Here’s a Good News story out of Kansas City, Missouri. Some veterans decided to do something about homeless vets and the result has been so successful that 600 other cities have come knocking wanting to know how they can duplicate the feat. The originators are currently working with 5 cities [St. Louis, MO, Atlanta, GA, Nashville, TN, Longmont, CO and Jonesboro, AR] to get similar projects off the ground.
So here’s the deal: the biggest barrier to getting out of homelessness is — homelessness. If you don’t have an address or access to a phone, how do you find work? How does a prospective employer contact you to let you know you got the job?
Enter Veterans Community Project. They bought some land in midtown Kansas City and had built, by January of this year, 13 tiny houses. Twenty four more are being added [at the rate they’re going, several are probably up and running by now.]
But it’s not just housing.
Social workers visit the vets to help them
with everything from bus passes to resume writing to acquiring clothes for interviews and for the time it takes to get a few paychecks under their belts.
Just seven months after the first 13 people moved into their tiny homes, eight of them had successfully transitioned into permanent homes of their own.
I think it's our intensive case management and our wraparound services that we provide on a daily basis," VCP CEO Chris Stout, said. "We try to do the 50/50 approach. We spend about half our time on the health and well-being. The other half of our time on the social and the life. You know getting their credit, legal issues and the finances all up to par.
VCP also takes their show on the road — locally. They do outreach to the numerous homeless camps around the city. Most of the vets can’t get to them, so workers go to the vets delivering necessities, signing them up on the waiting list to get into the facility, etc.
Here’s how the facility is projected to look one day:
Kudos Kansas City! May this vision spread!