Overview:
The Veterans Community Project is a nonprofit that helps veterans reintegrate into civilian life through outreach and tiny homes in Longmont.
After eight years in the Air Force, veteran Kendrick Horgrove struggled to adjust to civilian life. He moved to Fort Collins, started school at Colorado State University and worked at the Healing Warriors Program (HWP). Due to complications with his separation process, Kendrick has still not received his GI Bill, so he was paying for classes at CSU out of pocket and drowning in $30,000 of debt.
“I pretty much was on a downhill spiral,” Kendrick said. “I was on the verge of getting evicted, I didn’t have anything to my name, so I ended up going homeless, actually.”
While he worked at HWP, Kendrick got connected to people at Veterans Community Project (VCP). VCP is a nonprofit organization founded in Kansas City in 2016 by a group of combat veterans. After seeing other veterans in their community struggle to reintegrate into civilian life, they decided to create a tiny home village with wrap-around services for veterans. Since then, they have expanded to six different cities, with Longmont as their first expansion site in 2020.
“I thought they were pretty nice, and they’re cool people. They were understanding, too, and they were really calm. There was no rush. Every time I had a conversation with any of them, it was just a breeze,” Kendrick said. “They were very caring and supportive from the get-go. The atmosphere was exceptional.”
In 2018, the city of Longmont resolved to end veteran homelessness. Since then, with community support, VCP has been able to launch its outreach program, which has been in operation since 2020 and assists local veterans in getting back on their feet with job searching, mental health care options and general support during their reintegration period, and the tiny home village has been open to veterans since Sept. 2023.
“Our mission is veterans housing veterans, armed with the strength of the community,” VCP Longmont’s Executive Director Jennifer Seybold said. “So it’s about veterans helping other veterans, but it’s also even more so about the community wrapping around support and services to help individuals who are facing homelessness or currently homeless.”
VCP is privately funded and heavily relies on community involvement. They currently have approximately 90 community partners, including healthcare providers, and the Longmont community has shown up for VCP with nearly 4,000 volunteers who assisted with the build.
“We rely on our community in big ways,” Seybold said. “Volunteering is huge for us. We really need people who come out and help us to do things like repaint and flip the homes and support dinners for our veterans in a communal space.”
Unlike the Department of Veterans Affairs, VCP offers care and services to all veterans, regardless of discharge status. VCP’s five pillars of support are health and wellness, opportunity, money management, earnings and support network. Each veteran who seeks help from VCP receives a case manager to help guide them with the five pillars and their own individual goals.
“We don’t have clinicians on site; we have case managers,” Seybold said. “That is somebody that is assigned to work really closely with the veteran to understand their goals, their needs and then help them get connected to the appropriate resources and keep them moving forward.”
Kendrick used VCP’s outreach program to reintegrate himself into civilian life before VCP’s village opened for residents. However, Kendrick continued to struggle. He lived in a sixth-floor walk-up studio apartment in Fort Collins before being evicted and moving between his car and a friend’s basement. After reevaluating his time at CSU in Fort Collins, Kendrick decided to transfer to Naropa University in Boulder in the fall of 2023.
“I knew I needed a change of pace because I was pretty much in a rat race on a spinning wheel going nowhere,” Kendrick said. “I decided to quit my job in the Warriors program and just go to college, out of my car essentially. So when I got to Boulder, I was just sleeping in the school parking lot.”
One of Kendrick’s Naropa professors overheard his conversation with another veteran about living in his car, and he was immediately placed in emergency student housing. Kendrick then went to Fort Collins’ homeless office, where he was reminded of VCP.
Kendrick called his previous connection at VCP to see if they had any resources for him because he was homeless. They told him that his timing was perfect, as the first batch of tiny homes had just been completed. Kendrick went in for a 30-minute interview and moved to the village the next week.
“When I got to the village, it was pretty barren. There was no grass; it was just dirt,” Kendrick said. “So being there over the course of two years and watching the whole thing become finished was a beautiful thing.”
The village is built on 1.4 acres of land donated by developer Kevin Molsheim after visiting the original village in Kansas City and being moved by the project. On those 1.4 acres, there are 21 individual units and 5 family homes. The homes are specifically designed for veterans, with meticulous attention to detail.
“It’s trauma-informed design,” Seybold said. “Everything, down to the colors of the walls, are calming and soothing. We put thick insulation in them, so they’re very, very quiet, and the layout of the homes is set up for a veteran who may be experiencing some sort of behavioral health and PTSD. The position of the bed is pushed against the back wall, and you can see the entire radius of the home from that bed, so there’s nothing behind you. The windows are offset so you’re not seeing into your neighbor’s home.”
Along with trauma-informed design homes, the property itself provides a community environment for all veterans who live in the units, including a courtyard with a firepit, picnic tables and a gazebo. The VCP Village Center is also on-site, where veterans can meet with their case managers or host a Super Bowl party in their living rooms.
While at VCP, Kendrick’s case manager, Diane, helped him organize his schedule and complete tasks more efficiently. During his time in the village, Kendrick was taking classes at Naropa, working a part-time job and improving himself.
“[VCP] gives us an opportunity to catch our breath and stabilize ourselves,” Kendrick said. “You can change a lot in six months, but you can definitely change a whole lot in two years.”
Throughout his two years living at VCP, Kendrick took advantage of all of its programs, including acupuncture, cranial psychotherapy, healing touch, journaling and advisory meetings with his case manager. He also completed all of his goals he set to achieve each year there like paying off his debt, visiting his family for the holidays, working on his health and visiting his friend in Italy.
Kendrick now lives in the Naropa student apartments and continues to help out at VCP with their events and volunteer programs now that he has more of a footing for himself.
“Having a moment of pause and to collect yourself and to be able to try things in rapid succession, and then if you fail, you still have a place to go; you’re not worried about getting evicted,” Kendrick said. “It reframes your conscious and subconscious, too. It builds more confidence, and instilling resources within yourself is what is crucial.”
Today, VCP Longmont has 26 tiny homes on the property, with 12 veterans currently residing in the village, and its outreach program serves 150-300 veterans annually. VCP hopes to fill at least eight more homes before the end of the year, and they intend to continue working with veterans who live in tiny homes to better tailor their on-site services to their needs.
“We think outside of the box. We try very different things,” Seybold said. “We give (veterans) a voice in what works for (them).”
