Home for the holidays: Veteran embraces tiny home on path to healing

By Steve Young, for Pigeon605

There was a time when conversations about homeless veterans would conjure images in Mike’s mind of fragile souls sleeping in tents beneath bridges or hidden away down some dark alley.

That wasn’t him.

Or at least he didn’t think it was.

But three months after he walked across the threshold of his tiny house at the new Veterans Community Project village just north of Axtell Park school, this 62-year-old Air Force vet has figured out that the services available at the village to homeless veterans like himself are just what he needs.

“I’ll be honest,” said Mike, who requested that his last name not be used, “I didn’t think of myself as being worthy of this type of facility. I didn’t want to take a spot from someone I felt needed it more than I did. Well, that’s not necessarily true because I needed it very badly.”

At the time development for the VCP project was kicking off in November 2021 ─ and long before construction began on the first of 25 tiny houses on the campus the following summer ─ Mike was well into a downward spiral mentally and physically. A death in the family in 2008 had been a crushing blow to him. Later, undiagnosed and untreated diabetes would wreak havoc on his body and mind.

Mike had graduated from high school in 1979, played football in college and spent roughly two years in the South Dakota Air National Guard and active-duty Air Force. He was assigned to what he called UPT ─ undergraduate pilot training ─ and today has over 300 hours of pilot training. “I have nothing but good things to say about my military experience,” he insists.

After leaving the Air Force, he successfully dabbled in a number of business ventures. Life was good – until the trajectory of that life veered off course with the death of that loved one in his family.

“I just wasn’t prepared for it,” he said. “After he died, there was a point in time when I just kind of gave up mentally and fell into a rut. And I continued that way for a long time.”

About four years ago, Mike’s struggles brought him to the brink of homelessness. If a friend’s couch wasn’t available, he said he spent what few dollars he had on seedy motels. He lived for a time in what he called “a horrible RV,” where the only water available to him was what leaked into the vehicle.

On occasion, he slept in his truck.

On top of all that, the ravages of his uncontrolled diabetes started exacting a horrible toll. His failing health would leave him stumbling at times and send his blood sugar counts skyrocketing. Despite all that, he managed to land a job working on the floor at the Amazon fulfillment center in Sioux Falls earlier this year. Besides a salary, the job provided another thing he badly needed: health insurance. And it was at Amazon that he discovered something else that would change the trajectory of his life: A colleague told him about VCP’s tiny houses and suggested he should look into it.

“To be honest, when I inquired and started getting phone calls about it, I just kind of blew them off,” Mike said of VCP. “I’d been involved with the veterans system. I’d been very unimpressed and just unpleased that you get a lot of happy talk from them, and you leave with some hope, and then it’s all pulled out from under you.”

What VCP wanted to offer him was a tiny house with no mortgage and no utility costs. Like a studio apartment, the house has a designated space for a living room, bed area and kitchen, with a bathroom as well. The veterans can get assistance with groceries, but most have Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or can use local pantries if they don’t have the ability to pay for food themselves.

There are nearby laundry facilities for them to use as well.

When Mike arrived, five houses had been completed ─ all at 320 square feet, what VCP considers a family unit. Mike and two other veterans moved into three of the finished houses Sept. 28. “We started out by building and moving the first vets into family units because it’s a lot easier to move a single person into a family unit than it is to move a family into a single unit,” director of veterans services Laura Nostvick explained.

Today, five more houses are under construction across the pathway from those already completed. In the years to come, 15 more houses will be constructed, each at 240 square feet for single veterans, Nostvick said. All 25 of the houses are being built with sponsorship dollars, VCP director of development Alisha Grove said, at a cost for each that started out at $50,000 but has risen to roughly $70,000 because of inflation.

On Nov. 1, the VCP organization, which is headquartered out of the Kansas City area, embarked on a new Community Appeals fundraiser to bring in roughly $1.8 million to put up a community building in the heart of the Sioux Falls campus. There, a 4,600-square-foot center will become the hub for case management and other services at the village, as well as a place for veterans to gather.

And, of course, there are operational costs. Grove said $800,000 needs to be raised annually “to literally keep the lights on.”

“We are 100 percent privately funded,” she said. “We do not accept any federal dollars. So we have to go out every year and fundraise.” Anyone wanting to donate to those costs can do so here.

When Mike crossed the threshold, he walked into a house with an extra-long twin bed, reclining chair, small television, dresser, kitchen utensils, cleaning supplies, refrigerator and stove.

He will tell you that he walked into much more than that.

“I was housing insecure,” Mike said. “To me, when you’re housing insecure, you don’t have clean clothes. Your nutrition is horrible. And even if you’re a very confident person, such as myself, your confidence is ruined. Just having a consistent roof over my head, a place to stay, gives me the foundation to improve my life.”

That’s the goal, Nostvick said. VCP provides them a home of their own with individualized, wraparound support services. A case manager will help them get to medical appointments. They can take them to counseling sessions. “We also try to amplify other services in Sioux Falls,” she said. “We never want to re-create the wheel, so to speak.”

Additionally, VCP staff members meet at least weekly if not more with each veteran to help them attain what are called the five pillars of success: health and wellness, income stability, education and training, fiscal understanding, and the development of a personal support network.

Against the backdrop of all that help, Mike truly believes he’s getting better. When he first showed up at the village, he “was very likely clinically depressed,” he said. And to be honest, he said, “I don’t know that I have yet been cured.”

But now, he’s part of a community that’s impacting his life in a positive way, he said. For example, one of the volunteers at VCP took him to a Thanksgiving meal at a church when he had fully intended to just sit in his tiny house by himself. And just a few weeks back, the village hosted what it called “An Inaugural Lighting Ceremony” with cookie decorating, hot chocolate and Christmas music. “It was one of the nicest things I’d been to in a long time,” Mike said.

His healthier eating is bringing his diabetes back under control. He’s looking at maybe trying to purchase a vehicle through a car ministry in town as well. And Mike is looking at going back to Amazon soon with a chance to get off the floor and possibly into recruiting, which he said would benefit his personal health tremendously.

All that is pointing him toward his ultimate goal: transitioning from the village someday and out on his own again. The average veteran typically will remain in his or her tiny house for 12 to 14 months, Nostvick said.

Mike hopes to beat that average.

“This place has really restored my faith,” he said. “I met people that would not benefit from anything I had to give them. And what do they do for me? They just give me their love and concern and consideration.”

He’s believing very much that within 12 months or less, he can walk out a better person and leave the door open for the next veteran to receive that exact same compassion and care.

“I am glad that I’m here,” he said. “But I get sickened by the fact that there’s probably a veteran out there or a child or just any person … that’s out on the street and needs help. I have so much more compassion for them now. So I’ll get better. I’ll move on … so they can move in.”