Veterans Forward:
A Path Home
From homelessness to homeownership.
From isolation to community.
From uncertainty to a future.
You may never have experienced homelessness. You may never know what it feels like to wonder where you will sleep tomorrow night.
But you can be part of giving a veteran something permanent to build upon.
We would love to see a day when every veteran experiencing homelessness—wherever they live—has a path to a permanent home. But we are not going to begin by promising to solve a national problem. Our immediate focus is veterans experiencing homelessness here on Hawaiʻi Island. We start here. We learn here. We prove that the idea can work here. Then let’s see what you and I, working together, can do across our United States.
Veterans Forward was created around a straightforward idea: don't simply provide temporary shelter. Help create a path to a home that belongs to the veteran.
We raise the funds. We acquire the land. We provide materials and bring together skilled tradespeople, volunteers and a construction crew. The veteran works alongside us to the extent they are able, helping create the place that will become their home.
No rent paid to Veterans Forward. No mortgage owed to Veterans Forward. A home of their own.
And when we've done it successfully for one veteran, we begin again.
You may come for the car. Together, we build a home.
You may first discover Veterans Forward because you'd love to own a beautiful classic or custom automobile or motorcycle. That's okay. That's why we chose something worth winning.
Veterans Forward raises much of its project funding through raffles of desirable vehicles and other special items.
The raffle isn't the mission.
The raffle funds the mission.
When you purchase a raffle ticket, you're doing more than giving yourself an opportunity to win. Your participation joins that of other people—many of whom you will never meet—and together those individual contributions can become something substantial: land, materials, a construction crew and, eventually, a home.
Our first raffle features a 2001 Jaguar XKR Convertible. You may enter because you want the Jaguar. But you're also helping a veteran find a path home.
Your ticket helps us put down roots.
The money we raise helps us take the next critical step: acquiring land. Our working model is to find an appropriate residential parcel—generally around one-half acre—where we can build a permanent home for a veteran experiencing homelessness.
We're not looking simply for somewhere to put a small structure. We're looking for somewhere a person can put down roots: a place with privacy, room outside and the security of knowing, “This is home.”
Ultimately, the land beneath that home is intended to belong to the veteran too.
You help us build with a veteran, not simply for one.
Your support provides resources. But the veteran isn't intended to be a spectator. Wherever possible, the veteran will work alongside our construction crew, tradespeople and volunteers in creating their home.
One person may frame a wall. Another may paint. Someone else may select finishes, organize materials, make decisions about the house or help with landscaping.
Participation isn't a test.
The veteran doesn't have to earn our help. The purpose is to give the future homeowner agency in creating what will ultimately become theirs.
“I helped build this. This is mine.”
You're helping build more than a tiny house.
We're deliberately not asking, “How cheaply can we house someone?” We're asking: “What does one person need to begin again—and how do we make sure the home can grow with them?”
The first Veterans Forward home will be a compact permanent home designed around one person's needs. But we don't assume that person's life will always look the same. Stability creates possibilities. Perhaps someday there's a significant other. Perhaps that person has children. Perhaps circumstances simply change.
Built for today. Designed for tomorrow.
The structure, utilities, site placement and floor plan will anticipate future expansion without requiring the original home to be torn apart. The home we're helping build shouldn't limit the future it helped make possible.
You're helping create a homeowner.
This is the destination. We're not trying to create a permanent relationship between landlord and tenant. Veterans Forward doesn't want to own someone's home indefinitely.
Our objective is to complete the house and ultimately gift the home and land to the veteran outright, subject to the legal and program requirements established to protect both the veteran and the project.
The veteran isn't intended to become our tenant.
They're intended to become a homeowner.
A permanent address. An asset. A place to belong. And a foundation from which to decide what comes next.
You become part of the community too.
You might live down the street. You might live on another island. You might live thousands of miles away. It doesn't matter.
If you entered the raffle, volunteered your time, provided materials, offered professional expertise, shared Veterans Forward with someone else, or simply helped another person discover what we're doing—you became part of the effort.
We do it together.
When the veteran walks through the door of their own home for the first time, everyone who helped move the project forward owns a small part of the accomplishment. Not the house. That belongs to the veteran.
We begin here. We don’t have to end here.
We're not going to promise you that Veterans Forward will solve veteran homelessness. We're going to promise something much more concrete: we're going to start with one.
One veteran. One parcel of land. One home. One community coming together—beginning here on Hawaiʻi Island.
We'll show you where the money goes. We'll show you when we acquire the land. We'll show you the design and construction. We'll show you our successes—and when something doesn't go according to plan, we'll tell you that too.
When that first veteran owns that first home, we'll take everything we learned and start on the next one. Then let’s see what you and I, working together, can do across our United States.
One veteran. One home. One path forward.
Then we do it again.