Last year in May, work began to build a tiny home community by the Western Slope Veterans’ Coalition to help out veterans in Garfield County who are unhoused or close to losing their homes due to rising costs. 

Unfortunately, the lot they were planning to build on was deemed too small, but not only a year later, they found a new piece of land, thanks to the Flat Tops Cowboy Church in Silt. 

John Kuersten is still the planner on the Western Slope Veterans’ Community project with his business Kuersten Construction behind him and he described the new piece of land. 

“It’s a better piece of property and in a joint effort with the church, we submitted new plans for the veterans’ property,” he said. “It’s right next to the church.”

The Flat Tops Cowboy Church is right across First Street in Silt from Cactus Valley Elementary and the veterans’ tiny home community would be built on the land to the south and west of the church. 

“We’ve laid out the building footprint, we can build single story homes or duplexes depending on the need,” Kuersten said. “We’ll have a couple of community buildings with a prep kitchen because the hope would be to prep meals for the community in Silt because they go up to Glenwood Springs to do that now, so having that be here would be great.”

The plan would be similar to the one before: the manager of the homes would live on site, meeting rooms for the occupants would be available to speak with counselors and homes would hopefully be transition housing for vets to get back on their feet in a stable location. One difference is how big the land is: there would be about two acres for every home.

“We can build extra if we need to, but right now we’re thinking of 22 studios for one person each and then two single family units which would house one parent and one to two children,” Kuersten said. “We have enough room to spread everyone out and have buffers between properties, it’s within walking distance to the school, the bus stop is right down the road. We’re really excited.”

Kuersten was thankful for how the Flat Tops Cowboy Church has been cooperating and helping them and the Western Slope Veterans Coalition with the project. 

“Pastor Jeff Kehr has been fantastic, a great partner, he’s been working with me on the design and we’ve had meetings with the board there and they’re giving us time to fully finish paying for the land,” Kuersten. “They’ve agreed to work with us at the fundraising stage as well.”

There will be an open house at the church from 5-7 p.m., April 25 so people can see the property that’s going to be built on. Kuersten, engineer David Rosenthal and architect Yancy Nichol will be available to talk about it. 

“We want to make sure everyone knows what we’re doing here,” Kuersten said. 

The Silt Planning Commission are expected to speak on the project on May 6, but that scheduling could change, Kuersten said. 

The Flat Tops Cowboy Church is located at 289 First Street in Silt with the hopeful building property located to the south and west of the church. For more information and a layout of the tiny homes, visit siltveteranshousing.com/.