benefits and pensions and travel funds and the rest of the nonsense that you see with some of the larger organizations.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, you do see that. You know you answered partially one of my questions, you know, just giving a house and a place to live and you touched on that a little bit. But I remember moving a lot in the military and they lose half your stuff and break the other half.
Speaker 2:And so when you move and you realize, oh, I need sheets, I need towels, I need silverware, all the things that you don't have when you're in the barracks because you go to the dining facility and they issue all these things, and you move out and you get your first apartment and you're like, holy Jesus, this expensive for just the basic stuff. We're not talking about fancy pottery, barn stuff. We're talking about going to Walmart for pillows and sheets and blankets and stuff.
Speaker 2:And that's a real challenge for folks, even if they can get a place to live. To actually live and make it a home is a whole different issue.
Speaker 3:Right. So on average and this is before current inflation when I was working with Haven, we did what was called a move-in list for a studio, one bedroom and a two bedroom, and it's shocking at the very least, even if you're shopping at Walmart and Amazon and Wayfair and getting the best pricing possible, to really fully outfit a studio or one bedroom can cost $2,500 to $3,000.
Speaker 3:Right that's a lot of money, obviously, you don't have, once you get to a two bedroom and above $5,075, bed frames, mattresses, pillows, and then you start to think okay, well, what am I missing? Well, you're missing. How about just general cleaning supplies and paper goods, and maybe I'll treat myself to a robe and slippers, wow and a shower curtain and a bath mat, and it just and without those things, are you really home? Right, are you really home? Home? You really feel like you're home.
Speaker 3:And so what we do when we're assigning leases with our tenants is we ask them for an individualized wish list and we also stock a whole bunch of things that are pretty generic, which is flatware and dishes and coffee mugs, and shower curtains and towels and sheets. But if somebody comes to us which they just did recently and absolutely broke my heart in two a gentleman, one of our Vietnam vet guys, he didn't have a warm blanket. This is Philadelphia, it's cold. Regardless of how well our HVAC works which it works well in every single unit has their own HVAC. So if they want to live in a sauna or they want to live in a freezer, it's completely up to them.
Speaker 2:So you met my wife then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a woman of a certain age, I make my own, so but he never had a warm blanket. Wow. So when we bought him a warm fuzzy blanket and I mean it's just a delicious warm fuzzy blanket, but it was still from Walmart, but it was a beautiful, warm, fuzzy blanket I mean he was close to tears. You forget, when we're looking in from the outside right, we don't understand the struggles of other people and we take so much for granted because we're so blessed to live the way that we live and not having faced housing insecurity or maybe you did and you come out the other side and have a better understanding about it but in general and this is something else that we see when I'm talking to people about veterans, villages and housing insecurity, the first thing that pops in your mind is some guy of a certain age standing on a street corner with a piece of cardboard.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, right, that's what you picture.
Speaker 3:That's what you picture. And then when I say, well, how about the fact that we have a 30 year old woman living with us who was separated from her child because she made poor decisions and then had suicidal ideations, and they're like, wow, women, women are housing insecure. Is that a thing? Yeah, 10% of all veterans who are homeless or housing insecure are women, and so the VA isn't really set up to deal with women specific issues and women specific issues associated with the military in separation from the military.
Speaker 3:And so it's something that we don't talk about. It's a quiet crisis, so there's things that just having personal hygiene products available for our ladies and a warm, fuzzy robe and some slippers and just the bare necessities just to make somebody feel human and respected and loved that's the whole communal approach to what a village is.
