Since 2017, the Veteran’s Community Project's focus has been to provide permanent housing to veterans.
Brandonn Mixon, chief project officer and co-founder of Veterans Community, said their model keeps expanding nationwide and that enables them to change thousands of lives.
Mixon has worked for seven years to make sure veterans have a roof over their heads, a sense of pride outside their homes as they work together on improve their lives and job skills.
Mixon said what started as his dream is now reality.
The project serves more than 1,200 veterans each year in Kansas City.
“Really, making this dream a reality, to now changing what veterans' homelessness looks like nationally,” Mixon said. “If you would have told me we were changing veterans lives nationally, there’s no way. You’re talking about small-town guys in KC with a dream.”
Mixon said there are seven VCP communities across the country with plans to build more.
Projects in Longmont, Colorado, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and St. Louis are celebrating as they spent about a year helping veterans.
Mixon says they’ve had 4,000 cities requesting Kansas City’s model.
He said plans are now in the works for projects in Milwaukee, Glendale, Arizona, and Oklahoma City.
They also are working to expand in the Kansas City area.
“The problem now is when vets come in, we have to refer them back to the VA or other programs," he said. "The premise of the navigation campus is we can do that all under one roof. I got your back. We are going to do this together.”
A $5.8 million navigation campus is planned for 2026.
Mixon believes the navigation campus will save lives.
A grim statistic: 22 veterans nationally commit suicide every day.
Mixon emphasized of those 22 veterans, 17 of them were without access to services.
“We strongly believe we really have that one shot,” he said. “A veteran can come there and can say, 'I need help with social security or VA enrollment or dental or healthcare services."'
The goal, he said, is those services can be found under one roof.
They need to raise $600,000 before they can break ground on the center.
You can find more information on the efforts to help veterans here:
https://www.veteranscommunityproject.org/veterans-navigation-campus
