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.
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.
Steven Senne / AP Photo
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.”
The Associated Press and WITF’s democracy reporter Jordan Wilkie are partnering to tell stories about how Pennsylvania elections work, and to debunk misinformation surrounding elections.