Speaker 2:I really like that approach because, as we talk about, finding your purpose and finding your tribe are two of the things that veterans often have a challenge when they leave service. As you have this communal service everybody's sort of working towards the same thing and finding your tribe, which are people that are all sort of in the same boat. When you're in the service, it's automatic. When you get out, it often depends on where you go home or wherever you go afterwards. It may or may not have that. A lot of times you don't just because of where you're from.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of veterans or they're not the same age or the same era, and though I have seen where veterans of many eras, as soon as they start talking, they're all like back as if they were all the same age again. It's quite amazing. But finding that tribe and getting those people together, that where they can go, knock on the door and say, hey, I'm having a tough time. Oh, I get it, why don't you come on in and have a cup of coffee? That is a very significant approach to having better outcomes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting exactly to your point. The first group of veterans to move in, which was early July of this year. By the time we went back in late August to really start understanding who's living with us and what their needs were, they had already set up a watch, a command, a structure of who was policing the parking lot and garden to make sure that there were no cigarette butts outside of the smoking station or nobody was leaving Tin Can's aside. They were reporting nefarious activity of each other and keeping each other in line. So it was very interesting that it did not take long, and this is a group that again ranges in age from early 30s to late 70s.
Speaker 2:And this was entirely organic.
Speaker 3:Which entirely organic? They just got together amongst themselves and said you know, this is our home and we're gonna make sure that our home is clean and well maintained and there's no shenanigans either inside or outside. So yeah, they are on watch, they have a full. I won't say it's an exo and a CEO and the rest of it, but it's pretty darn close, Wow.
Speaker 2:but they decided themselves kind of like a HOA of sorts, sort of a militarized version. Almost Everybody has that background.
Speaker 3:And very much so. And they're self-policing. It's not like they're snitching to the management hey, you have Joe in 2A needs to have a talking to. They're going to Joe in 2A and knocking on his door and saying cut it out, this is our home and you're not gonna screw it up Because they realized that they're in a safe and respectable place.
Speaker 3:And for some, a lot of our people, it's been decades since they had this kind of environment, and that's another point. Right, this is new construction. We built this from the ground up. Every single thing is new New appliances, new countertops, new lighting fixtures, new water heaters, new washer dryers in every single unit. This is not lipstick on a pig. This is not taking a hotel or a motel and stuffing somebody in there. This is brand new construction.
Speaker 3:And I learned from my activities with Haven and we redid that entire shelter from roof to basement that it's the reverse broken window theory right. If you put somebody in squalor, they're gonna treat it like it is, which is squalor, and they don't care if they damage something or they break a counter or they you know whatever. But the reverse is true. If you give someone the respect that they deserve and that they've earned and say everything is brand new, this is all for you. Well, what are they gonna do? They're gonna take care of it. Oh yeah, so that's really what we're seeing. I mean, it's a super clean environment and everybody's really very proud of their apartments and of the building itself.
Speaker 2:So how is the? You mentioned the contracts and terms and apartments, and so how long do people stay? I mean, you mentioned earlier that you know if somebody wants to stay there as long as they live. Is there contracts? Is there leases? I'm just sort of picturing how this works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's leases, just like a market rate apartment. So leases usually run 12 to 18 months to date. Depending on the agency. It's 12 to 18 months and then they can renew. If they're in good standing and they're a good tenant, they can renew and renew and renew and be with us forever. If after a year, they say, okay, I've got my feet under me and I'm gonna move back in with my family or buy a place of my own, because we have some direct payers who are not on subsidies and they're using this as a springboard to save money and put money aside so that they can eventually buy their own place.
