 Welcome to the backstory on the Veterans Community Project of the CEP Village in Longmont. My name is Tim Waters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media, I have the good fortune of interviewing experts, activists, elected officials, community leaders on topics of interest and kind of varied implications for the community of Longmont. And today, I have the good fortune of interviewing three stars in a project that is making great strides in Longmont. The very first backstory, which was then just an audio podcast, featured the Veterans Community Project and the Veterans Village that was a vision to occur in Longmont. Two of the participants in that first podcast are Mark Solomon and Kevin Mulshine. Two of the faces you see on the screen right now, and we're going to do more formal introductions in a minute. But 18 months ago or so, February of 2018, was the first backstory. Today, we are recording this backstory on the occasion of the groundbreaking for the Veterans Community Village in Longmont. And there are a lot of miles that have been covered, a lot of hurdles that have been left since then. And it's time to tell the next chapter or the next phase of that backstory for Longmont. So gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me in this, for this recording of this episode of the backstory. More importantly, thank you for the extraordinary commitment to and contributions to Veterans. We're this whole project started in Kansas City, and Mark, I'm going to ask you to tell some of that background, and then more importantly, moving forward where we're headed in terms of housing veterans, homeless veterans in Longmont. So welcome. On the screen for viewers, we have Mark Solomon, who is a Lieutenant Commander in the Coast Guard. He's a Navy Reserve. Navy Reserve. And if you want to know, Mark, as we're recording this, you're 48 hours away from being redeployed. Yes, correct. So God bless you. You're leaving for a year. Yeah. So you're going to head off with, I know with a whole bunch of people thinking about you, you won't be in the, you won't be in town, but you'll be in the hearts and minds of a whole lot of Longmonts. Kevin Moshein. Kevin is now a Longmont resident, 18 months ago, I think he was a Ninewatt resident. So he got smarter and moved into Longmont. So we're, so welcome to Longmont, Kevin. Thank you. And Kevin has played a significant role in this. Kevin has a principal in HMS Development Corporation, and he'll be able to talk more about that. However, DP wants to go into HMS, but this project would not be in Longmont without Kevin Moshein. And Mark, I'm going to give you and Kevin a chance to tell that story. And Paul Melroy. Paul is the newest face to this, to this team as the executive director of the veterans volunteer, veterans get this right community project in Longmont. Mark, correct me. What's the right title? Is that right? It's it's a VCP Village Veterans Project Village or VCP Village. There you go. All right. And and Paul has very specific roles and responsibilities for what's going to happen in Longmont and more broadly in Colorado. So welcome to all three of you. I'm going to give you a chance to embellish those backgrounds right now. Mark, what else should we know about you? I think I'm a nice guy, fun to be around, you know, things like that. People who know you. I moved here to. The I moved to Longmont just over a year ago with my family to get Veterans Community Project started. This did start, as you mentioned, I remember the the room we were in is a small room, all audio at the time, right, for for our podcast. Big headphones on and big microphones in front of us. Yeah, absolutely. How times have changed, right? And so basically about five years ago on a napkin, a group of combat veterans got together, myself included, and we sketched out an idea for how we're going to help homeless veterans. The idea was really to create an organization that would not say no to a vet. So if a vet came in and said, I need whatever, the answer was going to be yes, let's go figure out how to make that happen. So each one of us who started this, all combat vets, as I mentioned, I'm an Iraq War vet, getting ready to deploy again, as you mentioned. And at some point every single buddy, every single person who ever served in the military, Paul also served in the military. We all took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And we were willing to defend the Constitution up to and including with our lives. That is just part of the oath. So whether you served for five minutes or 35 years, whether your discharge status was awesome or not so awesome, whatever it happened to be, the point was when you took that oath, you were willing to give up your life for your country. And we determined that that was good enough for us to make sure that you got support and whatever it is you needed when you got home or got out of military service. And yeah, just make things happen for people. So that was kind of the idea five years ago on a napkin. And we started in Kansas City. We opened an outreach center where veterans could get that service, just walk in and say, hey, I need it. And then we just go to work. And really through the kindness of the community. So I'll let Paul talk about the name and kind of where it comes from. But it's really the kindness of the community. So we don't take any federal dollars. It's all privately funded through individuals or corporations, grants, things like that. And we have been able to basically make an impact in Kansas City. And as word spread about what we were doing, other cities said, hey, let's go do that. That was phase one of our impact in Kansas City was this walk-in center, basically. Phase two were tiny houses. So we started building a village, a VCP village in Kansas City. It's now complete about two years after we started. It was 49 tiny houses and a 5,000 square foot community center. The community center is for the veterans that live in the village. They have a teaching kitchen and meeting rooms and things like that. So the houses themselves are fully code compliant homes. They need all Kansas City building codes for new construction. And they're transitional in nature for our vets. So our vets get to come in, stay for free, up to typically about two years or less. There's no specific requirement there. But that's kind of our goal for getting veterans re-housed at some point in a more permanent solution. And they live rent