For funders
Transitional housing for veterans experiencing homelessness in Colorado Springs. The second watch is the one kept in the middle of the night, when someone stays awake so the others can sleep. Our lantern shows it, three panes dark and one lit.
The proposition
Transitional housing is a bed and a room for a set period, with staff support, between emergency shelter and a permanent home. For twenty two years Colorado Springs had a house that did that for veterans. The Crawford House, operated by the Colorado Veterans Resource Coalition, closed in 2022, removing 20 veteran transitional beds. The Pikes Peak Continuum of Care still counts the county 195 shelter or transitional beds short.
Second Watch Veteran Housing (SWVH™) leases ordinary three and four bedroom houses on ordinary streets, places one or two veterans per bedroom according to individual need, and walks with each of them for up to eighteen months until they exit to permanent housing, never to the street.
Two houses and eleven beds open in the first year. Thirty percent of budgeted services are reserved for women veterans who have survived abuse, and the first house we open is theirs.
Mark F Gremillion is a civilian. The military expertise this work requires will be held by the veterans who govern this organization, and by the veterans who staff its houses. Our Articles of Incorporation require a veteran majority board. One director is seated so far, the founder, and the remaining seats are open. We say this plainly on every document we produce, because a funder who forms the wrong impression and later discovers otherwise is right to stop reading.
Read the case
The count, the closed Crawford House, and why falling numbers are the argument.
The needEighteen months, low barrier by design.
The modelNo less than thirty percent of budgeted program services and beds, adopted as binding board policy.
The women's houseA veteran majority board fixed in the Articles of Incorporation, and a founder from the building trades.
Who runs itThe three year budget, what a gift buys, and the first twelve months in order.
The moneyThe referral network we are assembling, named, with our ask of each.
PartnersThe ask
We are asking for year one operating support, for introductions to funders who move before a determination letter arrives, and for landlords willing to lease four bedroom houses to a nonprofit tenant, with a lease guarantee signed by the organization.
A full written package sits behind every figure on this page. It includes a strategic plan, operating manual, staff safety program, grant narratives, bylaws provisions and an open items register that lists what is still unresolved. We will send these documents to anyone considering a gift. We would rather be read closely than believed quickly.