Speaker 2:So this is not or have a good record of being able to pay, and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, build their credit and be able to show tenancy? Yeah, absolutely so. Some of you know quite a few of our tenants are on full disability or partial disability and are getting both HUD BASH and subsidies to be able to pay the rent. And maybe they pay $36 out of pocket or $63 out of pocket, and some of those we even subsidize because we have some grant funding that allows us to do that. And some people are straight payers and they're there because this is a springboard for them. They haven't had secure housing in a long time and it's a good place to sort of get their act together, get their feet under them, get a full-time job, put a few shekels in the bank and then any year from now, they can say okay, I want to stay here or I want to move on, to be in a place where I can, you know, be back with my family or start a family, whatever that may be.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess it would depend on where you are. I mean, I've been to Philadelphia and it's one of the neat cities where it's a real city, where you've got all the type of stores and everything. It's like New York City where it's a real city and you can go walk out and there's markets and stores and apartments and all the things, and other cities like DC where it's super sterile. You know, you have the residential areas, then you have the work areas and they're entirely separate. Right, what do you think? I guess, comparing the villages and the tiny houses and some of those other types of approaches that people are taking, that they're building tiny villages, you know, of houses and tiny homes to have veterans versus an apartment, versus, you know, more consolidated. I guess maybe it depends on the location. I guess, like everything in real estate, Well, it certainly does.
Speaker 3:And the company that the modular company that built our first village that I used to, that I'm an investor in and I have used for my own market rate buildings and was a consultant to this company. They have a full tiny home package. It's really for more rural communities because if you're building in a city you have to maximize every single square inch you know, not even square foot but square inch and to what code allows. If we had been able in this neighborhood to go up another floor, we could have easily filled it, but we're really taking up every single spec of that site line with enough green space for code and parking for code and the rest of it. There's nothing wrong with tiny homes. They are awfully tiny and it takes a certain mindset to be able to live in a space that's super efficient but also super, super, super small. Some of the tiny homes have permanent utilities. So, for example, the modular company that I mentioned, they do tiny homes as real homes so they can be financed.
Speaker 3:They could be refinanced because they have permanent utilities. Unfortunately, a lot of the tiny home projects do not. So they have propane and then they may or may not have their own cooking facilities. They may or may not have their own bathroom facilities. Some of the and I've seen a lot that have been proposed across the country they have. Basically, your tiny home is your little bedroom and living room and then you're sharing a communal dining area and you're sharing bathrooms and showers and I guess in some applications that works, especially when you have a lot of land and you have a lot of people to serve on that land. I can understand that. Me personally, I wouldn't wanna do that. I want my own shower and I want my own washer, dryer and I want my own refrigerator, and so if I want that, why can't I offer that to my veterans?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting dichotomy between, like, immediate housing, where a shorter period of time, where you're assumed to stay there, versus a home where you can stay as long as you want, and I think that's an important distinction that veterans villages is really bringing to the table. It's not just like hey, here's a place to stay for six months or a year and then you need to be on your way, you can stay as long as you want.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right and that's really having that consistency. That is missing in a lot of housing solutions is that somebody is offered a place to stay as opposed to a place to live.
Speaker 2:That's a great distinction.
Speaker 3:Yeah and so, yeah, there's lots of reasons. As I mentioned, I don't believe in housing first models, so there are plenty of reasons to have that transition where you're coming really from the street and you need to learn how to live not on the street before you go into independent living, and there's a lot of need for that. But there has to be something at the end that can house you not in a box but really in a home, and that's what the villages concept does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was quite fascinated. I did a whole series and I've talked to a bunch of people about housing insecurity and the reality, which I really wasn't aware of, is there's a lot more people that are housing insecure. They're couch surfing, they're staying with a friend, they're doing a lot of things and they don't have a permanent place to live and sometimes they're in their car and they're still working. They still are sort of normal, like you'd think. They just don't have a place to live because they can't afford rent or the deposits and all the things. Somebody told me once that there's nothing like being poor to realize how expensive things are, simply because everything costs more, and when you're poor, everything costs extra more than if you had a lot of money, which is kind of the opposite of what you would think. But they told me that and I've observed it to be true, and so having a place to live and be a home is a really great thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would add to that that a lot of our veterans and this is something that our management, our case workers, help our veterans with the VA is a morass of bureaucracy, right. And in a lot of cases and I'm gonna make a rash generalization here, but it's mostly true and that's why I'm generalizing we don't see a whole bunch of officers, okay, we see enlisted, we're formally enlisted, and they get a pat on the back or on the tusk and thanks very much for playing and have a nice life. There's not a here's how you get your benefits. Here's how you get your disability, here's how you get SSVF funds, which can help you with security deposits and first month rent. Here's how you get HUDVASH, here's how you do this. There's very little of that.