free. And basically we hold them accountable. There's a lot of accountability that comes with that being in our program. Yet at the end of it, they basically have the opportunity to then transition to something more permanent for them that doesn't include living on the streets. And word caught on quickly, we joke a little bit about it. Our tiny houses are the tiniest part of what we do. It's really our wraparound services for our veterans. And I'll let Kevin get into the details of how we came to Longmont, but sort of long story short, too late, I know. We just broke ground today on our second ever BCP Village. It'll be here in Longmont. We'll have 26 tiny houses in a 3,000 square foot community. And we're still on the search for that outreach center. It'll be somewhere in Longmont where, again, veterans can just walk in and get help whenever they need it. So our hope with the groundbreaking today is by next fall, we should be housing veterans here in Longmont. Mark, one of the benefits of doing the backstory is these aren't sound bites. It is storytelling. And not to leave out the important parts of the story. So don't feel like you're right. I didn't want Kevin to fall asleep. So that's why I was trying to make sure. I stayed excited about it. Could you just drill down a little bit further? Because I've heard you tell the story or stories about the project's approach, both to veterans and the concept of accountability. We have another entity in town that uses the word loving accountability in terms of how they approach this. But I know there's a loving but a rigorous approach to accountability and high expectations. And I think that's an important part of the story, that what you do with people to reconnect them to what they're most proud of and when they were most successful. There is a shared language and a shared experience that all people who've been in the military have. It didn't matter if you were in the Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Marine Corps, Naval Space Force. There is a common language that we all speak, and that is military. Every branch has their nuance. But generally speaking, we have the same. I went to a boot camp. It was going to be different than what Paul went through or somebody in the Marine Corps, Air Force, whatever. Yet there was a boot camp. And so again, there's a shared experience. What we found is, one, our program has always been designed around that accountability. We want to make sure that our veterans have all the support they need to be successful. And they also have to be willing and able to participate in that success. So we're not taking somebody off the streets and putting them in a house and saying, now you will fix whatever issues you happen to have. They have to raise their hand and say, I'm ready, willing, and able. Now we're going to still get them off the streets if they're not ready, willing, and able. It may just be not part of our program, and that's OK. When they're ready and they're willing and they're able, now what we do is we basically design a program around each vet. And this is the benefit we have of the flexibility by not taking those federal dollars. I can serve a vet in the way that they need it. So, you know, Councilman Waters, if you have a. I'm a Longmont public media volunteer with this conversation. Longmont public media volunteer waters. If you basically had some kind of issue, let's say it's just money, let's say it's money issues, you weren't good with your dollars and you had an outstanding rent collection that was due for $1,000 or $1,500. And you're just not good with your money. You can't pay it. You're living on the streets and you're just not making enough or you're making enough. You're bad with your money. You just have not paid that. Every time you go to rent something, they're always looking at your history and they go, no, sorry, we're not going to rent to you. So you live in your car. Well, what we do is we can say, hey, Tim, let's have you come into our tiny house and get you set up. And now we're going to put some accountability around that money management. We're going to have volunteers who come in and teach you how to manage your money. We're going to make sure you're employed correctly and you have the right dollars. And then the minute you save up $1,500 and we're going to have case managers that keep track of that, we're going to take you and we're going to pay off that old debt. Then we're going to put you back in our tiny house and we're going to let you save some more so you have a nest egg. We have case managers, again, that work with our veterans. They're on an eight to one caseload. Most social service organizations I know are closer to 30 or 40 to one. And again, it's our private funding model and through donations from the public, basically, at veteranscommunityproject.org. That allows us to be very accountable to our veterans. This second piece, quickly, that we've come across, it's been really neat for us, is we've realized that we've created barracks-style living without the barracks. And so members who join us, military members, prior service, who come into our village, and we have women, men, people who were in combat, people who never saw combat. It doesn't matter what branch or any of that. One lady was in the Coast Guard for two years, back in the 70s, right? Doesn't matter as long as they served at all, then they're good in our program. It doesn't matter if that contributed to their circumstances or not. Our case managers design a program around each vet, figure out what those issues are, and then we partner with other organizations that already are great at what they do to make sure that our vet goes and sees whether it's a civilian person for PTSD help or alcoholism or whatever it happens to be. Maybe they just need some help with budgeting. We can have somebody come in and do that. We do all of those things. We get them all set up. And then we can transition them when they're ready to the next step, whatever that happens to be. They can bring their pets. We don't want them to leave their pets out on the streets. So we have partnered with Veterinary Services. We just really, it's wraparound services. We make sure that veteran is taken care of in whatever way they need. And the veterans in the village also help with that barracks style living by, hey, Tim, I'm Mark, I'm your neighbor. And I know you're supposed to be going to this financial literacy class at 08. And it's 