NORTH TEXAS – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that more than 33,000 veterans are homeless in the United States, including about 4,000 in Texas.

A North Texas nonprofit organization is helping to change that by providing free job training in a trade to help veterans experiencing homelessness and housed veterans looking for a good-paying career.

The Homeless Veterans Services of Dallas, also known as the Veterans Resource Center, is a safe haven for many veterans, including retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Devoe Pelcher.

“I served in Germany, and from there I went to Korea,” Pelcher said.

Pelcher served the country from 1978 to 1987 and still has vivid memories of surviving combat.

“That was stressful because you never know when something is going to happen. I used to wake up thinking I was on fire, and I was so glad that I wasn’t when I woke up,” Pelcher said.

Pelcher is learning how to turn the old into new by crafting works of art from discarded scraps of metal.

“There was no way I was going to be able to pay for school,” Pelcher said. “My life was totally changed when I got that certificate that I completed the welding course.”

The veterans take welding classes taught by Dallas College instructors five days a week. Homeless Veterans Services of Dallas President Ken Watterson said the classes originally started out for veterans experiencing homelessness, but now about 10% of veterans in the class are unhoused.

“It doesn’t cost the veteran anything but his time. It’s a 10-week program. We pick 12 veterans at a time. So far, we’ve had over 500 veterans graduate from the program,” Watterson said.

The Texas Veterans Commission helps to provide funding for the program.

“It’s a mix of homeless veterans and veterans who are looking for that specific job skill,” TVC Commissioner Chuck Wright said.

The veterans come out of the program certified in a high-paying trade.

“Welding is a trade that is well needed and well paid, and that’s what I’m looking for, the money. The M-O-N-E-Y,” Pelcher said.

“Plumbers, electricians, welders, it doesn’t take long to get into the $80,000 to $100,000 a year range,” Wright said.

The veterans pick pieces of scrap metal and turn them into works of art. They also create practical projects as they transform the metal and their lives.

Retired radio operator Breeana Lopez served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2015 to 2018.

“It’s a lot of ups and downs. I really enjoyed it though and am thankful I went through it,” Lopez said. “It’s a brother and sisterhood.”

She plans to use her welding skills to sell unique items at the state fair, and she made one-of-a-kind gifts from scratch for her wife.

“It makes me feel great. I’ve always been the one that I love to help out,” Lopez said. “I try to help out where I can, and I love making things.”

“The life lessons that we need, the trades that we learn, they pour so much in me. I need to pour something out,” Pelcher said.

Pelcher feels ready to pick up what’s discarded and create magic in his community as he steps confidently into his future.

The veterans also get a forklift certification in addition to their welding training.

The Dallas City Council’s last-minute opposition to the proposed downtown high-speed rail route to Fort Worth won’t stall the critical federal environmental process that’s already underway.

That’s a big deal. It keeps the current environmental analysis on track to wrap up next March, which, once approved by the feds, will allow the North Central Texas Council of Governments (COG) to begin pursuing funding and more in-depth engineering. The COG delivered the news during a meeting of the 45-member Regional Transportation Council on Thursday afternoon. The project itself is expected to cost $6 billion and shuttle riders between Dallas, Arlington, and Fort Worth within 30 minutes.

The COG began producing the Environmental Impact Statement last March, which triggers a 12-month deadline. Michael Morris, the transportation director for the COG, said he expects it to cost another $1.6 million to produce 30 percent of the new alignment’s design. Planning for the environmental statement has already cost the agency $12.1 million.

The end product from this analysis generally establishes the alignment for major transportation projects, so when the Dallas City Council passed a resolution in June opposing elevated rail lines through downtown—pending an economic analysis—the COG was concerned that it could delay its planning by a year or longer. It had to design a new route through the most complicated part of the entire 30-mile line: downtown Dallas.

On Thursday, regional transportation planners said they received permission from the federal government to plan for two separate downtown alignments. Each would shuttle trains about seven stories high to the federally approved high-speed rail station in the Cedars, about a mile south of Reunion Tower. The older alignment has the tracks just east of the Hyatt Regency, splitting between the forthcoming $3 billion convention center overhaul through the heart of southwest downtown. The newer alignment misses downtown entirely, running just west of Interstate 35E along Riverfront Boulevard on its way to that Cedars station.

Morris said the alignment that misses downtown would likely result in losing a connection to Eddie Bernice Johnson Union Station, where Amtrak, Trinity Railway Express, and DART lines converge. But it wouldn’t require any maneuvering around skyscrapers. (Hunt Realty plans to build a $5 billion mixed use development in the corner that would house the other alignment. It contends its plans cannot coexist with the line.) Morris said the agency designed the first downtown route to include a “lobby” or a people mover that could shuttle riders to and from the Cedars station into the convention center and downtown’s Union Station.

If Dallas chooses the western alignment, the COG would no longer pay for that connection, he said. But Morris said it would still investigate ways to link the high-speed rail station with the convention center. Amtrak, which has taken over the separate Houston-to-Dallas high-speed rail project, has concerns about getting riders into downtown if Dallas picks the western alignment, said COG program director Brendon Wheeler.

“I think you’re gonna have your hands full trying to make that same connection in such an easy and graceful way that the high-speed rail system creates for you,” Morris said during Thursday’s meeting of the Regional Transportation Council.

Morris is no stranger to attaching big-dollar adjacent projects to his preferred plans. The city of Dallas has “paused” its support for the downtown alignment until an economic analysis can be completed, which is expected in October. Then it will establish its preference. But for now, the Council was nervous about sewing a high-speed rail line into its downtown.

“I believe in placemaking, and we certainly wouldn’t put a highway for cars through downtown,” said Councilman Chad West, one of the members of the Regional Transportation Council. “This is very different obviously, but it still creates some challenges when you look at that whole area … that it would cut off. There is no perfect solution, as you point out, and we still must work through that.”

While some Dallas officials have questioned the need for a high-speed rail connection to Fort Worth, the COG believes the federal government envisions this corridor of North Texas as a nexus for rail travel. A separate line from Houston to Dallas is already federally approved, and extending the line to Fort Worth would open up possibilities that could run rail to Central Texas and the western United States.

That’s all a long way away. Amtrak has taken over the Houston project, but still has land to acquire, designs to complete, and funding to secure. The federal plan for a nationwide rail network is still a draft. But the COG is getting its house in order, preparing just in case this all comes to fruition and big buckets of money come available.

Dallas’ job is now to determine whether the tradeoff of connectivity between the Cedars and downtown is worth the risk of how an elevated rail line affects development near the convention center. It made a stand, and it didn’t derail the project.