When Karl Colbert opened the third-floor door and walked into his new home, it represented more than a one-bedroom unit.
“It’s not just an apartment,” Colbert said. “It’s a new world.”
Colbert is among almost 40 residents of Freedom’s Path, a new structure for homeless veterans. The name seems fitting.
“I wanted to find a new path,” Colbert said. “The day we signed a lease, we got a base to start our lives. Having a place to live, a place to call my own, an actual address, I can communicate with my family, and they can see I’m stable again.”
While the first occupants moved in about a month ago, a ceremony Wednesday morning marked the official ribbon-cutting for the residence on Vancouver’s Veterans Affairs campus.
Colbert was one of the speakers at Wednesday’s event, and also chatted with visitors and media members before the ceremony.
The 64-year-old Air Force veteran said that he spent the past few years in Portland, involved in what he called the usual homeless lifestyle: couch-surfing, moving in with girlfriends, or living in old cars and vacant buildings known as “abandominiums.”
“Having this as a residence makes other things more accessible,” Colbert said. “The VA provides so many services that are essential to my life right now.”
That was one of the benefits of having Veterans Affairs as a partner in the project. The developer is Florida-based Communities for Veterans, which has opened similar residences in Texas and Illinois.
City Councilor Alishia Topper, who represented Vancouver during the ceremony, noted that “the city declared a housing crisis this year.”
Topper called Freedom’s Path “a small but important victory in the fight against homelessness.”
Tenants get rental assistance from the federal HUD-VASH voucher program — a partnership between Housing and Urban Development and VA Supportive Housing.
Freedom’s Path was built on 1.31 acres of land that had been used for a parking lot adjacent to the campus entry at 1601 E. Fourth Plain Blvd.
The price tag for Freedom’s Path was about $13 million.
Thirty-six of the apartments are one-bedroom units that measure 735 square feet; 14 studio apartments are 425 square feet. The apartments are unfurnished, other than beds that were donated.
Adam Gratzer, with Communities for Veterans, said he spoke Tuesday with another occupant who had been living in a motel. That cost about $1,200 a month, leaving him with less than $300 for all his other expenses.
“It’s $400 now, with a free shuttle to his cancer treatment,” Gratzer said.
Freedom’s Path also will provide a valuable community setting for its residents, Gratzer said: “Seeing fellow veterans achieve success will motivate others.”
And that environment — “the fellowship of the military,” Colbert called it — is something the Air Force veteran is counting on.
“I’m not alone in my task,” Colbert said.
