- Gov. Kathy Hochul visits Rockland's Homes for Heroes housing complex, built for homeless veterans.
TAPPAN - The veteran who is scheduled to move into Unit 6 at Rockland Homes for Heroes on Thursday — bringing the 14-unit site for formerly homeless veterans to full capacity on land once occupied by Camp Shanks — will be a day late for some pretty impressive company.
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday toured the 842-square-foot apartment on an off-limits-to-media tour inside before speaking to a small crowd gathered under a tent in the scorching midday sun.
Making her way to the podium through a crush of politicians and would-be politicians eager for photos with the governor, the Democrat quipped to state Sen. Bill Weber that the project should be "a model for the rest of the state."
New York put up $4.5 million toward the project, bolstered by private donations and $800,000 from Rockland County to reach a $6 million final price tag.
"A $6 million project is a small price for us to pay for what these individuals were willing to pay with their lives," Hochul said. "That's why today is significant. That's why I wanted to be here to share the celebration of offering individuals who deserve so much from us the one gift of a secure place to call your home. Welcome home."
Years in the making
Rockland Homes for Heroes had been years in the making, the brainchild of John Murphy, a Marine who grew up in the Bronx and served in the Rockland County Legislature for 44 years.
A longtime advocate for veterans and those with special needs in Rockland County, Murphy wore a baseball cap that read "Once a Marine, always a Marine" as he introduced the governor.
The 89-year-old Murphy praised his non-profit's volunteer board of directors for their work, and singled out two of the largest funding sources for the project.
"The New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance gave us $4 million. But I also want to mention something that doesn't happen everywhere," Murphy said. "This is the second smallest county in the state of New York, and this county contributed over $800,000 to this.
"Why did the state do it with their $4 million plus and the other groups that gave money that I'm not mentioning? Why did the community give us $800,000? The answer is easy. They love those who protect our beloved nation and believe you should never be homeless, never be homeless. So thank you, governor. Thank you to the state of New York. Thank you to the people and businesses in Rockland County. You changed lives. You raised hope. Right here."
Homeless veterans:There's help on the horizon at the former site of Camp Shanks
What the governor saw
On the tour, Hochul saw one of the 14 fully furnished affordable housing units that make up the final phase of Rockland Homes for Heroes.
Unit 6 occupies an area that was once the "chow hall" for the Nike missile base in the 1950s.
Designed by project architect Toni Kowidge, from the Ives Architecture Studio of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, the unit features high ceilings and an open floor plan front room with kitchen and a single bedroom with laundry. Each unit is handicapped accessible throughout, something upon which Murphy insisted, Kowidge said.
Architect Joel Ives said the design took it as "a philosophical necessity" to keep the slab floor and concrete front wall of the former location, only replacing the roof and interior walls, which had degraded over the years. What remains is a fully furnished, fresh apartment.
A meaningful location
Wednesday's tour marked the culmination of years of work by Murphy and his nonprofit. He is president of the board of Rockland Homes for Heroes, which sits on Western Highway in Tappan, at a location that is meaningful to veterans.
This stretch of Western Highway was where Gen. George Washington's troops camped in 1782, after their decisive win at Yorktown during the Revolutionary War.
Interactive photo: Slide the white dot in the photo below to see before and after Phase 2 site
It is also the former site of Camp Shanks, the largest World War II port of embarkation for GIs from all over the United States, on their way to fight in Europe. More than 1.3 million soldiers, sailors and airmen passed through the camp, which also held prisoners of war.
In her remarks, Hochul said her father-in-law "may have well left here as he went and fought at D-Day."
After World War II, the site became a Nike Missile base, then an Army Reserve camp. Then the camp went fallow, abandoned and unused.
By 2010, when the military offered the three-tiered, 15-acre site — sloping down from Western Highway to the tracks — to any nonprofit that would build housing for the homeless on it, all that was left of the World War II camp was a few rows of single-story offices and classrooms, and huge motor pool buildings along the railroad.
Enter Murphy and Loeb House, which has been creating treatment and supportive residential arrangements since 1982. Murphy created the Rockland Homes for Heroes nonprofit. In 2010, he leased the property with the goal of transforming its top two levels along a road now called “Path of Heroes Way” at the foot of Independence Avenue.
Half of the property, on the lowest tier, was donated to the town of Orangetown, which created a pond for wetlands, encircled by a path and named "Homes For Heroes Green Project Walking Trail." (It can be accessed a third of a mile south of Homes for Heroes, at the foot of Bogart Place.)
Homes in two phases
It took Murphy three years to get Phase 1 up and running. Opened in 2013, it comprises eight apartments for disabled and displaced veterans in two tidy houses along Western Highway.
Five years later, Murphy set his sights on plans for a lower tier of the property, where the low-slung Nike Missile headquarters buildings lay abandoned on a weed-choked lot under fallen trees. It would take Murphy six years to make those plans a reality.
"We saved the foundation and the walls," Murphy said on a tour of the site last fall, walking a freshly paved street lined by neat rows of homes.
Phase 2, toured by the governor on Wednesday, is 14 one-bedroom apartments, a permanent solution to homelessness for 14 veterans. There is also a community room, where services can be provided to the 22 veterans who call Rockland Homes for Heroes home.
Murphy's pride in the project is clear.
"It's one of the greatest things I ever did in my life," Murphy said on a tour last fall. "To make these homes — I'm going to have 22 homes — I'm thrilled for homeless veterans. And they're permanent homes. Nothing can equal that. Nothing."
While Wednesday marked the ribbon-cutting, units have been occupied for a while, said Will Warren, the non-profit's treasurer. He credited Murphy's vision and energy, his drive and commitment and his connections for making the dream a reality.
One of the new residents, a veteran whose end unit was closest to Wednesday's speeches, watched the governor arrive as he stood on the front walk of his new home. He watched her huddle with Murphy and others and when she went in to look at Unit 6, he did what any sensible person would do.
He escaped the triple-digit-real-feel-temperature, went into his air-conditioned apartment, and shut his front door.
On Thursday, he can tell his new neighbor in Unit 6 all about it.
Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.
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