This wasn’t a political decision, at least not in the way you might think. Because the flag industry is so driven by world events, Ms. Goglio says, the decisions Eder makes aren’t only about business. “It can sometimes be what’s right for the emotional aspect — of not just the people that work here, but for the citizens.”

Some of the feedback was positive, she says, “but there was such hatred in there. I will never forget that, ever. Ever.”

“I took that brunt for the company,” says Ms. Goglio, a sweet white woman with a gray and white bob. “It was a brutal couple of weeks.”

Jodi Goglio, the chief operating officer of Eder, says that the money was less important the fact that as a wholesaler, she doesn’t know where the flags will end up. Or, put another way, Eder doesn’t ever want to find out that one of its flags was tacked to a mass shooter’s bedroom wall.

The company makes historical flags, too — all 27 official versions of the stars and stripes and a line of replicas that span North American history. In 2015, after the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., left nine people dead, Eder Flag stopped manufacturing the ubiquitous Virginia Infantry flag that is widely mistaken for the official flag of the Confederate States of America. The company did it within days, not months, destroying the extant stock at a considerable financial loss. (Eder continues to produce other Civil War-era flags, including Robert E. Lee’s battle flag.)

Eder also makes state flags, municipal flags, military flags, international flags and commemorative banners of all kinds. All of these, as well as the flagpole inventory, are produced in the company’s main office building. The American flags are produced across the street, in a cavernous workroom with sewing machines, industrial equipment and ceiling-high shelves stacked with cakes of nylon.

It’s so big that the people handling the flag can’t help stepping on it, which drives commenters nuts whenever they see photos or video on local news. The stars are bigger than my hand. The stripes are 28 inches wide. This is one of the five million United States flags that Eder Flag will manufacture in 2019. Eder, the largest producer of American flags and flagpoles, is one of only five companies that have received a “Made in the U.S.A.” certification from the Flag Manufacturers Association of America.

This flag is so big that it takes 10 people to unfurl it across the floor of the production room, and even then it’s a tight squeeze.

We drove from Milwaukee, Wis., to Kansas City, Mo., stopping along the way to talk to people about civic duty, national pride and the symbols often used as stand-ins for Americanness.

That the immigration process is complex and arduous, and maybe even unfairly so, isn’t lost on people. Outside the courthouse, Sandy Weitz, down from Oshkosh with a group of friends to celebrate the naturalization of a friend’s friend’s wife, tells me that the man she sat next to went through the wringer to bring his wife here. Sixty thousand dollars and three separate trips to Vietnam, can you believe that? The hoops they put him through! I ask her if it helps her understand the critique that “waiting in line” is an inadequate solution. No, she says, shrugging. That’s just the way the system is.

Becoming a citizen changes people’s lives. It also doesn’t. Any one of these new Americans might leave the courthouse and be told to go back to where they came from. It won’t matter to many of their neighbors that the dozen new Mexican-American citizens are the ones who “waited in line,” who “did it right.” I say this to my press escort from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services regional office. She shrugs. “Someone could tell me to go back to where I came from, too,” she says. She’s often mistaken for non-white.

“Where is Benin?” Judge Adelman says. “It’s … on the west side of Africa,” the man from Benin responds, and a laugh ripples through the room. A woman in a yellow cardigan, who had nodded to herself as Judge Adelman stressed the importance of voting, is from India. We could have a conversation about what’s happening in Kashmir, the contested Indian state, Judge Adelman says, but we’ll set it aside for now. A dozen people from Mexico raise their hands. Sudan, a woman in a pretty blouse with a butterfly pattern, responds with a raised arm and a loud “here,” a smile in her voice.

Today, 4,242 people across the country are becoming U.S. citizens. In this Milwaukee courtroom, Judge Lynn S. Adelman is presiding over the naturalizations of 72 people from 31 countries, and he begins with a roll call of the assembled nations.

There are two kinds of naturalization ceremonies, judicial and administrative — the difference is like having a courthouse wedding versus planning your own — but regardless they’re all different. Each judge has complete control over the ceremonies in their courtroom. They can seize their bully pulpit or stick to the essentials, extemporize about freedom or voting or their personal political leanings.

