Homeless vets village project finally ready
PORT JERVIS — By the time next winter arrives, Bill Whetsel is determined to begin housing veterans without homes in Orange County.
Whetsel, an Air Force veteran and the founder and president of Rumshock Veterans Foundation, has dealt with five years of delays in his effort to build “Victory Village,” a supportive community for unhoused veterans, where they can live in small modular homes at a reduced cost and have access to reintegration services, job training and reliable transportation to health care appointments.
“I will not accept these guys that I know are homeless staying outside another winter. No way. It’s not happening on my watch,” Whetsel said.
His original plan was to spend $3 million on 50 tiny homes on 75 acres in the hamlet of New Hampton. But he has been forced to scale that back to 10 400-square-foot homes on approximately three-quarters of an acre in Port Jervis.
In addition to the houses, residents will have a shared community space with a commercial kitchen where they can dine, work and play pinball together. The community building will also have a three-bay garage where any veteran in Orange County can have their car worked on for free. There are also plans for an onsite recycling center.
Whetsel plans to charge $1,100 in rent for each unit, which will cover everything, including amenities and utilities — which shouldn’t be too costly, since the homes will run on solar power. The rent price is based on how much Whetsel believes it will cost to make the village self-sustaining. But nobody will be penalized or evicted if they can’t afford it, he said.
There will be gardens where the veterans earn money toward their rent by growing food and selling it to local stores. Whetsel said he is still fine-tuning that system and will have more details in the future about other job opportunities in the village.
To help make this a reality, U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan, a combat Army veteran, announced last week that he secured $1 million in federal funding for the project.
“The Rumshock Veterans Foundation is grateful for Rep. Pat Ryan’s continued support and dedication to helping the veterans community of Orange County,” Whetsel said in a statement when the funding was announced. “We are excited to continue our mission of helping every single veteran that is in need and creating a community to support the heroes that served and continue to serve our nation.”
The long search for the village’s new home
The housing project first came onto the public’s radar in 2020, when then-state Sen. Jen Metzger announced she had secured a $400,000 grant to help Rumshock Veterans Foundation purchase a 75-acre lot in New Hampton to build the “Victory Village.” But by the time the foundation received the money months later, the seller had taken the land off the market, Whetsel said.
Thus began a years-long process of finding a new location for the project. At one point in Whetsel’s search, he said Ryan, who was Ulster county executive at the time, had asked him about moving the project to Ulster.
“We wanted to do it in Orange County because Orange County doesn’t have veterans-specific services for the homeless veterans,” Whetsel said. “They go through the VA and when they get released, they get released to Cornerstone in Newburgh, a public homeless shelter. Which is fine, but veterans do better when they’re with other veterans.”
Whetsel pushed on with his search. He soon found another 75-acre site in Montgomery he thought would be perfect. The town’s leadership supported it and the county’s Industrial Development Agency planned to provide financial incentives. But an environmental assessment determined all but six acres could not be built on because of wetlands, Whetsel said.
Wanting to stay in Montgomery, Whetsel found another, smaller site. He was willing to scale down his vision to fit onto the property’s 24 acres, but before moving ahead, Whetsel wanted to get buy-in from a Catholic school across the road. It was during the height of COVID and Whetsel said he couldn’t get ahold of the school’s leadership. So, he moved on.
City leaders in Port Jervis then began reaching out to Whetsel, encouraging him to build the village there. One councilman told him about a property whose owners were willing to donate it to the foundation, Whetsel said. It was in a residential area near a train station. It seemed fine enough, but while he was looking at that property, he got a call about a different Port Jervis site: a .75-acre piece of land that formerly housed bungalows and a plant nursery. It was owned by a woman whose husband, an Air Force veteran, had died.
“When I got there, it was like being at my grandparents’ house. I could hear the creek, smell the trees. You know what I mean?” Whetsel said.
It took about a year of “interesting politics” and Planning Board meetings before Whetsel could use the state grant money to purchase the property, he said. In February, he finally got local municipal approval to start building out the village’s infrastructure. BOCES students will help build the homes, most likely during next fall’s semester.
Whetsel became emotional when recalling his efforts to find a location to house the veterans.
“As soon as we pulled in,” he said, “I knew this was the place.”