Committee backs new vet's home in Tucson

A legislative committee’s approval of funding that clears the way for a new veterans home in Tucson will provide much-needed relief to Southern Arizona’s growing population of former military members, state lawmakers from the region said Wednesday.

“We need to ensure there is a southern hub where the veterans can be well taken care of,” said District 30 Rep. David Gowan, one of those who pushed for the project. “We’ve done it quite well in the central region, and now it’s time to move it down south.”

On Tuesday, the Joint Committee on Capital Review approved spending $10 million on the project, which meets a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs requirement that the state cover 35 percent of the project’s $28.5 million cost. The federal government will pick up the rest.

The state currently has one veterans home, which opened in Phoenix in 1995.

Officials hope to break ground on the 120-bed Tucson Veterans’ Home in February, and construction is expected to take 16 to 20 months.

The facility also will require at least $5 million in state funding during its first few years of operation, according to background provided to the committee.

Having just one veterans home in Phoenix puts a burden on southern Arizona veterans and their families, said Rep. Patricia V. Fleming, D-Sierra Vista.

“There are so many veterans that have settled in southern Arizona that have retired and need extra help, and they have families that can’t make the trip to Phoenix,” Fleming said.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has had the facility on its priority list since 2006, and money from the federal stimulus helped moved the project forward, said Dave Hampton, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services.

“One home for all of those veterans isn’t enough coverage,” he said.

Of the estimated 600,000 veterans in Arizona, about 100,000 live in the Tucson metropolitan area, Hampton said.

The new facility will be on donated land next to the federal veterans hospital in Tucson. The plan calls for four 30-bed units providing long-term care, as well as a community and administration building.

Admission is open to honorably discharged veterans and their spouses who are determined by doctors to need skilled nursing care.