Speaker 3:So when people are thrown out and they have issues mental and or physical and maybe they don't have a suck landing because they don't have family or they were living independently before they went into the service, or they were 17 or 18 when they went into the service or any of that and then they come out the other side and they're in their 20s or early 30s and they're like ha, I don't know how to balance a checkbook. I don't even know how to open a checking account. I don't know where my benefits are coming from. I don't know what I qualify for.
Speaker 3:So the veterans are immediately at a disadvantage when they separate. Some figure it out, some do not. And the housing and security that you mentioned the couch surfing, the living in the car, that's not qualified as quote homelessness, even though those people are unhoused because they don't have their own place to be. If you are sleeping in your car, you are still not officially, by official agency standards, considered unhoused, which is bizarre. But if you look at the big picture of things in America, snapshot in time, any given night, there were about 38,000 veterans who are truly homeless and a million five who are housing and secure.
Speaker 2:Right and it was astounding to me to realize that hey, there's that many and just sort of how they're counted and sort of it's not the guy necessarily with the sign you know, at the, you know, please give. It's a lot of people that you just may run into, as at Starbucks or wherever somebody's working and they're doing their life, but they're not necessarily housed and they're sort of trying to figure it out and there's a, there's a million and one programs, but they're hard to get if you're not Tied in, if you don't have the right people with the right info, because it's a lot of different things with different qualifiers. So you have counselors, you have people that sort of help the veterans navigate all these different programs and things that they might be eligible for.
Speaker 3:We work hand in hand with the VSO, called Veterans Multiservice Center and in the Philadelphia region.
Speaker 3:They monitor all of the flow of Housing insecure and truly homeless veterans, so we get direct referrals from them and we work with their case managers to make sure that every single one of our tenants is Getting exactly what he or her would hear she needs and meeting them where they are. So when our veterans villages in Philadelphia, for example, we're a block away from public transportation that will take you directly to the VA medical center. We want to make sure that all of our veterans are getting the physical, that the mental and physical health care that they need, if that they're getting their meds, that they have access to groceries. There's a retail corridor also within walking distance. So we work very closely with VMC and other VSOs to make sure that our tenants have wraparound services.
Speaker 2:That's so important and I I love that phrase, the wraparound services. I've heard that before. I've talked to a lot of people. I talked to a lot of organizations and so many are started by social workers that Recognize some need and they get like, oh, I'm gonna do this, whether it's like equine therapy or housing or something. And so when I first heard that phrase it was from a social worker, like wraparound services, and I'm like, oh, that sounds so great. I get it now Like it's like a big hug. You know you need a big hug to get everything done and you know to be Hard or something.
Speaker 3:But what I will tell you is, I think, the unfortunate, the fortunate and unfortunate part, and I'm gonna give you a little anecdote from my former charity, philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, or pause, which I started a number of years ago. That was my first charity that I founded and after I was in the industry for a while, very well-intended people would come to me and say, oh, I'm gonna start a charity and I'll give to your charity. No, no, don't do that. Please. Just join our mission. Don't set up your own 501 C3 with your own overhead and your own employees and your own this and your own that. Just come join our mission, because a Chances are. You're not gonna succeed because it's a very difficult space and be. Why not just join us rather than having a duplication of all the infrastructure?
Speaker 3:And what we see in the veteran space is the same thing. Very well-intended people Set up VSOs because they see a need, whether that is equine therapy or fly fishing or Telemed or this or that or the other thing, and the reason that they set it up is because they realize that the VA doesn't provide what it really should be providing in terms of wraparound services. So then they come up and say well, I know how to do X, so I'll set up my own charity to do X. I mean, if you look down the line, I would love to have a portal for veterans where they can come to a village, live with a village and then we can set them up with everything that they need, rather than yeah, so what do you think are some of the biggest challenges or things that veterans are facing that result in veterans becoming homeless?
