Tunnel to Towers Foundation

Helping Military Heroes: Tunnels to Towers has a mission to end homelessness among veterans. Photo credit: Tunnel to Towers Foundation

On 9/11, Brooklyn firefighter Stephen Siller was off duty but heard the World Trade Center was under attack. So he returned to Squad 1 to get his gear and then drove toward the Twin Towers. When he reached the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, it was closed, so he donned his gear and ran to the towers. He died when the towers fell, and his body was never recovered. To honor his memory, in 2002 his family founded the Tunnels to Towers Foundation, or T2T.

It provides mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first-responder families with young children and smart homes adapted for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. The New York-based organization is now national, with a mission to end homelessness among veterans.

To that end, the organization broke ground in May on Atlanta Veterans Village in Mableton. It is refurbishing an old Wingate Hotel and turning it into a 103-unit sanctuary with long-term living spaces for men and women veterans.

“This is not what you typically think of when you think of housing for the homeless, which often is communal,” says Gavin Naples, vice president of the T2T Homeless Veteran Program. “These are separate apartments with bedrooms, kitchens and baths where veterans will live with dignity. But more than that, we will have a resource center on one floor that will offer counseling, job training and help accessing entitlements and Veterans Administration benefits. The goal is to rehabilitate our veterans and reintegrate them back into the community.”

In 2023, the foundation provided housing assistance to more than 3,000 veterans. The Home Depot Foundation, one of the group’s earliest partners, has pledged $500,000 to the Georgia facility.

“These facilities are the least we can do for those who have sacrificed so much,” Naples says.