Canadian Veterans who served as long ago as the Korean War and as recently as Afghanistan have been forced to sleep on the streets. Thankfully, that’s all about to change. Finally, these heroes will have well-deserved roofs over their heads.
The village in Calgary will provide homeless veterans with compact houses, individualized counseling, and other services as part of a project led by the Homes for Heroes Foundation. The foundation is working in collaboration with the Canadian company ATCO, and Mustard Seed, which provides services to people experiencing poverty and homelessness.
Co-founder and president of Homes for Heroes Foundation, David Howard said:
Our team at the Homes For Heroes Foundation has met with hundreds of veterans who are in crisis and experiencing homelessness.
Can you believe it? In 2018 more than 25,000 people across 61 communities were homeless in Canada. According to Everyone Counts, Canada’s point-in-time count of homelessness, 4.4% of those homeless people were veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces and 0.3% as veterans of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “I expect this to end the issue of veterans experiencing homelessness and I think we can do that within a 12 to 13 year period,” Howard said.
The “Homes for Heroes” Village is the nation’s first housing complex built exclusively for homeless veterans. It’s made up of 15 compact houses, that sit on three residential lots. The 275-square-foot homes come fully equipped with everything from cable and internet to a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping area, and even an outdoor deck. Each village costs between $3.5 million and $5 million to build.
Additionally, the complex provides additional on-site resources such as mental health support, counseling, career training, mentoring, case management, and community gardens.
Howard added:
We wanted to build a program that can help them with a successful transition to civilian life. Our veterans are proud warriors, proud of their service, and proud to be citizens of Canada. They want a hand-up, not a hand-out. We listened to what they had to say, and we designed our foundation around meeting their needs.
Using a $1.5 million donation, ATCO, a Calgary-based global provider of integrated energy, housing, transportation, and infrastructure solutions, built the village.
This complex in Calgary is the first built in Canada, but the Homes for Heroes Foundation has a goal to build communities for homeless veterans all over Canada. In fact, they already have additional land agreements for more villages in Edmonton and Ontario.
