Orange-Ulster BOCES students deliver first tiny home for veterans village

Orange-Ulster BOCES carpentry students turned classroom training into something that now sits on a foundation in Port Jervis, the first tiny home completed for the Rumshock Veterans Foundation’s village for veterans.

The home was sent off Dec. 18, with students, administrators, faculty and veterans watching as it was loaded onto trucks and escorted by Orange County Sheriff’s deputies, the New York National Guard and New York State Police. Once it reached Rumshock Village, a crane set the house in place, and students were able to walk through it and sign the walls before drywall went up.

For Orange-Ulster BOCES, the project was more than a construction exercise. Chief Operating Officer Deborah McBride Heppes said it showed what happens when the whole Orange-Ulster BOCES community comes together. The work gave carpentry students a real job site, a deadline and a public outcome that extended beyond grades or shop credit.

The students from O’Neill High School who helped on the project, senior David Aguilar and juniors Frank Morocho and Eric Michaca, later described the experience at a Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District Board of Education meeting with O’Neill Assistant Principal Thomas Breitfeller. Morocho said he worked on interior walls and sheetrock. Michaca called it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Aguilar described the broader purpose of the village and the role the students played in building toward it.

BOCES said students kept contributing through the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, installing windows, improving framing, sheeting and roofing. That work connected Orange-Ulster BOCES Career and Technical Education Center instruction for students in grades 11 and 12 to a visible community need, while giving future carpenters practice on a project that will serve residents for years.

Rumshock Village is being developed by the Rumshock Veterans Foundation as the first master-planned tiny home community on 0.75 acres in Port Jervis. The plan calls for 10 one-bedroom, one-bathroom homes for veterans, designed to offer safe, affordable and sustainable housing. Earlier funding reports said the project received $1 million in federal money secured by Rep. Pat Ryan and a $400,000 New York State grant.

The first home from the Orange-Ulster BOCES program now stands as a concrete return on that training, linking workforce education in Orange County to housing for veterans in Port Jervis.