Delayed Winnipeg Tiny-Home Village for Veterans Targets Fall Opening

A long-delayed village for veterans in northeast Winnipeg is finally moving again, and the Homes for Heroes Foundation is now aiming for a fall opening on the Transcona site beside Transcona Library at 1 Transcona Boulevard.

The project was first announced in 2022 with a plan for 20 affordable rental homes on a one-acre site, but the concept was slowed by fundraising gaps, an environmental issue and layers of government review. What looks different now is that the money and approvals have started to line up at the same time.

Homes for Heroes has since expanded the Winnipeg plan from 20 homes to 25, a sign the nonprofit believes the project can support more veterans than it originally promised. The site sale was approved by city council for $83,500, far below the land’s original $400,000 purchase price, underscoring how hard the city has worked to keep the project viable. City documents put the capital cost at about $4 million.

The funding stack is now substantial. The federal government, through Reaching Home, has pledged about $1 million. Manitoba originally committed $500,000 to help build 20 tiny homes serviced by on-site counselling, and the foundation later said another $300,000 would follow once construction began. The Winnipeg Kinsmen Club added $1 million when the village was unveiled in May 2022, giving the project the early boost it needed to survive the slow stretch that followed.

Brad Field, president and CEO of the Homes for Heroes Foundation, has said the delays came from a mix of fundraising trouble, an environmental problem and bureaucracy across different levels of government, with each setback pushing the next step further out. That back-and-forth left the village on paper for years, even after Winnipeg council gave its concurrence to the Executive Policy Committee’s recommendation on September 29, 2023.

The village is meant to do more than house people. Homes for Heroes says its communities use an inward-facing, barracks-style layout designed to build peer support, and the Winnipeg site is expected to include a resource centre, two on-site counsellors, community gardens and recreation space. The charity, which launched in 2018, says it is trying to end veteran homelessness by pairing housing with counseling and other supports instead of relying on a traditional shelter model.

The case for that model is local and immediate. A 2021 street census in Winnipeg found that 7 per cent of the city’s homeless population were veterans, a figure that has been used to frame the need for veteran-specific housing. Homes for Heroes already operates similar villages in Edmonton, Calgary and Kingston, Ontario, giving the Winnipeg project a tested blueprint rather than an unproven idea.

If construction now stays on schedule, the milestone to watch is the start of work on the Transcona site. That is the step that would turn a four-year stall into Winnipeg’s next veteran housing build.