(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Throughout the country, people are planting the seeds of innovation harvesting of bounty of ideas to help care for the only home we have, planet Earth.

With billions of people on Earth, it is more important than ever to open our eyes and minds to alternative ideas, both new and old about food, energy, resources, health, housing, and more.

The core of sustainability is meeting the needs of today's society without compromising the world for future generations.

In this series, our field reporters will explore eco-friendly ideas and lifestyles that help to make our world a little bit better.

Welcome to My World Too.

Short stories of sustainable living and earthly innovations.

There's no place like tiny homes for dozens of homeless veterans who now have a roof over their head and a community dedicated to giving back to U.S. veterans in need.

- [Brandon] Everybody's pretty familiar with a statistic of 22 veterans a day commit suicide, right?

What people don't know is 16 out of 22 veterans that commit suicide are not accessing any type of services.

Not going to the V.A.

Not getting any help.

And that's why we're here.

- Brandon, what was the inspiration for the veterans community project?

- One day, a buddy called me up on Veterans Day and said, "Hey man, can you donate a hundred dollars?

We need to get a guy in a hotel."

And I said, why do you need a hundred dollars?

Like, doesn't he qualify for V.A.

services?

And that's when he told me.

And I had never heard this in my life, that a lot of veterans don't qualify for veteran services.

A lot of reserves, a lot of national guard, a lot of dishonorably discharged veterans, don't qualify for veteran services, right.

That broke my heart.

And there was a group of about five of us.

And from there we started talking and we knew he wanted to do some type of transitional housing.

'Cause a lot of veterans struggle with reintegrating as society.

Instead of going to a shelter they would go live in a tent on the street, right.

Just because it's safer to them.

How we view it here at Veteran's Community Project is dude, our battle buddies, right?

And Afghanistan and Iraq or whatever would have had our backs no matter what bullets are flying, whatever was going on they would have drug any single one of us to safety, right?

But why is it that all my battle buddies are now on the streets.

Literally dying and committing suicide every single day because nobody has their backs.

Like that's screwed up from us.

They would have done it for us.

Why aren't we doing it for them?

And that's the approach we take here at Veteran's Community Project.

I don't care what they're going through, what they're struggling with, they're my battle buddy.

I'm going to go onto the battlefield on the streets drag them to safety and have their back.

And say, you know what?

I'm not leaving you behind.

(soft piano music) - Tell me a little bit about what it is that you do here.

- I'm the director of veteran services.

So I get to work with all the vets that are living in these tiny houses.

And then also I kind of oversee the services we provide up at our outreach center.

- My name is Ben Hendershot.

I'm the V.P.

of National Expansion for the Veterans Community Project.

And really work on the different projects that we have going and building the different communities that we're working on.

The first thirteen were right up against 89th street.

And we actually started them Christmas Eve.

And 28 days later, we completed them.

Like a lot of tar charge and combat vets out there, right?

We were on a mission.

But it is not a sustainable platform or a sustainable process to do that over and over and over again.

So between each of those different phases we did here in Kansas City, we kind of went back to the drawing board and said, how can we make this better?

How can we make this process more sustainable and easier?

And how can we make the designs of the buildings more sustainable as well?

- Well, I'd love to take a look.

- Yeah, absolutely, let's go inside.

- Oh wow.

This is really nice.

Looks like you got everything you need.

- What this house looks like is exactly what they're moving into.

Everything is brand new.

It's a fresh start for them, right?

It's an opportunity to, to start their life over.

We really try to get them back in that military mindset.

A lot of these people the most successful they've ever been in their life has been in the military.

So we want to get them back in that mindset get them out of that fight or flight mindset.

To really start working on the things they need to work on to transition into a permanent housing solution.

- Having the four walls and a door that is just for them.

Being able to see that pride that they get to have when they walk in the door.

And then they also get to feel that sense of security.

These houses are all built trauma informed care.

There's one way in.

There's windows on one side.

They don't face windows on the other side of a house.

That was all done intentionally for the safety, privacy, security of the vets that we have live in here.

- The thought process was not only to give them that safe and secure kind of feeling that sense of having their own place and the ownership which absolutely we intended and wanted to do.

But we also designed it for people.

Let's say you're struggling with some type of trauma post-traumatic stress or something along those lines.

So that's the reason the bed is in the back.

That's why you can have line of sight on all of the egress points in the houses.

So there's a lot of time, a lot of thought that kind of goes into how these houses are weighed out.

- Ben.

Now this looks like it's a home for a single person.

Do you also have homes for families or couples?

- We absolutely have residents here that are married or have children or have some type of dependents.

There's also a lot of people out there who won't go and receive help because they may only help the veteran and not the entire family.

So we never want that to be a barrier for somebody getting off of the streets and in really transitioning into a permanent housing.

- [Nick] Ben, what is the transition rate?

