A Kansas City, Missouri, group is building a village one board at a time. The goal of the Veterans Community Project is to ensure that men and women who have served their country have a place to call home. According to Kevin Jamison, the group’s founder, “We didn’t want to see any veteran suffering.”
Project organizers hope to have 10 homes completed by October 2016 and another 40 by the end of 2017. The Wounded Warrior Project and Team Rubicon joined in to help clear the land, and a number of different organizations and an army of volunteers have donated the supplies and manpower. Each home will be 240 square feet in total and measure 20 feet from end to end.
The boards used to construct the “tiny homes” will feature handwritten messages from supporters. The group hopes to incorporate these messages into the interior designs of the homes so that they can serve as encouragement for the veterans living there.
Jamison, a Marine Corps veteran himself, started the project out of concern for veterans who are homeless or having difficulty adjusting back to civilian life. “We want to give them something they can stay in, call it their own, and then socialize and reintegrate at their own pace,” says Jamison.