"Lowe's Heroes" Help Build Home For Homeless Vets
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – After a week of nearly non-stop improvements, the handiwork of volunteers is revealed.
With the help of 81 volunteers from Lowe's stores around the region, a three bedroom home is ready to serve female veterans as part of Project Journey.
"We have about 230,000 veterans here in the Pittsburgh region, about 23,000 of those are living below poverty," said Michele Margittai with the Veterans Leadership Program of Western Pa. "And at any given time, people living below poverty, 10 percent are either homeless or at risk of being homeless."
The volunteers called "Lowe's Heroes" worked nearly 1,000 hours on the home in the past week to make sure it was a safe place for female veterans and their children.
"It's a great feeling," said Joe Tramontana with the Lowe's in McCandless. "It's a great feeling. I have not had an employee come up to me and not have anything but positive things to say because they know what it does for the community, and they know what it does for this program."
Ultimately there will be four houses like this one in the Pittsburgh-area. Each will provide housing for 30 to 45 days at a time for homeless female veterans.
"It gets them out of the immediate crisis of not having a roof over their heads," said Margittai. "It gets them in to a safe and wonderful space to be in -- and it gives our case managers a chance to get to know them and to really develop a solution with them that will be sustainable financially making them financially self-sufficient, ultimately giving them a great quality of life."
With their ultimate goal of never needing to restore another house again.
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