Speaker 3:I would say the number one thing in my experience that I've seen with our ladies at Haven and also with our gentlemen now at the village, is the disconnect when they separate from the service, now putting our Vietnam veteran era service members at the side because they had. They had a cadre of their own problems right and not being welcomed home, you know, through no fault of their own, and they had. They saw a variety of atrocities, but more recently. So if we're looking really at desert storm forward to today, what we're seeing are that there are fewer and fewer people who are signing up for the military. So people in the military are doing more and more tours and they're seeing more and more bad stuff and the bad stuff's getting worse. And then they come back and they may or may not have a family unit and that family unit may or may not provide a foundation of support that they need to get through whatever trauma that they're working through PTSD, mst or just dealing with everyday real life okay, or they don't have a family to come back to because they went in right out of high school and end, end, end right. So it's the lack of soft landing being able to integrate back into productive civilian life, or people who are career military, in in enlisted positions, and then they get out and realize that they don't have basic, simple life skills. Every decision has been made for them for the last 15, 20 years when to eat, when to sleep, when to go to the bathroom, what they're wearing, when they're wearing it right. They go to a McDonald's menu and they're like, wow, there's a lot of options here and you know, making sure that they're putting aside taxes from their paycheck, which the military does for you, and and and so the choices are overwhelming. Life becomes overwhelming. They realize that they don't have the basic life skills. So what do they do? Self harm, self medication, bad decisions, and then you know, and then the rabbit hole of housing, insecurity, losing your friends, losing your family, losing your children into the, the system, and it's a rabbit hole of despair.
Speaker 3:Thankfully, a lot of our veterans at some point say, hey, this is not the life I want to lead and I need to get myself clean or I need to stop making bad decisions and I need a safe place to lay my head at night. At the very basic level, independent housing allows for somebody to have one less big concern, and that is am I safe when I shut my eyes at night? If you're on the street, you're not. If you're in a tent, you're not right. If you're in your car, you're not. There's. It's a big bad world out there. But if you are in an apartment with a locked door and neighbors around you and security cameras everywhere and you've got a big fluffy pillow and a nice warm blanket, you have one very important thing that you don't have to worry about. Now we can go get a job. Now we can figure out our disability and our benefits. You know what I'm saying, so, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:When you remove the the maslow's hierarchy of needs as you go further down the pyramid and you've got security, you've got food, you've got shelter, you've got a home, you can then take care of all these other things that are now part of society and being a contributing member of society, as opposed to just survival, which is so important. So we've talked about a lot of things, and I'm sure that there's things that I'm missing. If I, what have I missed? What should I have asked you about? But didn't.
Speaker 3:Well, I'd like to back up a second and tell you about the village itself, because it's important to understand with all of the the handouts out there that this is not a handout, this is a hand up, as cliche as it might be, but even so, we did not take any handouts to build this building. This building was built from individual, corporate and and grant and foundation donations. It was financed traditionally. We did not take any city, state or federal money not one cent. We did not take even any tax credits. We may in the future, but we wanted to get this built to show that it can be done. So what we're really looking for and maybe there are people in your audience who are, you know, have the volition, the passion, the money, the land, the, the, you know the zeal to say, hey, I, we could so use a village in my backyard. So what we did was make this an open source template.
