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Gaetano Del Giudice spent three years in the Army as a short-range missile crew member. During his service, he witnessed a friend get accidentally shot and killed during a rifle training, one experience that left him struggling with depression, PTSD and anxiety.
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After moving to North Carolina in 2021, Del Giudice’s mental health challenges made it difficult to maintain housing. He was hospitalized and eventually approved for housing through the Department of Veterans Affairs, but he later lost his apartment after an increase in his disability benefits pushed his income above the program’s eligibility limit. He became homeless again.
“Finding housing is only one part of the struggle,” he told The News & Observer. “Maintaining that stability while dealing with mental and physical health problems can sometimes be just as difficult.”
Del Giudice, 59, is among hundreds of veterans statewide who do not have a place to call home. In Raleigh, nonprofits hope the development of 10 tiny homes can address part of their larger need.
Wake County has more than 50,000 veterans, the most veterans in any county in North Carolina, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
As of Aug. 18, there were 21 people on a list of unhoused veterans who had received services through a county government or a partner program supported by the county’s Continuum of Care within the past 30 days.
But the list does not capture every veteran struggling to find or stay in housing. Del Giudice has been staying with his mother in Massachusetts while preparing to return to North Carolina and begin his housing search again.
The county’s first veterans-only tiny village in Raleigh will give at least some unhoused veterans a permanent place to live.
Operation Coming Home, a nonprofit initiative of the Home Builders Association of Raleigh-Wake County and the U.S. Veterans Corps that builds homes for veterans, and CASA, a Triangle nonprofit that develops affordable rental housing, are partnering on the project.
The village will have 10 homes of about 400 square feet on two-thirds of an acre owned by the city at 15 Summit Ave. Rents will be based on residents’ incomes.
“These are going to be veterans who are in a financially distressed state … probably a lot of them just kind of feel like they’re alone in the world,” said Paul Kane, executive vice president and CEO of the Home Builders Association. “They’re going to be like a little community there.”
Four homes will be reserved for residents earning up to 30% of the area median income, four at 50% and two at 60%. The 2026 area median income for a one-person household in Raleigh is $92,700. Two homes will also be fully accessible for veterans with disabilities.
A shared pavilion will give residents a place to do laundry and be in community with one another. Veterans will also be referred through and connected with services through organizations such as the VA health care system, Wake County Veterans Services and Veterans Bridge Home.
The Raleigh village is still in the planning and permitting stage, but Kane hopes it can help address the shortage of housing available to veterans in need.
Raleigh’s village is one of several being developed across North Carolina as communities look for new ways to combat veteran homelessness. The permanent housing model, however, is not new. A farm in northern Chatham County has taken the approach to support individuals facing mental health challenges.
Following a narrow gravel road called Penny Lane in Pittsboro, a path winds through a quiet community lined with tall green pine and poplar trees before reaching 15 tiny homes, each with a different colored door, arranged in a semicircle.
“This is home,” said Catherine, a resident who asked that The N&O use her fist name only to protect her privacy.
Catherine became the village’s first resident in July 2025. She came to North Carolina from Pennsylvania in 2018 after being diagnosed with kidney cancer, seeking better treatment at UNC.
She later received mental health services through UNC for schizoaffective disorder, a chronic mental health condition that can cause symptoms of schizophrenia and mood disorders. Catherine said she needed extra support for her mental health while her mother underwent cancer treatment, so her doctor connected her with the Farm at Penny Lane. She participated in the farm’s programming before eventually becoming a resident.
The village is part of the larger Farm at Penny Lane, which combines permanent supportive housing with therapeutic activities and support for people living with severe and persistent mental illness, particularly those on fixed incomes.
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The farm offers programming through UNC’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health, where participants can garden, feed animals, make art, play music, and practice yoga and meditation.
The tiny-home village was developed through a partnership among the UNC School of Social Work, the center and Cross Disability Services (XDS) Inc. to provide permanent supportive housing alongside mental health support.
“Housing is healthcare,” said Thava Mahadevan, the village’s founder and co-director and director of operations at UNC’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health.
As a clinician, Mahadevan saw that access to a psychiatrist or therapist could address only part of someone’s needs. A person could have medical and mental health care, he said, but still not have a safe place to sleep at night.
Mahadevan is a refugee from Sri Lanka, and said he experienced housing insecurity himself.
“If you don’t have a safe place to go, you’re sort of living for the day, and you’re not thinking beyond that day,” he said. “So housing became something that you really have to solve before you can start talking about recovery and everything else.”
For people living on fixed incomes, much of their income can go toward rent, leaving little money for necessities like food and medicine, Mahadevan added.
Residents pay about a third of their income in rent at Penny Lane.
Catherine loved caring for older adults as a certified nursing assistant for three and a half years before she became sick. Now, she finds other ways to enjoy life on the farm.
She often spends mornings rocking in her chair on her porch with a cup of coffee. On clear nights, she lies in the grass with her friends, eating watermelon and looking up at the stars.
It was difficult to enjoy life outside the village because of trauma she experienced from sexual abuse, which left her feeling unsafe in previous living situations, she said.
At Penny Lane, the people at the farm have helped her feel safe.
“I’ve been out on my own and things did not work out very well,” she said. “I’ve been hurt …. It’s safer here.”
The development team of the planned veterans village in Raleigh drew inspiration from visiting Penny Lane, which gives priority to veterans for five of its homes.
The model shows that permanent supportive housing can work without large homes or institutional settings, Mahadevan said, just small, permanent homes with support tailored to those living there. The village has been open for about a year, and Amy Wilson, a professor at the UNC School of Social Work and co-director of the Penny Lane village, has been studying its outcomes.
“It’s still a drop in the bucket of what’s needed,” Mahadevan said. “However, we have a model that can be replicated.”
In January 2025, some 752 veterans in North Carolina were counted as experiencing homelessness on a single night, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The hope for Raleigh’s village is that it will be “the first of many” permanent housing options for veterans in need, Kane said. The homes are expected to be completed by Veterans Day 2027.
Del Giudice said having a stable home, along with support for the challenges he faces, would allow him to focus on the rest of his life. A veterans village in Raleigh is something he thinks would help with that.
“Knowing that you have a warm bed to sleep in and a roof over your head may sound like something simple, but when you have experienced homelessness or housing instability, you realize how much those things truly mean,” he said.
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This story was originally published August 25, 2026 at 10:20 AM.