Why exactly the White House is upside down is revealed halfway through, when you walk into a room with a diorama of scientists performing surgery on an alien. You can fill in the rest.

“This isn’t really Donald Trump,” a kid in a blue shirt says, more than once, “there’s only half a body.” Another kid points to a cutout and says to his brother, “Is that Hillary Clinton?” “No,” the brother says scornfully. “That’s Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton was never even president.”

It’s what you think it is: the White House, upside down. The first room you enter, after having your picture taken, is empty, except for some presidential cardboard cutouts glued to the walls and an animatronic Donald Trump fortune teller machine.

We’re going to the Top Secret Inc. Upside Down White House. The digital sign says admission is $5, today only, but I suspect the sign says that every day.

Top Secret Inc. Upside Down White House in Wisconsin Dells, Wis. (There are two other unrelated upside-down White Houses in the U.S., one in Tennessee and another in Florida.)

Driving through southern Wisconsin, we make a detour to Wisconsin Dells, a summer resort town. It’s like a verdant Vegas, with many weird buildings and places of interest, including a sprawling Mount Olympus-themed resort. In front of one gas station, there’s a human-size Statue of Liberty.

Every year, the Hobo Foundation of Britt hosts the National Hobo Convention, a celebration of itinerant workers. Barricades keep traffic from interfering with the festivities on Main Avenue.

“If we live in fear, what good is faith?” he says. “We are a community of faith. That creates safety in our hearts. The moment we start having fear in our hearts and live in fear is the moment we lose our faith.”

Imam Selim also thinks that the city’s low unemployment and economic stability make it “an excellent place for any minority community to thrive,” because those factors reduce the economic anxiety that can breed fear of difference.

Imam Selim, 31, has led the mosque since he and his American-born wife came to Cedar Rapids from Egypt seven years ago, spurred in part by the trauma of witnessing the violent chaos of the Egyptian Revolution. He is conscientious and kind, patient with our questions even though he’s worn out. Cedar Rapids has been good to him and his family. People are welcoming. The city is home to one of the oldest Muslim communities in the United States.

He’s meeting with a congregant named Matt, a composed, observant white man with a bushy reddish beard. He, too, wears a prayer cap, with a white tunic and pants. A convert to Islam who observes strict modesty rules, he declines to shake my hand.

His desk is cluttered, and boxes are piled in one corner. Perched atop a tall bookshelf is his new diploma; he completed a bachelor’s degree in world religions at nearby Coe College. Later, he’ll replace his kufi with a baseball cap and the tunic with the pale pink blazer hanging from the back of his padded chair.

On this hot, bright Friday afternoon, the doors of the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids are propped open. It’s just after Jumu’ah, the Friday afternoon prayer. Imam Hassan Selim is in his office, still dressed in the loose white tunic he wears to pray.

Why do so many Native Americans serve a country that for so long excluded them? It’s simple, one woman says: “This is our land.”

It’s Veterans Day at the powwow, with dances for each branch of the armed forces, including the reserves and National Guard, but vets have pride of place throughout the weekend. Members of the settlement’s American Legion post raise and lower the flags and lead the twice-daily Grand Entry into the arena. The traditional Pipe Dance and Victory Dance, which began after World War I, honor their sacrifices. The tribe has more than 250 veterans of the U.S. military. During World War II, eight men and women served as code talkers, using the Meskwaki language to transmit tactical radio orders.

Powwows like these are complicated. They’re modern social events that began in the wake of decades of federal suppression of indigenous rituals, both expressions of defiance to assimilation and intercultural commercial entities. In 1923, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a statement warning tribes against holding powwows or dances, the Meskwaki threw the biggest one yet and invited all of their white neighbors. The event attracted more than 12,000 people over four days.

The several styles of competitive powwow dance are denoted partly by the performers’ regalia. Grass dancers, for example, wear ribbons and fringe across the span of their shirts and down their pants and dresses. There are also a handful of traditional dances, which originated throughout Indian Country. At the Meskwaki History Museum tent, Suzanne Buffalo proudly explains that tribes act as sacred custodians of other nations’ dances: The Meskwaki have long performed the Shawnee Dance, which was a gift from that tribe.

