From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
A cottage built by San Marcos High School students over the past few years soon will be a temporary home for a veteran who has undergone a healing program and is ready to live independently.
The 400-square-foot structure, technically called an accessory dwelling unit or “granny flat,” will be part of a residential program Wounded Warrior Homes operates for veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder or other issues.
Wounded Warrior Homes Executive Director and co-founder Mia Roseberry said the new cottage behind the nonprofit’s home in Vista will be used to help veterans get a taste of what it will be like after they move out of the program.
“What we’re finding is a lot of times veterans in our program will be like, ‘I’m excited, I’m moving out, I’m going to live on my own for the first time,’” she said Thursday morning at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the cottage. “And they realize, ‘Now I’m on my own, and I’m alone,’ which is not always a good thing. They tend to slide backward. They tend to isolate.”
Veterans will spend the final 60 to 90 days of their stay in the program in the cottage, where they will experience what it’s like to be alone while still being next door to a support system in the main house just yards away.
The cottage was the first built by the Warrior Village Project, founded by Fallbrook resident Mark Pilcher as a way of helping veterans and teaching construction skills to the new generation of builders.
Pilcher teamed up with Michael McSweeney, at the time a senior public policy adviser with the Building Industry Association of San Diego County, and they brought the idea to teacher Chris Geldert at San Marcos High School.
In 2019, the school became the first in the county to enroll in the BIA Academy, a four-year construction trades program with a curriculum offered by the California Homebuilding Foundation and Building Industry Association.
“When Mark and Mike first came to us, it was almost a no-brainer for me to say, ‘Yeah, I want to take this on,’” Geldert said at the Thursday ceremony. “This has a huge meaning behind it for the kids, and they were all excited. It’s really transformed our program.”
Students worked on the cottage over two semesters and had completed the framing when the pandemic shut the school down in March 2020.
The final work was completed by volunteers, and the cottage was delivered in two sections to the site off of York Drive in Vista in February 2021. The cottage was lifted from a flatbed truck and placed on a foundation Navy Seabees and other volunteers had created.
A few weeks later, students from Montecito High School in Ramona were on the site to add some finishing touches.
Pilcher said 66 businesses contributed money, material or labor to work on the cottage.
“When I started this project with Chris and Mike, I was knocking on doors along the 78 corridor,” Pilcher said. “I was emailing all kinds of companies in the building industry. I was calling on the phone. As much as I hated doing that, it got a lot easier really quickly.”
Pilcher said he got positive responses from almost everyone, and many thanked him for the opportunity to help veterans.
“So for you veterans out there, I just want you to know that this community cares about you,” he said.
Geldert’s students are building another cottage at the school, but they’re facing an unexpected problem. So far, they have no takers for it.
He said he hopes the next cottage will go to another nonprofit that helps veterans. After that construction project is complete, Geldert expects to shift to building tiny houses on wheels, which will be easier to transport than the cottage, which cost $10,000 to haul to Vista.
McSweeney is no longer with the BIA and is now the statewide career technical education coordinator for the California Homebuilding Foundation, where he is coordinating with 50 schools to teach more students building skills.