08, 05, and you haven't left the house yet. Knock, knock, knock. Tim, why aren't you going, right? Because I like my tiny house. I'm not gonna mess up my experience there. And I'm certainly not gonna let my battle buddy or my shipmate mess up their experience either. And so we've had this neat thing happen from a cultural standpoint where the military sort of concept kicks back in with our veterans and they really look out for each other. And that's helped out a ton. We've had 73% placement since we started veterans running through our program. Again, most organizations right now are in the 30 to maybe 45% range and we're at 73. So early data, small sample size, we're gonna keep doing this for a long time. And I think those numbers aren't going anywhere. I think it's gonna continue to be pretty high. You just described the non-combat or the domestic aspect of leave none of them behind. So I don't think I did in the introduction acknowledge that you're a Lieutenant Commander and in 48 hours you will be referred to as, I've got a phone going on the side of me, a Lieutenant Commander. But in the next 48 hours, you're a real estate agent for Kellner Williams. Yeah, correct. So I'm a- And you hear from now, you hear from now when you return from your deployment for folks who are thinking about selling their homes, gotta make that note, you'll return to Longmont as a Kellner Williams, real estate agent. And I have people in between. So if they don't wanna wait the year, we got people, we'll get you hooked up. But yeah, absolutely. I'm the only founder that originally didn't go full-time into the organization. My goal has always been to sell enough houses to write big six-figure checks to the organization that I started. I can tell you my co-founder, brethren, are constantly asking me, where's that check? We're working on it. Need to sell a few more houses to make that happen. But yeah, my goal has always been, we have some really awesome people like Paul who've been willing to join our mission. And they do that work day in and day out every day. I get to do the fun stuff. I get to do interviews and speak in front of cameras and raise money and things like that. That's fun for me. Paul and the team, they really do the hard work of day-to-day, let's get stuff built, let's help veterans. And truthfully, that's their specialty and that's why we have them on board. And it's just need to be able to work with such a good mix of talent. I'm sure that really understands what it means to have boots on the ground. Oh yeah. Because they've been boots on the ground. Yeah, absolutely. So you're involved in this conversation with Kevin Molshine. Now Kevin, some people might look at this and wonder, how did Kevin Molshine show up in this recording in this program? But there's a, we wouldn't be talking about this program were it not for you. So how did you get connected with Mark and the project in Kansas City? And what role have you played in bringing this project to Longmont? Thanks, Tim. Now, back in 2018, if you remember, there was a confluence of actions taken by the City Council in Longmont, which was they wanted to tackle affordable housing crisis, therefore putting certain requirements on new developments to satisfy certain requirements. They also adopted the resolution, which is basically a challenge to end veterans homelessness in Longmont. So we were asked to be, since we've done development in Longmont, we've done certain check, put some HMS, HMS, yes. And we put some charitable aspects into some of our developments. Recently, we were kind of tagged to find the right land for a veterans facility. But with NIMB, it's not in my backyard, NIMB issues. It's tough to, as generous as people were, wanted to donate parcels, it's tough to do. So Luba is actually the Mayor, Mayor Bagley, who originally said I will, why don't you just put it in your development and your next development, which is Mountain Brook, basically a 65-acre development with about 460 homes or so. And honestly, at first, we're just trying to prove you can't do it because it's never been done before. There is no new home developed in the United States that's incorporated a transitional homeless facility. That's because of the stigma of it. And the city's attitude towards that was, well, this is great because we'll be the first. If there's none now, we'll be the first. And honestly, we were in and around the country and there's a lot of, Tim, there's a lot of facilities in the country that are communal living, that maybe it's an old apartment complex or maybe it's an old hotel or something. And honestly, it gets into a lot of things of what would feel like it belongs to a new home community. And my last stop, we were given up on it but our last stop was Kansas City, Missouri. We had heard some things that there was a lot of good press about the Veterans Community Project. And so our last stop was in Kansas City. We had a four-hour layover. And as I said, the founders pretty much blew me off the entire time I was there. But I learned to appreciate it because they were helping veterans and they couldn't get themselves away from helping veterans so they're helping somebody more important. But Tim, if for anybody who's going through Kansas City that gets a chance to stop by that campus, there's a positive energy created by a couple of aspects. One is the tiny home concept provides such a dignified response and such a dignified option for housing. And it gives such a great feel to it. But then also the energy that is on the campus it almost has to be experienced because any particular day the campus is teaming with volunteers and also veterans who are running from one job to another or going for different things when Mark was talking about the accountability when I got to walk around the campus after being blown off by the founders. I talked to some of the veterans and they have a pretty tight schedule during the day as they're working on whatever issues they need to address. And it had such a positive energy that at that moment it actually went from where well maybe having a facility for a homeless veterans in a development, maybe it wouldn't be a stigma and frankly maybe it could draw people because maybe you could have, you know, we're gonna have the traditional amenities the swimming pool and the workout facilities and all that and they'll be first class but maybe there's an amenity we can come up with that nobody's done before you need community compassion