GLENDALE, AZ — A year ago, city leaders and veterans gathered at a dirt lot in Glendale to celebrate the groundbreaking of what will become a 50-home village designed to help homeless veterans rebuild their lives. Now, with construction underway, the question on every veteran’s mind is the same: when will it actually be ready?
The Veterans Community Project is rising on the northeast corner of 63rd and Grand Avenues in Glendale. When complete, the $14 million development will include 50 individual cottages and a central village services building, offering transitional housing and wraparound support services for homeless veterans in the Phoenix metro area.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates there are nearly 1,000 homeless veterans in Arizona right now. This village can house 50 of them at a time.
A Project Years in the Making
The road to breaking ground was a long one. Mayor Jerry Weiers and the Glendale City Council spent more than two years working to bring the project to the Valley, securing both the land and the funding needed to get it off the ground.
Weiers has been vocal about his commitment to the veteran community — and equally vocal about his impatience with the pace of construction.
“To me it’s too slow,” Weiers said. “But that’s just the way things are.”
He says the delay is simply the reality of a project this size, but his urgency hasn’t faded.
“You can’t just give somebody a home,” Weiers said. “You have to help them figure out why they’re homeless, what the problems are, help them get their lives turned around and make themselves sufficient.”
Not Just a Roof, A Path Forward
This won’t be permanent housing. Veterans who move in will stay an average of 12 to 14 months, working daily with on-site case managers on what the program calls wraparound services, which address the root causes of homelessness and build a clear path to permanent housing.
Rebecca Tallman, interim executive director of Veterans Community Project of Glendale, says the model is designed to create lasting change, not just temporary relief.
“You can’t just take a veteran, put them in a home or anyone, really, and think that’s going to fix the problems,” Tallman said. “Those case managers are going to be working with them on a daily basis to figure out what that next step looks like and make sure that permanent housing is a permanent solution.”
Tallman also pushed back on a common misconception about homelessness.
“There’s a huge misconception that when we talk about homelessness, that is all mental health or addiction issues,” she said. “The reality is it can happen to any one of us. It could happen to you or me today or tomorrow.”
Proven Model, New Community
Tallman comes to Glendale from the original Veterans Community Project in Saint Louis, where she was part of the program from the very beginning. She says she has seen firsthand what this model can do.
“We’re changing generations of lives,” Tallman said. “That’s what we’re going to do here as well: take these veterans in and be a collaborative partner in this community so that we can all work together and we get to change people’s lives.”
The project has drawn broad support from the veteran community, though not without complicated emotions. ABC15 spoke to Arizona veteran Don Nelson, who attended the groundbreaking back in 2025, put it plainly.
“The veterans that were getting out during Vietnam, Korea, or World War II were pushed off on the streets,” Nelson said. “They said, ‘thanks for your service and have a nice life.'”
Nelson called the project a step in the right direction, but made clear it should only be the beginning.
“This is a great start forward for helping veterans today,” Nelson said.
What Comes Next
The Veterans Community Project says it plans to open its doors to its first set of veterans in Summer 2027. The organization says it will take a phased approach to opening starting with a small number of veterans and scaling up as staff are hired and trained.
The $14 million budget covers both construction and staffing costs. Tallman says the organization will also need ongoing operational support from the community to keep the village running year over year.
To learn more about the Veterans Community Project, click here.