Connect Community Village works on securing land

Dec. 8—Connect Community Village makes offer for location

Initiative hopes to fight stigma as they continue to secure land and funding

The Connect Community Village is finally making an offer for some land, according to President of the "tiny village" Virginia Dial.

Dial, for years, has worked with the local homeless, addicts, veterans, and former jail inmates to transform their lives.

While still years away, Dial says that they're one step forward in the journey.

"This community village is an initiative that will create safe living space for people coming out of incarceration, people coming out of recovery programs, and foremost, our displaced veterans," she says. "The tiny village will consist of a three-phase project that will start with 25 tiny houses. We are in the process of making an offer on some property as we speak. The initiative will create an atmosphere of a safe living environment, vocational job training, and continued resources and training for success for their transition back into the community."

Dial saw the need for these homes about six years ago as she performed jail ministries for her church. Jail is characterized by many as a "revolving door," and people who go there to "cure" their addiction often just find themselves back where they started.

"I just kept seeing more and more of the issues that didn't seem to be helping these people transition out of their situation," says Dial. "So I began to ask them what was the difficulties they were having in being able to successfully stay in recovery, avoid recidivism back into the jail system. And [I asked] our veterans why they could not get a foothold back in their community."

Dial found their were three things that were consistently reported when she asked these people why they weren't able to keep on the "straight and narrow."

Housing.

Transportation.

Livable wage.

"These things had to be resolved to even begin to give them hope and success in their transition," she says.

While researching possibilities, Dial came across news of a program in Austin, TX which had built a village comprising 200 tiny homes. Dial was so committed to finding out more about the village, she travelled to Texas herself and saw what the village in Austin was accomplishing.

"I went through a three-day seminar with them seeing how they got started and how they maintained [it]," says Dial.

Though the local village will be modeled after that village in Austin, the Austin village was what Dial called a homeless community. Dial claims that her village would instead be a transitional community.

"[It's] to help people get back into their communities and their families and society at large," she explains.

The people who will join the community will be recommended by jails, rehabs, and the VA, and the village will take in people based on those recommendations.

Following the recommendations, the village's five-person panel will evaluate the person's situation and determine their eligibility.

"It's going to take a community commitment," says Dial.

Dial hopes the project will be self-maintained and plans for residents to work in the village to "keep it up and keep it going." Dial hopes that the work the residents perform in the village can also be used to benefit the people outside of the community, that is Pulaski County as a whole.

"That's the connect part," she says. "You can be with these people... and you can see the light come back in their eyes when they've created something, when they've built something, when they've accomplished something."

Dial believes that the village's creation will sew seeds of unity between the County's addicts and former jail inmates and the greater Pulaski County community. She feels that currently there is a rift between the community and those who would occupy the village.

"There is this stigma between these two groups of people. The community looks at people that are coming out of incarceration, those coming out of recovery, and our dislocated veterans in a different light than they would, say, their next-door neighbor," says Dial.

Dial says this stigma goes both ways as well. Because of the condescension and distrust that the community gives to the homeless, addicted, and formerly incarcerated, these people distrust the community and are less likely to seek help because they don't feel they will get it from the community.

Dial claims the mere mention of homelessness leads to controversy and recalled her impression that the community initially rejected the Sky Hope Recovery Center when it was still being established.

"Now everybody sees that Sky Hope is successful," says Dial. "It's an awesome place, and those girls are hard-working, and they're contributing to their community, but at first they had a stigma. 'Where are we gonna put that?"

Dial says that formerly incarcerated people and drug addicts have been given hope for their future through the programs offered, and that when they leave rehab or jail, they often have these hopes dashed by the rejection they receive from the community.

"They have a struggle getting jobs. Look at that background check, and there you go," says Dial. "But we have a lot of businesses that are realizing that these people make good employees... We're trying to emphasize that and encourage that and keep giving them that hope... we want to be part of their solution and not part of the problem."

People distrust each other, says Dial. "We've got to understand that their value is not less because of a bad choice they've made. In God's eyes they're still just as valuable as you or I are."

Dial, in an interview with the press, echoed what others in the community who work directly with the city's less fortunate: "Every single one of us is one tragedy, one action, one decision away from being in that same boat."

Dial gave an anecdote of the stigma when she recalled a woman who tried to donate to some impoverished people a gallon bag full of used soaps.

"'I thought your people, your people, could use this,'" the woman said. "The director [of the program] looked at her and said, 'Ma'am, I know your heart's in the right place, and we really do appreciate it, but these people deserve a new bar of soap.'

"And I never forgot that. These people deserve a new bar of soap. These people deserve a safe place to live. These people deserve a second chance. These people deserve it. No less than you or I would... you get a lot of pushback from that, but that's the truth."

While the village is still far from being completed, Dial is hopeful for its success and requests the community donate at connectcommunityvillage.com.