How many people who have come into this program have successfully transitioned to permanent housing?

- So last year in the year of 2020 our successful transition rate was 93 percent.

And in this line of work, that's unprecedented and it's unheard of.

It really shows that this model works that it's sustainable and that it's scalable for the future.

- [Nick] So Ben, when you say a 93 percent success rate in transitioning to a permanent home, what does that mean?

- That means that when somebody transitions out of our program, it's into a permanent housing solution that is sustainable for that individual.

- I imagine it can be very overwhelming for a new vet coming into this program.

Are there ways that you help the vet sort of navigate that?

- Yeah.

That's a big part of what we do.

Community is our middle name.

And so one of the things that we know that we can do is we can end veteran homelessness but we can only do that with the community around us.

And so the staff that I have on and things that I've had to kind of learn since being here is being a subject matter expert on what's out there.

What certain vets will qualify for.

Whether it's time and service, things like that.

We just try and simplify that.

We try and make it as easy to be able to have access to care, access to services, to give them the support that they need to be successful in the longterm.

- And how were you funded?

Is there, is there government funding that's coming to you or is it all privately funded?

- Yeah.

So a lot of people ask us like, how did you guys create this?

Did you guys get huge federal grant?

That's actually not how he did it at all.

We took federal funding.

They limit on who we can and can't help.

And we said, you know what?

I don't care.

I ended up need your federal funding.

We're going to have our brothers and sisters back.

This was built by the community for veterans, right?

What's been amazing is, we've been able to bring the community here to help us build the tiny houses.

- This wonderful city has really wrapped us in their arms and given us a ton of support.

Being able to build these houses, being able to continue to bring in new vets and continuing to fill those houses with new furniture.

And it's brand new almost every single time somebody moves in.

- When you look around this house though, you gotta remember this is the community in here, right?

It is a community that donates these pots and pans.

It was our partners that donated the granite for the countertops.

It is our plumbing partners that really donated the plumbing fixtures in the restroom.

So I mean, it's really, when you look at this house this isn't just something that V.C.P., has really built.

This is the community coming together to really wrap around an issue of veterans homelessness and saying, hey, we're better than this and we're going to do something about it.

- Brandon, how many tiny homes are on this property right now?

- So on this property right now, we have 49 tiny houses and a 5,000 foot community center with wraparound services.

So health care, dental care, veterinary services essentially the one-stop shop for anything our veterans need inside the village.

A resume writing classes, laptops, you name it.

- [Nick] What are the advantages of building a community like this of tiny homes versus say a much larger shelter where maybe you have individual rooms or maybe large barracks?

- Several advantages to having a village of tiny homes like this.

For instance, when we look at shelters, security really becomes a big factor.

Also personal space, right?

When we talk about transitional housing, when we talk about getting an individual permanent housing ready, in that process, it's really important for them to have their own space where they feel safe, secure.

Where they can really work on their issues whatever those issues may be.

And really just have a place that they can call home, to get them to a point where they're ready for some type of a permanent housing solution.

Also costs efficiency.

For what we could buy and rehab a local school for, we could build five of these villages.

- [Nick] Wes, one of the things that strikes me about this community is that they're all individual private homes.

And I can only imagine that that adds a lot to your mission, to give these vets their private space.

- It's a really neat thing that helps us build trust almost immediately with the vets.

One of the things that we put our stamp on is, dignity first, and showing the respect and honor that these vets deserve as they're walking in the door.

And so there's a number of things that we do to protect them, to protect their privacy.

There's a reason we're not inside a home talking to a vet right now.

Cause we like to limit that as much as possible so that the vets can be in here and really focusing on why they're here in the first place, Being able to focus on what led to them becoming homeless in the first place.

What led to, you know, that that gradual decline or if it was a steep cliff.

Either way we want them to be able to get that chance to catch their breath.

- [Nick] You're not just putting a roof over these vets heads.

You're really helping.

Helping them to transition back into society.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And that's actually a lot of people just think we just own some of these houses.

Saying here you go, we're forgetting about you.

No, that's one of the least things in what we do, right?

The veterans here, again, we'll work with them on a money management, whatever the case may be, help them with, you know transitioning out of here into permanent housing.

These aren't just shacks, right?

The whole thought process behind the concept of these tiny houses.

It puts us back in that military mentality, right?

Like a lot of bee huts we lived in.

Conexes, barracks lifestyle that we lived in.

When I built the very first tiny house that was the thought process and design.

My best night's sleep, as silly as that sounds was an Afghanistan.

I knew my battle buddy was behind me.

I knew that I was on a tight-knit corners.

And I wanted to take that concept and bring it to another battle buddies that a lot of us had positive experiences in the military but it's the transition out that gets us, right.

- When Veteran's Community Project first started here in Kansas City, there was actually no intention of even having any national expansion.

