For funders
Transitional housing for homeless veterans in Colorado Springs. Three panes dark, one lit — dark means sleeping, light means someone is on second watch.
The proposition
Second Watch Veteran Housing 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 is held by the veterans who govern this organization — the board is veteran-majority by bylaw — and by the veterans who will staff its houses. 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 need →Ordinary houses on ordinary streets, eighteen months, low barrier by design.
The model →Thirty percent of everything, written into the bylaws. Here is why.
The women's house →A veteran-majority board by bylaw, and a founder from the building trades.
Who runs it →The three-year budget, what a gift buys, and the first twelve months in order.
The money →The referral network we are assembling, named, with our ask of each.
Partners →The 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 signed lease guarantee.
A 356-page package sits behind every figure on this page — 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 all of it to anyone considering a gift. We would rather be read closely than believed quickly.