In the days leading up to the powwow, loss has shaken the community. Two women have died, one an elder, the other a young woman who left behind a daughter. The M.C. calls for a blanket dance to raise money for their families. Someone spreads out a blanket woven in rich purples and bright oranges, and dancers and visitors cover it with bills and coins. People give generously, lots of fives and 20s. A little kid who won $5 in a Tiny Tots dance comes over and adds his prize to the pile.

The Meskwaki Nation, formally the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, is the only federally recognized tribe in the state. Their 8,000-acre settlement is a sovereign nation, not a federally designated reservation; the tribe bought the first 80 acres in 1857. The tribe has more than 1,400 enrolled members.

“There’s a young lady all the way from Hangzhou, China,” he says. “It’s her first time seeing real Indians, she says.” Mr. Yazzie, a Meskwaki and professional Fancy Dancer, returns to the settlement from his home in Minnesota for the powwow each year. People chat and catch up. Most leave their phones in purses or pockets. There’s funnel cake and fry bread tacos. This is the 105th Meskwaki Powwow.

Most are dressed casually, in T-shirts and baseball caps: Their voices are their sacred wardrobe. The women who sing with them stand in a semicircle behind them. Everywhere, women and girls in heavy jingle dresses bring the sounds of the bells with them as they pad in and out of the arena and visit friends in the bleachers. Every so often, the M.C. Larry Yazzie welcomes visitors from other tribal nations, U.S. states, and countries.

Bleachers line three sides of the arena. A covered pavilion and speaker stand forms the fourth, sheltering elders and dancers resting between songs. The singers, all men, sit in front of the pavilion in their drum groups — Eagle Feather, Meskwaki Nation — each ensemble crowded around an enormous brass drum with a microphone suspended over the drumhead.

There are lots of confrontational T-shirts at the fair, their messages unprintable here. And then there are the Slipknot fans, dressed in tees that pledge their allegiance to heavy metal. The band is in Des Moines for its first hometown show in years. Obviously there’s a mosh pit.

The Iowa State Fair is one of the largest state fairs in the country, drawing more than a million visitors, including many presidential primary candidates.

He also believes there is a secular redemptive narrative that can heal political division in this country. “What we have to keep saying over and over again is that America is an idea,” he says. “It’s not a people. It’s the idea of bringing people from all over the world together to live prosperous and generous lives.” Obviously it hasn’t happened, not yet. “We haven’t realized that dream,” he says, “but in general, we get closer and closer.” Just this morning he heard Cory Booker say so.

Both men believe that the problem facing Democrats is one of messaging and competing ideology. Mr. Leonard says that conservatives have cast political difference in the Biblical terms of original sin. “Republicans know people are born bad and redeemed by their faith in Jesus,” he says. “When somebody does something bad, it’s because the person made a bad decision. Democrats think people are born good. Something bad happened to them. And so we have to blame society.”

He cuts the genial figure of an old-time newspaperman: suspenders holding up khaki pants, notebook in hand, bag of recording gear slung over his shoulder. It’s true in temperament, but this is his second career, third if you count his stint driving a cab while teaching anthropology at the University of New Mexico. When he came home to Iowa in the mid-2000s, he became a radio journalist and news director for a pair of rural stations south of Des Moines. Since the presidential election, he’s published half a dozen opinion articles in The New York Times, Salon and other publications. CNN’s Brian Stelter has called him a “Trumpland translator.” Last year, Mr. Leonard began asking Mr. Russell to write Times opinion articles with him.

People come in and out of the house throughout the afternoon, many of them helping prepare the place for Ms. Harris and her event. Mr. Russell is waiting for his friend Bob Leonard, a local journalist, to arrive.

We sit and talk, and the couple’s hospitality unspools with the hours. There’s fresh coffee, a tray of crackers and some hummus and a beautiful bowl of heirloom tomatoes and, later, an enormous block of sharp white Cheddar cheese. Two shaggy, well-loved farm dogs wander around, nosing our arms and elbows until we scratch their heads. P-Dog a black dog with patches of brindled fur on her belly and legs, entices visitors to indulge her bad behavior. One, two, three times she’s shooed away to flop, sulking, on the big armchair or to duck through the doggie door into the rain.