and community service. So I know I'd love to be able to walk down the block and help some young veteran with a resume or help them with budgeting as Mark was talking about or help build the houses. And so when it turned from being something that has a negative stigma to it it's really the way it's operated at Veterans Community Project where we saw that as an opportunity to bring it in, make it as our component of our community and actually make it as value added as something that people would attract buyers because I actually think today, I think with all the trouble we've had and even in 2020, I think people are looking for those community service opportunities and if they can walk down the block and help a veteran, what better amenity could we have? So that's how we got this point. Well, I'm gonna just as I reflect just for a second on your conversation with the mayor and I'll say this fondly since I do fair amount of work with the mayor that I've known the mayor to use language like put up or shut up. Sounds like that was kind of a challenge for you and HMS and don't you love it when you have a chance to put up? Yeah, no. Which is what has happened here. Number one, number two, the other kind of narrative would be you make reference to 2020 in the year we'll never forget none of us will ever forget no matter, you know, every young children no matter how old they live to be, they'll remember even from their childhoods, year 2020. And in a year when there has been so much to be concerned about, to have a project like this that represents so much hope and reason to be optimistic as you envision the people who are gonna be served and how they're gonna be served, it's worth taking some time to celebrate it and reflect on it. And to get it to where you want it to be enters Paul Melroy. As the executive director of the VCP village project Longmont, and I think potentially with other more reach beyond Longmont in the state of Colorado. Paul is relatively new member of the team and has pretty broad and substantial responsibilities. So Paul, welcome to this conversation. I don't know where you're living now and I know if you're gonna live in Longmont. I'm actually in Lyons. So my wife and I really wanted the Colorado experience. Well, you're gonna get it. And we're up in the mountains. So tell us about you and tell us about your role and responsibilities now with this project. So I'm a long time nonprofit guy, a long time arts guy. So I worked in the arts for about 25 years and was the executive director or managing director and a number of organizations. So my experience has varied with that little bit of a tilt. I'm also a veteran. Before I ever graduated from college, I had served six years in the Navy at four years in the reserves and two years active duty. So while I was the peacetime veteran back in the mid-80s, I still have, I have a lot of friends who are 10, 12, 15 years older than me that are Vietnam vets. And the way that we've handled our returning vets has always bothered me. I just felt like we put these guys in harm's way and things happen to them during their service that affect them after they get out of their service. And I think you see that with the homeless population, certainly PTSD in particular is a big factor. But I was always bothered by the sort of a lack of care. And some of it, I don't think it's intentional. I just think we just as a country haven't figured out exactly how nuanced the response to all that needs to be and just how deep that goes. So I was looking for a job. I had parted ways with my last employer in Wichita. I've been running the Tallgrass Film Festival. And I'd seen an ad for this position and I saw it a couple of times and I thought, I'm an arts guide, this is social services though, they won't even talk to me. And after I'd seen it a few times, I thought, man, it sounds like a fun job. And I knew a little bit about the organization just because they've gotten some national exposure and I was fascinated with the whole tiny house concept. And so I sent my resume in and the gentleman that's my boss now immediately contacted me and said, yeah, you're not a good fit. Thanks, but no, thanks. And I thought, okay, nothing ventured, nothing gained. No worries. And about two weeks later, I got a phone call from him saying, well, a couple of the folks on our search committee think we really ought to talk to you. And the next thing I knew, I was driving up from Wichita to Kansas City and had a great visit. I hung out for a few hours one afternoon and chatted with a number of folks. And not too long after, got another phone call, clearly indicating more serious interest. And I went and spent a better part of 24 hours up there and really got to talk to folks and got to see the outreach center in action and got to see, I actually sat in on a deep briefing that the case workers were doing on the clients they're working with. And I was kind of, I was hooked. I just thought, these guys are doing great things. This is part of the solution. This is definitely a step in the right direction. And just was just delighted to be able to come on board. You know, my role is sort of chief cook and bottle washer. There's just all sorts of things that go into, you know, right now my job is getting the village built and establishing an outreach center and getting some infrastructure in place. But, you know, what's great about working for nonprofits is that no one day is like the previous day. It's gonna be something a little different every day. And I'm literally watching my job sort of transmogrify over time here into different things. So it's a little bit fundraising and it's good old fashioned people management and planning and logistics and, you know, whatever needs to happen. And it's one of the, you know, one of the things that attracted me to VCP was that whatever needs to happen attitude. If you've, I appreciate that you suggested visiting Kansas city if you get a chance. It's remarkable and Kevin touched on this too. When you've go visit the village there and go visit the outreach center, it's the energy is incredible. There's all these volunteers and the staff just generally has this attitude that we don't like to hear the word no, we're gonna find a way to say yes. And that bleeds into the relationships with our partners. And, you know, I think that means that makes, that gets people to do things that they maybe wouldn't have done or might have been on the fence about, but, you