Volunteers of America and The Home Depot Foundation - Serving Those Who Served Our Country


With the generous support of The Home Depot Foundation, Volunteers of America is working throughout the United States to build new housing for homeless veterans. Since the beginning of this partnership in April 2011, two of these facilities have finished construction and opened their doors to men and women in need.
The Detroit Veterans Housing Program, built and operated by Volunteers of America Michigan, opened Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2011. The 24-month transitional housing program, located in downtown Detroit, provides housing for 60 veterans at a time paired with social services including case management and counseling, employment training and job placement.

An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 homeless veterans currently live in Detroit. “Together we will be able to help countless veterans through this facility and we are excited about reaching into Detroit to make an impact here,” said Volunteers of America Michigan CEO Alex Brodrick.

In October, approximately 200 volunteers from The Home Depot’s Team Depot® and The Mission Continues – a non-profit founded after 911 that encourages our returning service people to be engaged in community service – converged at the site to construct a beautiful park complete with benches, landscaping and a flagpole across from the facility. Construction of the new Veterans Memorial Park is another part of the ongoing redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhood.

On Dec. 8, 2011, Volunteers of America Indiana opened Liberty Landing, a 49-bed transitional housing facility in Fort Wayne serving honorably-discharged homeless veterans from the surrounding area. In addition to housing, this new transitional living program provides individualized, strength-based case management services to veterans to assist them to attain their self-sufficiency goals by linking them with community, employment, housing and Veterans Affairs resources. This is combined with group educational interventions that will help building their vocational, recovery, relationship, financial literacy and overall life skills.

“Statistics tell us there are already so many homeless veterans and it’s a population that continues to grow, so this fills a critical gap,” said Liberty Landing program director Carol Cartwright, who estimates that nightly in the Fort Wayne area, nearly 2,500 people are homeless, including 400 veterans.

Since beginning its partnership with Volunteers of America, The Home Depot Foundation has pledged a total of $2.8 million to the organization over three years to benefit homeless veterans, with $1.6 million allocated so far. Fifteen veterans’ housing projects currently are being funded as part of the partnership, including those in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, Texas and Washington.

Volunteers of America is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations addressing veterans’ needs. Nationally, it serves more than 7,700 homeless veterans each year through 35 programs in 15 states.