They were, he says, shellshocked. When he went back the next day to do some paperwork, the school superintendent’s assistant told him, “I wanted to hug you last night. I went home and cried. Everybody has tried to figure out what to do for these boys.” It took outsiders to make change happen. “These two teenage boys asked us to be their parents,” Mr. Russell says, with a hint of lingering disbelief and an abundance of pleasure.

Mr. Russell remembers the first time he picked Devon up at school after a temporary guardianship went through, how Devon danced in the parking lot when he learned that Coyote Run Farm really had become home. The boys hadn’t told anyone at the high school about any of this — the office staff had never met Mr. Russell before.

“This is Austin,” Mr. Russell says, stretching one long arm to point to a basic-training portrait of a young guy tacked to a mirror behind him, his wrist slipping out from his buttoned cuff. I knew very little about Mr. Russell when I contacted him — just that he’s a gay farmer — but his is also the story of a new American family that carved itself a place in rural Iowa. As they got to know Austin and his brother, Devon, he tells me, their farm became a refuge from a difficult home life. Mr. Russell and Mr. Standley let the boys decide when and what to tell, but what they learned was “dysfunctional, really horrific.” The couple had resources to help them figure out how to change their situation — not just money, but connections at Drake Law School. Eventually, and of their own volition, two of the boys asked the couple to become their legal guardians.

They have mules, horses and turkeys. They invite friends and customers to come learn to butcher chickens. Mr. Russell’s siblings and cousins have worked on the farm, and in the summers they hire a gaggle of local boys as farmhands, for whom Mr. Standley prepares huge lunches every day.

He and his husband, Patrick Standley, have owned this 110-acre sustainable farm since 2005. It’s a retail agriculture operation that uses sustainable agriculture practices to produce chemical-free produce and hormone-free beef, chicken and eggs, which they sell at farmers’ markets and to restaurateurs. They also accept vouchers from the federal W.I.C. nutrition program, which provides nutritious food for low-income women and children.

The solution they have to offer involves policy planners parachuting in to save American agriculture from itself. Mr. Russell says that American farmers are in the best position to respond quickly to the climate crisis. “Not agribusiness, not the oil companies, not the food retailers,” he says firmly. “Farmers.”

Both Republicans and Democrats treat farmers as victims, Mr. Russell says. Republicans flatly refuse to address the problem of climate change but address farmers as wounded heroes, unappreciated and undervalued. “And the Democratic message,” Mr. Russell says, “is, ‘You guys are all committing suicide.’”

A fifth-generation farmer with a master’s degree in rural sociology, Mr. Russell, who is 49, has been working on issues of economic and environmental sustainability in agriculture for nearly two decades. Led by his religious faith, he has spent his life teaching, organizing and preaching. Over the past couple of years, he has taken an increasingly public role in organizing farmers to drive climate change policy in industrial agriculture.

Matt Russell comes outside to meet us in rubber boots and his Sunday best, a blue plaid shirt tucked neatly into belted jeans. He’s used to visitors: Beto O’Rourke and Tim Ryan have been here, reporters too. Kamala Harris’s campaign staffers are staging the barn for her visit this afternoon. All of them want to talk to Mr. Russell about climate change.

We arrive at Coyote Run Farm late on a Sunday morning, the sky the kind of gray that makes every plant and flower look more alive.

When the freshmen enter the school and head for the gym, there’s a gantlet of icebreakers: Walk through a tunnel of smiling teachers and upperclassmen, screaming and waving their hands in front of your face; massage your neighbor’s shoulders; she-says-Lincoln-you-say-High; volunteer to pop balloons as fast as you can. Move your body, feel feelings — though not too much, or too many.

About 6 percent of the students in the Lincoln public school system are refugees or immigrants. At Lincoln High, students come from more than 50 countries and speak more than 30 different languages at home.

It’s the first day of ninth grade at Lincoln High School, the largest and most diverse in this city of nearly 300,000. Since the arrival of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975, Lincoln has been among the country’s friendliest cities for refugee resettlement. The city is home to the largest Yazidi community in the country. (The Yazidis are a Kurdish minority who were driven out of Syria and Iraq by genocide at the hands of the Islamic State.)