know, having a great attitude and making it really clear what your goals are, I think is one of those, it's a little bit of the magic with VCP. They just don't like the word no. And I love that. We find ways to say yes with our veterans. You've already heard a little bit about the wraparound services. So, you know, every client that we get is gonna require a little something different. And so my challenge as a manager is to make sure the resources are in place that if it's, you know, if there's something we can do that we'll, we have the capacity to do it and that we have the partnerships with other folks in town, as you heard earlier, we don't wanna reinvent the wheel. If somebody's doing a great job delivering meals or transporting people or whatever, you know, we wanna hook up with that organization and, you know, find the best care that we can for our clients. So, you know, in terms of looking towards the future, I think one of the, so one of the big challenges here is Northern Colorado is not Kansas City. There's a number of things that are different about the landscape here. For example, one of the big things in Kansas City that VCP does is give away bus passes and help people with transportation there. Well, here the transportation system is a little disjointed. There's certainly ways to get from point A to point B but it's not quite as easy here. That's gonna be a factor for us here and it's a continuous topic of conversation about the possibility of really needing to be mobile at times. And my director of veteran services, Sean, right now, that's, you know, he's working out of his house but he's going to where he's needed. And I think that's gonna be part of our landscape going forward, although I think it's really important that we get some bricks and mortar location where people can walk in. I think that's just really important too. The bottom line is we wanna serve as many veterans as we can get to, which means doing the fundraising that's needed to have money to help them and to have the staff that you need to help them. But there's a lot of magic with VCP. It's amazing to me how when just a few pieces start to come together, you start to get this critical mass and all of a sudden, you know, everything's clicking on eight cylinders. It's a really cool thing to see. So that's what I'm looking forward to here is sort of hitting that point of critical mass when I know that we are just cooking and we're helping a lot of people and that we have capacity to help even more and a vision for how to do it. You know, I don't wanna profess a vision right now of exactly how it's gonna be because we're still figuring out what, you know, how to leverage what we do best here in Colorado. The other big factor is 2020. We unfortunately think there's going to be more than a few people added to the roles of the homeless. You know, there's a lot of evictions starting to happen, a lot of foreclosures. Whatever that number is of newly homeless people about a quarter of them are gonna be veterans, you know, if the statistics bear and they usually do. So I just, I have a sneaking suspicion there's gonna be a much greater need over the coming months than there is right now and we're having conversations with the other organizations around Longmont and Boulder County about how are we gonna handle this? What do we think that's gonna look like and what roles can we all play to find a solution to that? So it's interesting times. It's like the old Chinese curse, right? We're living in interesting times. While you have the floor, what do you want? What's your answer to the question to Longmont as you ask, how can I help? What do you need? Boy, there's all sorts of ways to help. So, you know, obviously we have financial needs and we're very fortunate to have a great philanthropic base. But, you know, we're expecting to provide about a million dollars worth of services a year in Longmont when we're fully up and running and that takes money. So that's the easy one for some folks. Just, you can just write a check and it really helps immensely. But we also love our volunteers. When we go to build the village, you know, about 70% of the construction is happening with volunteers. It's similar to the Habitat Model. And, you know, we love our volunteers and we love getting them engaged because once somebody comes and works on a house, they really feel, you know, some investment, some psychic investment in that. And, you know, they get emotionally attached and we love that because they become great supporters. We'll also need people to help us out when we open up the Outreach Center. In Kansas City, they make use of a lot of volunteers in there. I'm sure we're gonna want to too. When we open up the Community Center in the village, same thing, we'll be providing a lot of services there. And as you heard a little bit earlier, you know, at the village, we try really hard to go above and beyond with our folks. So, you know, we hook them up with, hook our residents up with veterinary services and dental services and things like that. So we'll be looking, you know, for folks in town to help with things like that if possible. There's just all sorts of ways to help, you know, you want to come do a little gardening at the village or, you know, a little landscaping, we love that. You know, it's very easy to sign up on our webpage to be a volunteer and things are a little slow at the moment, but I think come, you know, early next year, things are gonna ramp up real quickly. So we're wanting to gather as many interested volunteers now as possible. So right now it would be people willing to help write checks or not help write, to write checks to help with the economics of it. And then building cadres of volunteers so you can get them ready to step in kind of full speed, full stride when that opportunity presents itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to circle back something that we probably should have touched more deeply on. It just in terms of the scope of the need here is if, Mark, it's fair to assume, I think, that if every government, level of government and agency that a veteran turned to for assistance, if their disposition was find a way to say yes, there would not be a need for the veteran's community. Absolutely true. But that hasn't been the experience. And then that effect, in fact, that Paul made reference to, it's not intentional that we've walked away from our veterans. I would like to turn that around and say, it should be intentional that we walk to our veterans or don't let, don't lose connection and don't fail them when they return. And that's what you are committed to. What's the scope of the need nationally? So, yeah, so nationally, on any given night, the numbers look to be approximately 40,000 people who took the same oath I did, the same oath Paul did, are sleeping on the streets every night. I don't know what their circumstances were. I don't know how they got on the streets. All I know is that at some point, they raised their right hand, took that same oath, were willing to give up their life for their country. And now 40,000 of them every single night are sleeping on the streets. 