It was really intended to do the best we can for the community we live in, and the veterans in the area and move on.

- So the plan is to build communities just like this the same thing, tiny homes, community center with all the wraparound services and everything?

- So not necessarily right.

It really just depends on the individual city.

That's what makes us this nonprofit so unique is we're able to build the tiny houses according to code.

Nobody else has been able to do that in the United States, right?

So working with the city officials and the counties to figure out what their code is and what they need to be able for us to be inside the city limits is going to depend on that individual city.

- And we really felt an obligation to take the knowledge that we've learned and take this and try to scale it across the country to help as many of these veterans as we can across America.

(acoustic guitar music) - [Narrator] There's a global architecture firm on a mission of sustainability to help make the world a better place one design at a time.

Let's join Mike Wunsch to learn more.

- Steve, give us a little back history of B-N-I-M. Did B-N-I-M react to the environment in which you work?

Or did you change the environment in which you work?

- You know, your dad was an architect.

I know that, and I knew him a little bit, He had quite an imprint on Kansas City.

The firm was really a Kansas City focused practice until about 20 years ago.

One of the great things about B-N-I-M is we're taking the things that we learned in Kansas City and helping people in California.

Or helping people in Texas, or, you know more recently helping people in Africa.

And you know, that we've learned really good lessons here about responsibility, about innovation, about the opportunities to make the world a better place through design.

(happy music) - My name is Jeremy Knoll.

I co-lead the sustainability team and B-N-I-M. And what that team consists of is individuals and members who are advocates for sustainable building methods.

Who ask the hard questions of our projects teams.

And ultimately then report back at the end of the year.

So that we're collecting all the information from projects across the firm whether it's a tiny little coffee shop renovation or a multi-billion dollar ten year long master plan development.

We're looking at every single project we touch.

(soft piano music) - For a lot of people we hear the term sustainability but in terms of buildings or architecture what does that specifically mean?

What things are you impacting?

- Well, each building really has so much potential to impact our lives and our healths and our overall wellbeing in a pretty positive way.

- At B-N-I-M really the root of our work is thinking about design in a holistic interconnected way.

So when we think about sustainability we're not just thinking just about energy efficiency.

We're thinking about multiple categories.

And actually we track metrics on all of our projects in six categories.

So it's energy, water, ecology, wellness, equity and resources.

And so there are a number of factors from daylight to thermal comfort, to, you know the carbon associated with a project that we're we're taking all of that into consideration whenever we're creating a design for our clients.

- Buildings impact our lives every single day.

It is the environment in which we live our life.

Obviously plays a major role.

A lot has to go into how buildings are designed.

- The environments we're in.

You know, I don't think people realize how much they're impacting their physical, their psychological their emotional wellbeing.

And that's really our job is to make sure that we're designing spaces to, help with human experience.

To help people thrive.

- Can you explain how what you guys do today has a very long impact?

- We start looking at the way buildings use energy.

Really from over the lifetime of a building.

So a small decision now where we say, it may use five percent more energy if we cut this piece of advanced technology.

That doesn't really sound like a whole lot of additional energy in a year, but when you multiply that over 100 years of lifetime and then extrapolate out how much carbon is associated with that and then multiply that out on how many buildings we're doing every year.

It exponentially can get worse and worse if we're not really paying attention to those details.

- There's so many older, beautiful buildings in our country and across the world that when possible to restore and keep those buildings is that a sustainable approach to try to preserve and keep older structures and re rebuild them?

- It certainly is.

In fact, it's one of the most sustainable things that you can do in, in design, right now.

- Because it's there already.

All the energy that was created to make the materials and construct that building, has already occurred.

And so to reuse it you're not going to have to do that again if it was a new building.

- By the time you've saved the structure and what we call the envelope of a building, you've saved close to 80 percent of the embodied energy of that building.

It takes a lot of materials and it takes a lot of energy to build a building.

Everything from extracting a metal from the earth to processing that, shipping it, processing it again then installing it with an arc welder.

That's going to use a lot of energy.

By the time you have a beam in a building it's used an enormous amount of energy.

That's what we call embodied energy.

There's an embodied energy in a building that is intrinsic to the building materials.

So if you're doing a gut renovation compared to building new, you can save 80 percent of that energy before you've even started by choosing to renovate rather than build new.

- Plus, I mean, a lot of these structures, especially if they're historic in nature, they have a great quality and character that today we just can't replicate some of that beautiful terracotta or brick work anymore.

- Share with us the challenges climate change has brought on.

It seems storms are bigger.

Storms are more intense.

In the world of architecture, how has that impacted what you guys are doing?

- The changing climate around us has impacted the way that we design in that we now have to think about disasters, not as an if, but a when.

We have to plan on flooding.

We have to plan on tornadoes.

We have to assume that those things are going to happen.

