A Reason To Celebrate - for our homeless veterans !

This is the first chapter of a three-part-over the back yard fence story to share the good news. It begins with the sadness of knowing we have 67,495 homeless veterans in the richest nation on the globe.

Ergo, many years ago, the Loeb House Charity of Rockland County, which was created in 1982 to provide community supported housing for our mentally ill brothers and sisters made every effort to address this veteran problem too.

When our vision of an appropriate supportive home did not blossom to our standards for our veterans, we conceived a stronger model and we created the "Rockland Homes For Heroes"Charity in 2009 as a partner with the Loeb House Charity. Our new model was to be a permanent, affordable, strongly supportive apartments just for homeless veterans.

Our first step was to secure a lease of a 14 acre parcel of the historic US Army Camp Shanks built in Orangetown, from which more than 1.3 million GIs from all over the US were prepared to cross the Atlantic to fight the nazi army. Many died on D-Day.

We were awarded a 14 acre parcel on which we built 8 permanent, affordable, supportive apartments for homeless veterans on Western Highway in the hamlet of Tappan in 2013. The apartments replaced the offices of the defunct 50s Nike Missile Program Headquarters for Rockland County.

Having beautiful private homes fulfilled our goal of turning troubled lives to successful 0nes. They have security, privacy, pride, the basis of a peaceful life. Then our Federal Government converted our Lease to a Deed, after which we gave 7 of the 14 acres to Orangetown to build a Green infrastructure which improves water quality by reducing storm water at its source through infiltration and evapotranspiration with a perimeter public walking trail with public access around the wetlands. It was the work of the Orangetown Highway Deatment. We hope our resident veterans and the public will enjoy the trail.

With a success under our belt, we reached out in 2020 to the State for the money to convert the abandoned Nike Missile Headquarter's classroom and meeting room buildings on the mid level of the parcel to build 14 more permanent, affordable, supported one-bedroom apartments.

These will be available this summer.

I owe a great deal to the many who brought us to this happy place. They rose to the challenge. They shared our vision, our motives, our determination. They stood by our sides, always ready to help. Unfortunately space limits my giving thanks to everyone in this article, just a few giants. The Second Chapter will name more of our army who came forward to ensure victory.

In alphabetic order -

Attorneys Donald Brenner & David Howe,

AHC - NYS Affordable Housing Corporation, Community Revival

FLHB/AHP - Federal Home Loan Bank/Affordable Housing Program,

HHAC -NYS Homeless Housing & Assistance

HCR - NYS Homes & Community Renewal, Ives/Toni Arwen Kowidge Architects,

Libolt & Sons General Contractor

Leviticus Fund - nonprofit loan fund, Orangetown & Orangetown Highway Department

OTDA - NYS Office of Temporary & Disability Assistance

Rockland Homes For Heroes Board of Directors, who are not sitting around. They have their sleeves rolled up and taking every job thrown at them.

Tom Micelli [a veteran], John Manifold [a veteran], Former Judge Will Warren, Marty Wortendyke, Monica Toscano, Carlos Martinez

Rockland will be proud of this.

Please consider participating by visiting our web site www.rocklandhomesforhroes.org and its Donor wall