10% of them sleep in areas that are just not fit for human habitability. Most of them are men. About one in 10 is a woman that, it's really just kind of a mix of things that get them there. And I think when you look at that number, when people hear that number, what's really cool for me is that I look at that and I go, that's terrible and it is. And it's just that we've realized that it's not really insurmountable. Could this model, this tiny house model in our walk-in clinics be the thing that solves that problem? Can we eliminate veteran homelessness? And I think the answer is yes. The reason it's not insurmountable is because we do have a community of people who are willing to step up and say, yeah, I can help with that. I can write a check or, hey, bring them over to my auto repair place and I'll fix somebody's car for you at a discount or free or whatever it is. Starbucks was out today helping us serve coffee to our donors and people who came for our groundbreaking. There's lots of ways that people can contribute to making sure that we take care of our veterans. And so we connect those people together. So rather than have to call the VA and say, hey, I wanna write a resume for a vet, how do I do, literally just call us and then we can put you in touch with any organization that needs that help or maybe it's us. So we become in the Clearinghouse with that two things that Paul kind of understated and it's just because we are, honestly, we're sort of humble people, but as we've looked into the numbers, we see that on any given night around here, we're talking close to 100 veterans that are sleeping on the streets. So any night, just think about it, you're in your house, whatever you're watching the stars at night and there's 100 people sleeping on the streets that were willing to give up their life for their country. How do we impact that? One person at a time. We go out, we find those people and there are people, by the way, that are not with Veterans Community Project who are out there doing street outreach, they're reaching out to homeless people in general, they're doing amazing work. We're gonna partner with them and focus on the vet portion of that because there's some unique things available for veterans, resources and all that. It's just navigating the system. So one quick example I give people is, think of your favorite friend who got married and decided they wanted to change their last name, okay? So then you have documents, you got your social security number and you got your birth certificate and then you gotta go somewhere and you gotta see somebody and you gotta stand in line and take the little number and now it's COVID time and it's really hard. Now do that being homeless. You don't have time to go anywhere because you really don't have the resources to get somewhere. You don't have any documentation. You don't have your social. Some people don't even remember their social because they haven't used it in maybe a decade. They certainly don't have the birth certificate. We are the people who will go beat down those doors, figure out, okay, I'm gonna go find your birth certificate for you or I'm gonna go get that social security card for you. Then I'll go help you figure out where at the VA or what government organization can help us with the next step and sort of clear the roadblocks because with federal dollars comes things like, hey, it's Thursday and it's sunny out and it's 95 degrees. There's an organization at third and third that will help you. But if it were Monday and sunny out 95 degrees then you gotta go over here. And so we just can weed through all of that and make sure that that works. And so having those community partners basically just being willing to put up with the bureaucracy and figure it out so that the vet comes to us and then we go figure out the answer to what Paul was saying earlier. For example, in Northern Colorado, he mentioned transportation. It is about an hour and 15 minutes from my house to the Cheyenne VA. So I can go up to a different state and visit the VA. If I wanted to hop on a bus and get to the VA in Aurora, it would take me maybe about four hours, okay? So again, imagine we had a vet not too long ago in Kansas City. He needed some help and our staff was on the phone for eight hours on hold with various different organizations. Now imagine again, okay, if you've got time and you got nothing going on, great. You sit in front of your phone and you just put it here or just wait, it's painful and it's annoying and whatever. If you're homeless, where do you plug your phone in? And oh, by the way, everything shut down for COVID. So I can't even go into a building and wash my hands if I have a cough, right? So all of these things are becoming more and more complicated and it is too easy to look and go, somebody else will take care of that. Well, the reality is, yes, somebody's taking care of that. It's just really hard to navigate. So tell you what, you just come to us, we will figure it out. I don't know the answer. That's no problem, we'll go figure it out. And that's the beauty of, I think, where we have carved this niche. There are so many new references to it. There are so many amazing organizations and people out there who are willing to do this every single day. Vets are unique and they also, the veteran organizations are sometimes unique depending on funding. And so again, our job is just, don't worry about any of that stuff, come see us, we'll help you out. And Paul has already helped with Sean house veterans. We're doing that now. We won't have houses, tiny houses, for maybe another year. And we're already starting to house people because put some veterans in a room and tell them you can't do something, but we're kind of hard headed, as our wives will tell