Veterans village in Colma first of its kind to offer housing and on-site services to vets

John Bardes is a 77-year-old Vietnam veteran who still talks fast and funny, like a former New York cab driver. Which he is. 

The rest of his body isn’t quite as quick as his wit anymore.  

A former San Jose teacher, he broke his hip during a fall over a curb at school some years back. He said his knee is going out and his heart is starting to fibrillate. He was on disability and was evicted more than once before 2019, which he blamed on his relationship at the time. He was getting medical care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

“Honestly, I went broke,” Bardes said. “And I was a veteran.” 

Which made him a perfect candidate to move into the Colma Veterans Village, which he did in 2019, the year it opened.

“This is a very good place for me,” Bardes said, sitting at a table in the village’s wellness center. “I can’t walk too well. That guy over there, that guy that’s in that office, he’s up to my apartment in five minutes, if I need him.” 

The Colma Veterans Village was the VA’s first attempt at building one-stop housing for veterans who are either chronically homeless, near homelessness, or medically or psychosocially complex. 

It’s a first-of-its-kind, 65-unit permanent supportive housing site in Colma serving mostly older, Vietnam War-era veterans. The VA has 24 veteran housing sites in the region. What’s novel about Colma is primary care and mental health care teams are on site. The facility also provides occupational and recreational therapy.

“This place is extremely secure but it’s also well-maintained,” Bardes said. “In my current condition, I can’t do any of that. I think I would be fooling myself to buy a home at 77 years old and try to do the upkeep of a home. That would be a problem for me.”

There are no vacancies and turnover is slight, village officials said. Only two of the 65 residents are women, which village officials say they expect to change as the military sees an uptick in female enlistment. Things have gone so well since opening in 2019 that the VA has opened, or is in the process of opening, at least 18 more nationwide. 

The Colma site was developed with low-income housing provider Mercy Housing. Most apartments have one bedroom, a living area, a small kitchen and a bathroom.  

FIRST: Veterans Administration Senior Social Worker Sing Quan shows resident Douglas Brown’s apartment at the Colma Veterans Village in Colma, Calif., on March 26, 2024. LAST: (L-R) Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program Manager, Nicholas Madsen and Veterans Administration (VA) Senior Social Worker, Gil Diaz, in the courtyard of the Colma Veterans Village in Colma, Calif., on March 26, 2024. (Ray Saint Germain/Bay City News)

There’s a nurse and a psychiatric nurse on-site, as well as four social workers, a resident’s coordinator, a property management team and a maintenance worker. A primary care doctor is on-site at least every other week. 

Anne Fabiny was a clinical administrator at the San Francisco VA Health Care System and a UCSF geriatrician who helped develop the programs in Colma. The Archdiocese of San Francisco donated the land, adjacent to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery on Mission Road, to Mercy Housing for development.

Fabiny said the VA has a difficult time keeping specialized workers, so the innovation in having a one-stop site for at the veterans’ needs were good for them and good for the people who work there. 

“Knowing what we call medically complex, social, psychosocial, complex veterans, the real innovation was putting the primary care team and the mental health team on site,” said Fabiny, who worked at the village for three years and now serves as a VA consultant.

“And the patient population that the primary care team and the mental health team serves are the veterans who live in that housing site. So when everybody got up in the morning and went to work, they all went to the housing site and the only people they were responsible for and took care of were the people who live in the housing site,” she said.

Addressing challenges in numbers

Housing homeless veterans is still an issue in the U.S. According to the VA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 annual count of veterans without permanent housing was higher in 2023 than the previous year.

On a single night in January, HUD data shows there were 35,574 veterans who experienced homelessness in the U.S. — a 7.4-percent increase over the previous year and a 14.3-percent increase in unsheltered homeless, though the VA also said veteran homelessness has still decreased by 52.5 percent since 2010.

Much of the recent uptick is attributed to emergency housing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as municipalities sheltering homeless people in motels, with the numbers bouncing back up when those measures ended.

The VA is trying. As of October 2023, it engaged with 34,498 homeless veterans, exceeding its goal of 28,000. But even with housing vouchers, older veterans find it difficult to find affordable housing in expensive areas like the Bay Area.

And that’s before considering other needs of veterans. Gil Diaz is a senior social worker at the Colma site. He said working there is rewarding because it’s all about veterans with higher needs than most. Most of the veterans are seniors with not only many of the issues typically facing veterans in the U.S. like homelessness, addiction, poverty, and physical problems, but also those facing older people in general.

“They’re that age group where they’re having a little bit more difficulty being independent, but they don’t qualify for a skilled nursing facility,” Diaz said. “But they still need to be independent. Being here with the social workers and nurses and property management, we can provide those services in between. So it’s been really good.”

Along with the village’s three-story residential buildings, there’s a community room where on this particular day a contracted masseuse is on-site, working out veterans’ muscle kinks with soothing music in the background. There are multiple common areas inside and out.

There’s also a vegetable garden created and maintained by a local church, a small dog park for residents’ dogs to stretch their legs, and “harm reduction” vending machines, dispensing medical supplies from condoms to insulin syringes to wound care kits, paid for with a type of VA credit card. 

Residents typically pay 30 percents of their income for rent. The rest is covered by HUD Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers. Veterans used to be required to have honorable discharges to qualify for VA housing, a mandate that has changed in recent years, said Nicholas Madsen, the site’s HUD-VASH program manager. 

“We do prioritize people who are veterans who are chronically homeless,” Madsen said. “The definition of chronic homelessness speaks to how long you’ve been homeless over the last 36 months and how many episodes of helplessness you have. If I spend the night on the street and then stayed at a friend’s house for a week and then spent a night in the shelter, that would be two episodes.” 

Addressing the needs of aging and disabled veterans — this is a model that’s being replicated all across the VA now. … Veterans can stop by any VA facility or sites and get connected to our homeless programs. However they come to us, we’ll connect them into the care that they need. No door is the wrong door. Nicholas Madsen, HUD-VASH program manager

Madsen said the services are a growing need the VA is trying to meet. He estimated another 15 all-service sites have opened since 2019. 

“Addressing the needs of aging and disabled veterans — this is a model that’s being replicated all across the VA now,” Madsen said. “Veterans can stop by any VA facility or sites and get connected to our homeless programs. However they come to us, we’ll connect them into the care that they need. No door is the wrong door.”

Residents aren’t necessarily banned from using substances, but the facility will get substance abusers the help they need.

“We offer a harm reduction and housing first model,” Madsen said. “The most important thing is to get a roof over your head. You don’t have to be sober. You don’t have to be in mental health treatment. Put a roof over your head, then address those things later.”

Fabiny said in the three years she worked at the Colma site, no one became addicted. 

“I think that’s an accomplishment,” Fabiny said. “The rate of evictions (before veterans come to the Colma site) is high because a lot of these older veterans have the burden of both chronic illness and mental illness. We were really able to show that it’s not easy, but it’s possible when the primary care team is really a high functioning team.”   

Colma Veterans Village resident, Douglas Smith, 79, talks on March 26, 2024, about his time living at the Colma, Calif. complex. The Veterans Village is a 66 unit housing community available for veterans with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program vouchers. (Ray Saint Germain/Bay City News)

Douglas Smith, 79, spent three years in the Air Force, working on B-52s. He’s been at the village for three years and said he “loves it.” 

“It’s peaceful,” Smith said. “I get everything I need, right here. There’s good people here.”