Everyone likes everyone else today, even if they don’t like themselves. The ninth grade cheer squad takes the floor, leggy foals who mostly can’t tumble yet — one girl handsprings to the center of the gym and everyone else trots after her. The dance team is bigger and less nervous, though here, too, they open with the one kid, the only boy, who can drop into a split. None of the kids in the stands know the rhythms of “Get Ur Freak On.”

The sun is burning off the last of the humidity from last night’s thunderstorm and they’re all nerves, lots of thousand-yard stares, lots of clowning. The adults are rattled, too — old bodily memories, but affection and tenderness, too, for who they are and who they’ll become and for what they’ll face. The seniors, who run the orientation, are immune to it.

Teenagers — when they’re in big groups, like the 600 freshmen swarming the front steps of Lincoln High School — don’t see adults, just each other. Everyone’s wearing whatever they think their first day best is.

The county Democratic Party folks have pads of sample ballots so they can explain ranked-choice voting. Kansas is traditionally a caucus state, but the state party has decided to adopt ranked-choice ballots for the May 2020 primary. (The Kansas G.O.P. may not have a primary at all.) Raymond Rogers, tabling for the group, says he’s excited to see how it goes. He’s a jolly white man with wire-rimmed glasses, about six inches of gray and white beard, and the kind of belly that suggests a life of good eating and drinking. He lets me cast a ballot, though I don’t want to taint the results. He tells me I should read “PrairyErth,” by William Least-Heat Moon, and writes the title on the back of a ballot so I won’t forget.

Inside a handsome, recently renovated recreational building, community groups and small businesses are tabling. Representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are giving away water safety swag, and a woman from Flint Hills Technical College is touting the school’s new robotics program. A local insurance agent is raffling off a side of beef.

An older white man in an immaculate cowboy hat walks by and says, conversationally, “Gary’s going to pull it straight through to the beef barn.” That’s not exactly what happens, but Gary Watts still wins in the 3,000-pound weight class. An orange tractor shudders into silence just before Nate Myers is about to hook it to the load. A half dozen men watch him crank it and cheer when it roars back to life. “It’s only a hundred years old,” he says. “Sometimes she needs a little lovin’.” It dies again, and someone says, “Looks like Nate spent too much time working on everybody else’s tractor and not his own.”

Three nights before the Lyon County Fair closes, there’s no gate fee; the place is packed with children begging their parents to buy more tickets for the dozen or so rides. In the arena, the antique tractors take a lap around the track so we can get a look at them all before the tractor pull starts. (There are three different tractor pulls during the 11-day fair.)

Outside Good’s Cash Saver, a grocery store that sells everything at the wholesale price plus 10 percent, I see a woman wearing a T-shirt that says “I Survived Cambodia.”

Agricultural processing plants typically rely on immigrant and refugee labor, especially for difficult and dangerous jobs on slaughterhouse floors. About 10 years ago, when residents were hostile to a group of 400 Somali refugees Tyson had brought in, the company relocated the workers to a facility 279 miles west. The company also closed the slaughterhouse at the Emporia facility, which cost the community 1,500 jobs, though Tyson attributed the move to industry overproduction.

Downtown, a civic group has recently installed wireless speakers that broadcast music from a local radio station. Family Video, the last video rental chain standing, has a store here. In May, the company introduced CBD and hemp products in all of its locations, generating some competition for the CBD store across the street. The city’s economy is also anchored by a Hostess bakery, a state university, a two-year technical college and a Tyson meatpacking plant.

Emporia, Kan., has followed the Main Street revitalization plan that has swept distressed urban neighborhoods and rural towns alike. There’s a craft brewery, a bike shop, a remodeled movie palace turned concert hall, a monthly art walk and a farmers’ market, one more likely to be attended by actual farmers than in some other locales.

Kansas City, Mo.

The guys start rolling up to City Park around 5:30 p.m., some straight from work. Eddie Diaz is a cabinetmaker. Vinny Aguirre drives for UPS. Bubba Hernandez is a package handler for FedEx. Rob Olvera is a union forklift operator. They get changed in the parking lot or drop their bags by the backstop and pull on team T-shirts or jerseys, rusty orange or black for the Indios, navy or red for the Bravos.