you. And we're just gonna go solve problems. So we've already started housing veterans and getting them help and support. And Paul and the team have just stepped up and done that. They're not gonna wait for tiny houses, they're just gonna go do it. So to bring this back to home, every once in a while, I'll put my city council head on in these sessions because the council has been through a series of, actually last summer, went through a series of conversations about understanding the breadth and the scope and the depth of our homeless challenge and the needs of our homeless population in Longmont. And it quickly came to the realization that our homeless population isn't some monolithic group. It's a bunch of segments. It's families living in car with children, it's seniors who are housing insecure or homeless. It's our disabled community. And one of those segments is our veteran community with the associated issues of PTSD and what goes along with that. If you look at the whole continuum, it does feel like an elephant you're trying to swallow. But when you break that down into the populations and you say, okay, what's the need and how can we solve the problems or respond to the needs here? It's real doable segment by segment. And right now, I'm really optimistic that for our homeless population or for our veteran population who are homeless in Longmont, we can solve that problem. We don't need the VA. We don't need, they could help. We don't be dependent on the VA. We're not dependent on HUD. We can solve this problem right here for a population that deserves the best we can bring them. And it is gonna take, so to that point Tim, it's gonna take creativity, right? So you've got hard working folks that we're gonna go out every day and we're gonna work really hard to just solve problems. And again, it's kind of that military mindset. I can't, you know, if I'm gonna take a country at some point, right? I can't just do that thing. I gotta go step by step. What are the battle plans and all that? We also know that no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. So we're constantly adjusting what we're doing, right? I wanna kind of redirect this back towards Kevin because that creativity is so in Kansas City, we bought five acres of land. We built these houses. It was great. The city helped us with infrastructure. I mean, I'm underplaying that, but it was amazing. And so here we are today. Then we come to Longmont and Kevin and I joke all the time. He said basically, hold my beer and I'm just gonna one up what's going on there, right? And so it's that creativity that allows us to be able to impact veterans' lives every day. My hope is also that there's an impact on the greater homeless population as a whole. Even though this segment is what we focus on, I think there is that not in my backyard thing that Kevin mentioned earlier. And now we're purposely putting people that are homeless in your backyard and people right now seem to not have any issues with that. And I don't think they're going to going forward. We've raised property values in Kansas City in the area that we put our houses in, not only the property we're on, but the surrounding area. We're going to be in a high-end subdivision here and we're going to keep values high and engage the community. I think Kevin talked about it today at our groundbreaking ceremony about different ways to engage people who are buying a lot in the neighborhood and how they can help us help veterans. And so I think that sort of starts to go at that, that whole NIMBY, not in my backyard thing. Well, I want to turn back to Kevin and the creativity that's associated with this project. And while I get Paul's concerns about not articulating too much of a vision because times are so uncertain and there's so much influx or in change right now, but there is a design, right? That is the reflection of a vision or the manifestation of a vision. And when we talk about a village, I think people ought to have a sense, Kevin, this isn't just a collection of tiny homes. There's a plan and there's a commitment to creating an environment and aesthetics that most people, they're going to have to show up to see how it really plays out, but talk a little bit about what those commitments are to create a place for people that honors their service and their dignity and is a place for people to be proud of where they live. Yeah, no, thank you. No, that goes back to our issue, which we were discussing before, which is taken, what is a transitional homeless facility? And frankly, because of their management of VCP, turning it into something that's more of a, I'm gonna say it's an amenity and it's a chance, as I say, I would live next door to 8,900 Truist, which is their address in Kansas City. And I really do, as we talk to our builders and they get to know VCP and they're the ones that are actually selling the houses, they're very excited about the concept because you get young families move in, what better lesson for your kids than to be able to understand that we have to give back and help. And I think so many people, Tim, the cities move towards trying to come up with smaller units, higher densities and lower prices, which we're trying to do, we're trying to bring in condos at $300,000 and keep on. Yeah, no, so it's workforce housing that we take very serious, but for people like me, empty nesters at this point, what better opportunity to have something to do than be able to walk down the block and help people who did something that I didn't have to do. I didn't have to give that out. So I actually owe more than, I'm always blessed that Mark, I get to work with people like Mark who were given back while they're still giving, but I didn't have to go give the oath to serve my country and I owe them a lot. So what better opportunity for me as a saying, empty nested than to be able to help, be able to make it part of a neighborhood where I can walk down and help somebody who had to go through that. Kevin, if people want to, I know you have visuals of the design. If there was some place that people wanted to go, take a look at what's this gonna look like when it's built out? Where would they go to see the visuals? I'm gonna have to give you that. I'll give you that. I'll tell you, I can tell you where to go. It's veteranscommunityproject.com and you can actually click, there's a Longmont tab and you can click right there and the donate button is right there as well. So you can do all of