Tiny home community planned to aid homeless veterans; Who’s contributing materials and labor?

• Scott LaMar
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  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

 Steven Senne / AP Photo

FILE PHOTO: In this Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2013 photo homeless Korean War veteran Thomas Moore, 79, left, speaks with Boston Health Care for the Homeless street team outreach coordinator Romeena Lee on a sidewalk in Boston.

Airdate: Monday, November 14, 2022

On any given night, about 130,000 military veterans are homeless across the country. In Pennsylvania, it’s estimated there are about 15 hundred homeless vets at any given time.

Some help is in sight for Central Pennsylvania’s veterans with the Tiny Homes and Community initiative for homeless and displaced veterans that is planned for a five acre site in South Harrisburg.

When completed, it will include up to 15 tiny homes and a community center where veterans will have access to health, education, career and counseling services both on-site at the community center and through existing organizations’ programs — all free of charge.

One of the companies and groups contributing to the project is Renewal by Andersen which is donating $536,000 worth of materials and labor toward the tiny homes project.

On Monday’s The Spark, Linda Johnston, General Manager of Renewal by Andersen said the company and others are excited to help veterans,”The sacrifices that our veterans make for us on a daily basis is just amazing. And when we as a community can come together and do something to support them when they’re in need of help, it’s really important that we do that. And that’s not the only reason why Anderson is stepping up, but when we did our event earlier at our office, all the many of the other construction field companies were there — Atlas Roofing, Cleveland Brothers Equipment, DePalma Construction, Phillips Workplace Interiors. And that’s everything from insulation, roofing, shingles, furniture. So it was really, you know, it was a conglomerate of all of us that are in the construction field coming together to really help get this community project off the ground.”

What does $536,000 buys? “it buys a lot of windows and doors and the labor to put them all in. So the tiny home communities will the tiny homes will each have three windows and an entry door. And then the community center is a lot of windows, transom skylights, not skylights, side lights and patio doors, entry doors. So there there’s a lot of of units going in there. We’re going to have some crews there for for a good bit of time.”