Veterans open KC outreach center

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kansas City-area military veterans pressing to create a neighborhood of tiny homes for former service members have opened a veterans outreach center.

The upstart Veterans Community Project's center opened Thursday in a renovated 7,000-square-foot building in Kansas City, Missouri, The Kansas City Star reported.

The center, in a building that had been an auto-parts store, ultimately will offer free legal services, job referrals and training, computer literacy courses, a food pantry, offices for project staff and free bus passes for area veterans, regardless of whether they're homeless.

When it comes to pressing ahead on ideas that haven't been fully vetted, "we're not afraid to pull the trigger," said Bryan Meyer, a Marine Corps veteran who's the project's chief legal officer. "That's who we are. It's how we've been trained."

The Veterans Community Project, which was incorporated as a nonprofit in late 2015, aims to serve veterans that many programs won't, including those who were dishonorably discharged and those who served in the National Guard or Reserves.

The group also hopes to have the first 10 tiny houses for veterans occupied just down the road from the new center by late summer. That housing project on 4.2 undeveloped acres, bought for $500 from the Kansas City Land Bank, has been slowed by unfavorable weater and the site's lack sewer lines.

The Veterans Community Project has been granted $325,000 from the city's Public Improvement Advisory Committee to help run the lines.