those things. Listers, there you go. It's probably worth, right in that moment as well, reminding those who view this that Longmont is the first, but how many communities across the country have expressed interest in potential expansion beyond Kansas City? So we've actually had 3,000 plus cities reach out to us. We've had over 700 that are serious about it. Longmont is our first and I'm gonna venture to guess you're gonna see some announcements from VCP. Really, it's gonna be probably about every three or four months we're gonna be announcing actual groundbreaking in new cities. So we're on a huge trajectory. Our goal is eight different cities by 2022 and right now there's resources and dollars, again, not trying to be silly, but resources and dollars are what holding us up from building these villages all over the country. So somebody wants to write a check for $100 million, we'll make this happen tomorrow, but we're gonna keep working on that, right? But yeah, it is, it's happening. And again, I think people with a vision, Tim, you and the city council and people like Kevin, they just look at this and they go, we can do that and it's different. It's not, oh, I don't want that over here. I want that on the other side of town. It's like, man, I want that right here, right where I'm at and how do I do that and how do I contribute to that? And again, I think that that's a winning combination. The tiny houses are that shiny penny and that's great. We're gonna get you to make sure that we can hire case managers and solve problems for people. All right, fellas, I've kept you at this long enough. I'm gonna give you a chance to make any last comments, but here he'll be mine. So the long monitors who view this, just to kind of digest this of the 3,000 communities that expressed interest in 700 series, long mon is the first. So long monitors, we need to set the standard, right? We need to be first, best, and always setting the standard, right? So when people look around to see work in this work in ways to which we aspire, we ought to be the place that they turn to. So that's the challenge. What's the last comments that you fellas would like to make? You don't mind me going first because I want Mark to go last, but Tim, I think I do get a little bit of a challenge when we say other cities and Mark references eight other cities. And I've always told Mark that my goal, we've taken the design, we don't mess with their floor plan for their tiny homes, but we wanna put nice front porches. We're giving them the most amazing views of the front range. And our goal is that when Mark gets a call from a large donor or a corporation that wants to see a facility, they fly to, they fly, they come to Longmont, Colorado. They don't go to Kansas City, you know that against Kansas City, but it's a challenge to make us, and making it attractive. Part of it is the aesthetics, but more of it is just that energy of volunteers and having people out there that are working every day to make the, to help the veterans. And so I really look forward to it. Thank you. Paul, any last comments? Welcome back. We lost you there for a minute. Any last comments you wanna make? I think you're on mute. You're on mute, Paul. This is COVID stuff right here. It's COVID stuff, we're gonna, you mentioned adjusting and adjusting and adapting and adapting. Yeah, well, that's what we're doing right now. Yep. So Paul, we lost your visual and you're still muted. All right, Cal, can you hear me now? Last comments. All right. We're incredibly appreciative of the chance to do this here. It has been said earlier, just the community has been really welcoming, very supportive, and I feel like we're all rowing in the same boat together in the same direction. So that's a pretty cool thing. Yeah, especially for the Navy guy over here, he likes that. Yeah, good Navy reference. Good job. What's your word, Navy guy? I wanna just reiterate that we, when we started this five years ago, I could never have imagined that I'd be on a video call one like this, but really with people like you, with a city council person from the city of Longma, the city manager was giving a speech today about working with us, developers late in business with, and I know it's a nonprofit, it's still a business with talent like Paul, the team we have here in Colorado, the team we have in Kansas City. Quick note to our groundbreaking ceremony, I think it was all but three of the staff people from Kansas City carpooled, whatever it could, growth trailers, and they brought all of that stuff out here and themselves to make sure that one, they were here for this historic event, and two, that they helped us set up and tear down and did all that. Three people remained behind to make sure we were still taking care of vets. I mean, this is who these people are. It's an amazing group of people. I am super excited, even though I'm gonna be gone for a year, Paul's mission now, I've tasked him with it as a co-founder that means anything, is he will be done with this village by the time I get back or else. But in the meantime, it's just, I am just humbled and honored to have been one of the guys that started this and came up with the idea, but it's really about the amazing people we're meeting in places like Longmont and Boulder County and the Denver area, the attention we're getting from national media and the governor came today. Things like that are really gonna help us solve this problem. It's just, it's not, it's unacceptable, it's just not insurmountable. And I think we need to remember that. It's just one step at a time. Let's just move forward, help us do what we need to do for our veterans and those hundred folks that are sleeping on the streets around here, that's gone quickly. Whether we have houses or not, we're gonna make that go away. And then we're gonna build houses. We're gonna make other towns. We're gonna be able to help them as well. And so this is just the thing that builds on itself and it just starts in a town and it's as easy as people in Longmont just saying, hey, I just wanna do something. How can I help veteranscommunityproject.org? Well, Longmonters and whoever else watches this, that's the backstory on this chapter of the veteran of the DCP village in Longmont. This isn't the end of the story. This is just the end of this chapter. Mark, Godspeed to you. And good luck in the next year. We'll look forward to your return. Thanks gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you.