And not only are they going to happen but they're going to happen in with increasing frequency.

- I'm actually working on a project in Northwest Africa.

And it's in a place where the Sahara desert meets the Atlantic Ocean and they have a number of climate issues.

They have advancing desert, they have rising sea levels.

Whenever we design for a project in a place like that we're thinking about the ways in which our building can extend beyond its walls.

How can it help that kind of local city in what in what ways can it do that?

So for example, in this place they have issues with flooding, even though it's in the desert.

And storm water.

So we're making sure that on our project we're not doing anything worse to cause problems in terms of that flooding.

We're thinking about the winds that come through and how we can create a micro climate on that place.

So it's about thinking about that the specifics of that place of its climate to benefit beyond the walls of the building.

(soft piano music) - One thing that's obviously happening with climate change is storms are more intense.

Tornadoes, floods.

Floods where we didn't use to have floods, etcetera.

How does that all impact your design decisions?

- Well, you know, when you have a big catastrophic event like in Greensburg, Kansas, for instance that the whole town was wiped out.

And so we had to go back and build new.

It gives the opportunity to build new in a better way.

- B-N-I-M was brought in to first engage with public officials to answer some of those questions and to think broadly about what would rebuilding this town take?

What is involved?

But really where our role really began was in meeting with the community that had been dispersed and trying to get a handle on how do we go about rebuilding or re-imagining what this place can be.

- What's important about Greensburg is the value system of the people led the redevelopment of the city after the disaster and have continued on.

They can do things the easy way or you could do things the right and they tended to always choose to the right way.

- [Mike] Is it fair to say to what happened in Greensburg really became a national example of sustainable architecture?

- So Greensburg definitely became an example for the rest of the nation.

It did have a spotlight shown on it both during the recovery and then to some degree afterwards.

What I found the most exciting about the process of the recovery of Greensburg Kansas was that the high school students began to attend the green building conferences.

- The kids got together and convinced their parents that they could make a city and the words they used make a place that we want to come back to.

So they invested in, technology, high-speed internet.

The city adopted LEED platinum ordinance.

So all the public buildings were LEED platinum.

They've got, their own energy plant.

Renewable energy plant, wind plant.

There's smart water management strategies on Main Street, right through downtown, as well throughout the town.

And they decided to do things the right way because they knew that was that was ingrained in their value system.

(upbeat piano) - We live in a world where electric cars are becoming more common.

Many, many things are changing.

Our resources are limited.

How do you see the balance moving forward as an architecture firm, dealing with resources.

Dealing with the limitations.

- I'm already talking on most projects that we go after, that we pursue as an architecture firm about using no energy during the operation of the building.

That's already part of what, that's already part of the conversation.

So the next frontier for us is really all about figuring out the embodied emissions.

When we build a building, we build it with a lot of different materials, but concrete and steel stand out as two of the materials that use the most energy.

To create.

To ship.

They're heavy.

They take a lot of effort to take out of the earth.

To melt.

To put back together.

To combine with other materials, and then eventually to make into a building, or a bridge, or a road.

So from an architect's perspective, those are two materials that are very fundamental to the way that we do business.

So rather than trying to solve everything all the time what we're seeing is that if we can begin to really focus on the big pieces and get those to where we're starting to make real industry changes to those types of materials and bring the emissions of those down, then we've got the beginnings of some real change and some real solutions.

- In regards to your team, your sustainability team, where do you see you guys going in the future to continually improve on what you're doing?

- I'm really looking forward to pushing our team of architects to reduce our impact even further and start to even get into the realm of positive buildings.

They don't affect the environment in a negative way but they give back, they have some sort of regenerative aspect to the building.

Looking towards a more regenerative future.

To try and reduce some of the damage that's already been done.

I think that's the next step in architecture is moving in that direction.

- That's our duty to protect the health, safety, and welfare of our society and community.

So, and it's actually part of our code of ethics to think about sustainability in the design of projects.

And I think, one of the biggest challenges architects are facing right now is how to address climate change in the work that we do.

Because buildings consume about 45 percent of U.S. global emissions really architects have been called to action to be part of this, solving the problem.

- I was in school in the seventies.

That means I've been practicing a little over 40 years.

At some point we have to just say, enough is enough.

We have to start making better decisions about how we occupy the land and the kinds of environments that we build.

What have the systems that we use to build those buildings.

And that means thinking, the construction.

Well, we have to rethink the construction industry.

So somehow or another, we have to change the way that we're designing and fabricating buildings so that we're using less embodied carbon, less energy, less resources in the construction process.

And we're having less impact, long-term impact over that 50 or a hundred year cycle of the building on the natural systems that are being degraded.

You know, we are at this point where we have to change the way we're doing things in order to peacefully co-exist with the systems that got here first.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Share your sustainability story or learn more about sustainability and earth friendly innovations at myworldtoo.com (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)