Tiny-home village for veterans planned in northwest Sioux Falls

A community of tiny homes designed for homeless veterans and their families could be coming to northwest Sioux Falls.

It’s thanks to a team of city officials from different departments who pursued the project as part of a leadership development program.

“There were so many times we thought this thing was dead, and it just kept going,” said Jason Bieber, senior planner, who first started working on it nearly three years ago.

“It’s amazing this project could be something significant for Sioux Falls.”

Bieber was joined by Ryan Sage, assistant city attorney; Lt. Jon Thum; Sioux Falls Police; and Shannon VerHey, assistant city engineer from public works as part of the city leadership program. Their challenge was to tackle a problem in the city.

Bieber, who had been asked for years whether tiny homes could work in Sioux Falls, started an online search.

It led him to the Kansas City-based Veterans Community Project, an organization founded by combat veterans nearly six years ago with the goal of making sure “that no veteran ever falls through the cracks of the system,” said Jason Kander, president of national expansion.

What does that look like?

In Kansas City, it became this: a village of 49 tiny homes with wraparound case management services and walk-in support services.

The founders “maxed out their credit cards and mortgaged their houses” to build it, Kander said.

Then the community stepped up.

“The amount of community support was mind-boggling,” said Ben Hendershot, vice president of national construction.

“The community really stepped up and paid all that off and said we’re going to take care of these veterans. We’re not going to let you pay for it out of your own pocket.”

The village opened in 2018, and the experience made the nonprofit realize “there wasn’t just a need for this in Kansas City but in every metro in America,” Hendershot said.

Community leaders nationwide began hearing about it and reaching out. The Veterans Community Project set a goal of having eight villages nationwide by the end of 2022.

One is under development in the Denver area and another is in St. Louis.

The future tiny home village in the Denver area.

Sioux Falls, thanks to the group of city officials that approved the project, is in line to become the fourth location.

“Sioux Falls has been a wonderful partner,” Hendershot said. “We wouldn’t be this far in the process already if it wasn’t for the partnership.”

Laying the groundwork

The city officials started to explore the tiny-home opportunity with a feasibility study in cooperation with the veterans organization.

It led to a finding that there are 43 self-identified homeless veterans in the city. Most of them are in emergency shelter, five are in transitional housing and six are unsheltered. The Veterans Community Project considers anyone with discharge papers and supporting documentation to be a veteran, regardless of the duration of service or whether any tours were completed.

There were requirements and roadblocks along the way. The city officials wanted to find property close to a bus route, Veterans Affairs and support services and large enough to accommodate about 30 tiny homes plus an outreach center for case managers.

They found one on a vacant nearly 2-acre parcel with the address of 316 N. Western Ave. that actually fronts Willow Avenue and sits north of the track for Axtell School. As a bonus, it’s close to the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance, which can offer additional resources.

Using housing funds, “we purchased it for less than assessed value, so it worked out really well,” Bieber said.

The plan is to gift the property to the Veterans Community Project once rezoning is approved by the City Council. That’s scheduled for early May.

While a schematic design was put together for the public approval process, design isn’t final. It will start once the property is gifted, the organization said.

The village also is not meant to be permanent housing but to be a stop on the way toward permanent housing – an apartment or home that in theory the veteran is able to pay for himself or herself.

To support that process, residents of the village will receive case management services around everything from financial literacy, income stability, education and training to job placement and health and welfare. Case managers also will help connect veterans to existing services.

Sioux Falls is “very, very good at sheltering people in need of shelter, but the big gap we found was actual transitional housing,” Hendershot said. “What does that look like to take someone from street homeless or living in a shelter and transition them into permanent housing that’s sustainable.”

In Kansas City, “we are constantly moving people out and bringing people in who are ready to make a life change and get off the streets,” he added.

There are two tiny-home layouts – a 13-by-20-foot layout for a single person and a 16-by-20-foot design that technically could fit a five-person household.

All homes include a full bath with shower; a kitchenette with a range, stove, microwave and refrigerator; a desk; and a bed. In the family units, there’s a triple bunk on the back wall and a queen bed.

“They’re laid out with mental health in mind,” Hendershot said. “We looked at PTSD and typical triggers. These look like simple designs, but there’s a purpose behind every single thing.”

In Kansas City, that approach has been powerful. The organization describes a visit to the village there as a cross between a base in Afghanistan and a startup in Silicon Valley.

“It’s really innovative and different, and to us veterans, it feels like home,” Kander said.

“Once someone moves into the village, they immediately come into our umbrella of care, and we’re working with the community to provide them with everything needed for permanent housing.”

The concept of being part of a village is important, they stressed.

It’s “the living among people with shared experience and re-creating the environment of active-duty housing to re-create the last time many were stable and successful,” Kander said. “But really what makes it success is the wraparound case management. We are actively working with them to make right all the things that were going wrong in their lives before they arrived at VCP.”

The future village in St. Louis

Construction in Sioux Falls will move forward based on fundraising. The hope is to find sponsors for the homes themselves and ongoing operations, including case management. An assessment of the Sioux Falls philanthropic community convinced the nonprofit that support exists.

“This is not a Kansas City organization coming in and building something,” Kander said. “Sioux Falls will build this. This will be VCP Sioux Falls, and Sioux Falls as a community will take ownership.”

The village won’t be built all at once because the organization has found it best to scale up move-ins. Once the land is acquired, design and fundraising will start.

The future village in St. Louis

The approach taken by Sioux Falls to get to this point could serve as a template for other cities, they said.

“It has absolutely been the model going forward for how to make this process seamless and allow us to deploy as quickly as possible,” Kander said. “They made it very easy for us to say yes.”