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Construction is underway to finish the remaining 20 tiny homes at VCP Village in Northern Colorado by spring of 2025.
With tremendous community support, Veterans Community Project of Longmont has officially closed its $7 million capital campaign. Construction is now underway to finish the VCP Village of 26 tiny homes in Northern Colorado.
This means that VCP of Longmont will be able to increase its capacity in 2025 and welcome more Veterans to the Village as housing becomes available.
“As we approach Thanksgiving, it’s fitting that the feeling in the air at VCP of Longmont is one of immense gratitude,” said VCP of Longmont Executive Director Jenn Seybold. “We like to say that it takes a village to build a VCP Village, and that’s certainly been the case here as more than 2,000 community members have contributed to this project in support of our Veterans.”
As part of the Veterans Community Project mission to fix Veteran homelessness, VCP of Longmont is one of four VCP locations (with more to come) across the United States. At a VCP Village, Veterans experiencing homelessness are able to stay in their transitional tiny home at no cost for as long as they need, with the typical stay being 16 months.
While living in their 240-square-foot home, residents receive tailored wraparound case management support in areas ranging from mental health to credit counseling to career services. Since 2016, VCP’s model has demonstrated a radically effective 85% success rate of helping Veterans go from experiencing homelessness to achieving permanent housing.
The capital campaign news comes as VCP of Longmont celebrates the one-year anniversary of welcoming its first residents into the six tiny homes that have already been finished.
Those residents included Michael, a Navy Veteran who experienced nearly four decades of chronic homelessness since being discharged in 1986. With health challenges mounting as he grew older, Michael described the opportunity to move in as “a matter of life or death.”
Well, it’s fair to say that his nine months at VCP Village were indeed life changing. In that short time, he was able to: become debt-free by paying down three credit cards and having $50K in student loans forgiven; set up recurring prescription medication shipments now that he had an address; and take advantage of the VA’s HUD-VASH program to move into permanent housing.
Michael is one of many housing success stories through VCP of Longmont. In 2020, the team opened a walk-in VCP Outreach Center to help Veterans, long before any of the adjacent tiny homes were ready for residents.
Since then, the team has worked with dozens of partner organizations to help more than 100 Veterans experiencing homelessness secure permanent housing. In addition, they’ve served another 600 Veterans in a variety of ways, from providing emergency rent assistance to navigating the VA benefits system. That Outreach Center programming will continue to grow and be strengthened now that the capital campaign is complete.
Since it was announced, the project has also been featured on the local news, including being highlighted for one aspect that makes it quite unique: The Village is located in the middle of a new housing development. That innovative structure was a partnership between HMS Development, the City of Longmont and VCP.
“YIMBY, or Yes In My Back Yard, is a term we’ve heard a lot – we love that,” said Seybold, adding that she also educates those with questions. “I did receive a call from a woman concerned about spending her life savings on a home near ‘a homeless camp.’ But when I then told her about VCP and our programming, she said, ‘Okay, yeah, this is wonderful.’”
Kevin Mulshine of HMS Development recently told CBS Colorado, “[After visiting the flagship VCP Village in Kansas City], we thought you know what, maybe Colorado is ready for an amenity called compassion.”
Now with the project’s completion in sight, the VCP of Longmont team is excited to enter a new phase of serving Veterans in need. They’re also reflective on what’s been a five-year journey to get here.
Given its launch in 2019, that journey included dealing with the construction industry supply-chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like a years-long wait list for an electric box, or even cement.
VCP of Longmont Director of Development Melissa Gruber laughs, “When we got sidewalks last August, all of us cried.”
Although those sidewalks shouldn’t need replacing for a long time, it probably won’t be the last time someone’s brought to tears at this community of Veterans turning their lives around.
Thank you to all of those who have and who are continuing to make this possible.
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