Speaker 3:Not everybody knows how to build a building. I do know how to build a building because that's what I do for a living. So if somebody says, well, I have a piece of land, or my, my church has a piece of land, or I live near, you know, a big open space and we have a lot of homeless or housing insecure veterans and we would love to build a village. We will walk you through that process. We will help you build your pro forma. We will help you with all of the background information, the architecturals, the MEPs, how to build a building, what you know, what policies and procedures to put in place. We cannot, even if I build a village a year, I cannot solve the problem myself. I need other organizations to understand the value of the village concept and be able to join us in building enough units to house our heroes that's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so much of it. You may have a great idea, but it's daunting. Uh, the procedural and administrative burdens, uh, which is probably why you didn't take a state and federal money, because those always have fingers attached and and conditions and clauses, they sure do yeah, they always do, and so, uh, just getting the, the code, permits and all those things can be daunting by itself, never mind having all these additional requirements.
Speaker 3:Uh, and even maybe it doesn't really help right and even, uh, in land entitlements, meaning that, okay, I have a large swatch of open farmland, I live in the middle of nowhere, iowa, and I'd love to build a village. Okay, your neighbors are going to hate you. They don't want affordable housing in their backyard. Nobody wants anything, if that's the nimby concept, not in my backyard. I have dealt with enough neighborhood organizations and development organizations that I know how to swim with the sharks to get to what I need to do, that's, I think, even before putting together pro forma and raising the money and putting together the cap stack and all the things you need to do to build a building, sometimes the mere entitlements, and meeting with neighbors who don't want veterans in their backyard, which hurts my feelings and yours. But there's a, again that preconceived notion that, well, I don't want that guy, that crazy man with the cardboard, living in my backyard.
Speaker 3:Okay, there's ways around that. There's ways to present to a neighborhood where they not only are, not, are no longer nimbies, but they actually say, hey, this, this could be good for the neighborhood. In the neighborhood that we built, uh, we took a lot that had been empty for at least a decade, maybe longer, and and what was it. It just was a trash heap and, and you know, place for people to have nefarious activities and whatever. And when we showed the neighborhood and the homeowners what we were building and the green space that we were going to be providing and the fact that it was going to be clean and and secure that, they were like oh my god, this is amazing. You know where have you been and the fact that we're housing our heroes was even, you know, a bonus, and in some cases, some of our residents who live with us grew up in that neighborhood and now are coming home, literally and figuratively that's just amazing.
Speaker 2:What is probably the biggest challenge that you've experienced with building the village, uh, the veteran village? Is it the neighbors? Is it construction? Is it finding the right people? What is the biggest challenge you've experienced with this project?
Speaker 3:Well, this particular project, I'm going to say I had a unicorn of a problem because it was being finished in the midst of COVID, started and was continuing in the midst of COVID and the supply chain issues put us almost a year behind in opening up this village and so everything got more expensive because of supply chain. We were missing electric components for the better part of eight months. They were sitting on a ship off of the port of Long Beach and we I mean screaming from the rooftops, I mean I cut in line in front of I'm going to tell you, tell you 25 big buildings and market rate billion dollar developers because I'm a fighter that way and my veterans needed a place to be and I fought to get the components. That we did. We might still be waiting for them if I didn't have partners like Sangobang Self-Sensee, which is a global company, and they got on our side and started making phone calls and shaking people down for these.
Speaker 3:But then once we realized, okay, now we have the components, now we have to remobilize the elevator company, now we have to finish the roof and roofing materials are petroleum based and gas went from $70 a barrel to $100 a barrel, so the roofing materials go up and it's those little things that people don't think of when you're building a building, except when you are building a building that all of a sudden your budget, which was absolutely on budget and on time, is now a year delayed and interest rates are double where they were on your pro forma and you're $250,000 over budget because of everything outside of your control, and that means we have to raise more money and be more vigilant in how we spend money.
Speaker 3:So we're a pretty lean and mean machine, but we're always finding economies of scale and donations so that we can refi and then build the next one, and the next one, and the next one. But yeah, covid and supply chain and inflation and interest rates really, really throw us for a loop. That could have been the end of Veterans Village, and it wasn't, because I won't allow it to be.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know you got to have those driving forces. Every organization has one. We're real fortunate to have our Cindy, who is the driving force of making sure everything happens and reaching out and doing all the things that make the magic happen. I'm sure you are the driving force as well. It's a force of personality. So I do have a question Is there one particular story, anecdote, experience of a veteran? You mentioned one person earlier but that really sort of exemplifies what you're trying to do there.
Speaker 3:I'm going to give you two, so I'll make them quick. Leon, who is our resident historian. He is from Frankfurt, he fought in theater in Vietnam and in fact he always tells the story about how his 18th birthday was in the jungle and then separated from the military, I believe at 25, had a myriad of kids, I'm sorry. Came back, had a myriad of married, had a myriad of children, went back into service until he was 25 and while before he was set to separate from the military, there was a house fire and he lost three of his children.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:And it sent him down a road, for obvious reasons, of really bad decisions, self-harm and not being able to keep a job and you know, and just the trauma of the Vietnam experience and how he wasn't particularly welcome home.
Speaker 3:And then trauma in his family, declared bankruptcy, lost his home and then it was just a slippery slope and has been for decades. He has, in his travels, self-published two books about his journey and the journey of several other people of his age that came out of the same high school in the Frankfurt area and then comes to us full circle. He's non-ambulatory, he's in a wheelchair and is just not only so blessed, feels so grateful to finally be, as he considers it, home, with his brothers, several other people from the neighborhood who served either alongside him or in Vietnam. So he considers them brothers and just that. It's an atmosphere where he's now thriving. He's working on another book, he's our resident historian. He loves to talk about and teach all of the younger veterans, really not only about the neighborhood but about service and about service to others, and he's a super joy to be around and he's the one that I mentioned that wants to live with us until his last breath.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:On the other side of the spectrum, both age and gender. We have a young woman who suffered sexual assault in the military, not once, but several times, reported it and then was demoted, even though she went through the right reporting mechanisms, started to have anxiety and depression because it was made to seem that it was her fault. She separated from the military with MST, had a family, was separated from the family, had her child taken from her because of suicidal ideations and really bad behavior, and now has gone through. As I mentioned, there's lots of steps to get to the village. She has made all of the positive choices, went through recovery programs and is now safe with us and was just recently reunited with her daughter and now has shared custody.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's fantastic. Yes, definitely both ends of the spectrum, far different experiences and causes, but united by service in a very significant way. We've been talking with Dana, spain, and it's Veteran Villages. The website has recently changed, so when we put it up, don't worry, we're talking about Veteran Villages.
Speaker 3:We have the websites up and live veteransgovorg.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that is not what I was trying to say. Yeah, I need to go check that out, because I was going to get the old one as I was preparing to talk with you and I was like maybe it's a giving and foundation and Veteran Villages go check them out. A great organization, dana, again one last time. What is the website?
Speaker 3:Veteransvillages, that's floralorg.
Speaker 2:Okay, we'll put it on the socials and all the places you'll be able to click on it If you're driving and listening. You don't have to write it down right now. They're a great organization. So you have the one in Philadelphia and you're planning another one.
Speaker 3:So we have had a lot of conversations with Chicago, both developers in Chicago and administrators within the city of Chicago. So we are, I wouldn't say, far down the path, because the land would be coming from the Land Bank of Chicago and that could be a year to 18 month proposition, but we are in talks with them. But we've also had interest from across the country California, here in Arizona, where I reside, in Virginia, and then more in Pennsylvania, because we have so many veterans, because we have so many bases in Pennsylvania that we may do one either in the Lehigh Valley or out closer to Fort Indian Town Gap. So, yeah, there's been a lot of interest and I field all the calls personally and all the emails personally. So if people come and say I want to build a village, I have land or we have a need, I'm happy to have that conversation because it really it's not to be too trite here, but it takes a village to build a village.
Speaker 2:It definitely does that. We've been talking with Dana Spain, the founder and president of the board of Veteran Villages. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you're doing and really everything you're doing for veterans. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Take care Bye now.