These guys grew up together and now they play ball together, just like their dads and their grandpas before them. All their kids play on the tee ball and football and Little League teams their dads coach. Tonight Louie Vaca’s daughter is running around with Mr. Diaz’s kids. Their dads have come out to throw some balls before the teams leave for the amateur fast-pitch world series in the morning.

Fast-pitch softball is a family tradition among some Mexican-Americans in the Midwest.

The Bravos and Indios are part of a circuit of Mexican-American fast-pitch softball teams, established in the central U.S. in the 1930s and ’40s, when the game was among the most popular amateur sports in the country. Banned from segregated recreation clubs and later discouraged from playing in mostly white Amateur Softball Association tournaments, Mexican-Americans founded their own, traveling for matches in Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado — the Midwest and Plains states where Mexican immigrants had found jobs in agriculture and shipping in the years before World War I. The Newton Mexican-American Athletic Club hosted the first Mexican-American tournament in 1946. July marked its 71st year. The game has been a multigenerational anchor for Latino communities across the region ever since. In Kansas City, Mo., the teams are dynasties, complete with beefs folks have been tending for decades. Mr. Hernandez is the third generation of one of the game’s ruling families. His grandfather Paul Sr., known as Waxie, was a star player for the Aztecas before becoming the legendary coach of the Amigos. Paul Jr. pitched and then coached for the Amigos, too. Mr. Vaca's grandfather was also an Azteca, and his dad was an Amigo.

Vinny Aguirre, the Bravos coach and founder.

Mr. Aguirre has a big smile and a big tattoo of Jesus on his forearm. It’s been a good season for the Bravos, he tells me. We’re standing side by side in right field, watching guys tossing balls around in pairs. They’re 3-2, and “the only thing that’s beat us this year is the rain,” he says. Mr. Aguirre happened to play baseball as a kid, but now he’s a steward of fast pitch softball. In 2015, hoping to help keep the sport alive in Kansas City, Mr. Aguirre revived the Bravos, his dad’s old team, and organized a new annual tournament. Now people come to Kansas City for the Indios’ tournament in June and for theirs in July. One of their pitchers is a guy who’s up from Argentina for the summer on a tourist visa. He started 15 games over the season, but not at N.M.A.A.C. The tournament requires that your pitcher is Mexican-American. Gabby Melendez took pitching duties and a tournament M.V.P. award for the second year in a row. Mr. Diaz goes back and forth from practicing to coaching his son, also named Eddie, who is 7 and good at every sport he plays. The guys shout advice; Mariano does some batting practice with him. Little Eddie’s bright future aside, they do worry about the future of Mexican-American fast pitch. In July, a major Texas tournament celebrated its 70th, and final, year. The guys in their 20s seem to prefer video games. The women’s leagues are defunct, and these days boys play baseball. It’s too bad: In this atmosphere of heightened anti-Mexican rhetoric, they need the community the sport creates more than ever. I say so when I’m chatting with Mr. Olvera on the sidelines. He agrees. “The one benefit of all the negativity is that it’s brought us guys closer. This field, it’s our safe place.” They try not to dwell, but the politics do intrude. Once, Mr. Aguirre says, one of their guys, a pitcher from Mexico, was on the mound when he received a phone call informing him that his wife and children were in ICE custody in Texas. The sun’s slipping away, the kids need to get to bed, and Mr. Aguirre’s shift starts soon. He won’t be at the tournament this weekend — he’s already missed too much work this summer. Sincere but self-conscious, he tries a pregame pep talk. “I almost wish they’d lose,” he says. Almost. They’re still teasing each other as everyone packs up to head out. “I used to be a softball player, but now I’m a family man,” Mr. Hernandez says — a toddler and a newborn and Jamie, his very patient weekend softball widow. (He did skip a tournament the weekend the baby was born.) “They’re always saying they want the old Bubba back.” Everyone laughs. “No one’s been saying that,” Mr. Olvera says. If they have, they’d never tell.

Army recruiters in Kansas City, Mo.

The houses are painted in pigments that recall the American Revolution, the Prussian blue, vermillion and slate conjured in scenes of Paul Revere or Samuel Adams hustling to and from dim, conspiratorial taverns in a Boston winter.

Houses in Veterans’ Village, a transitional housing program for homeless veterans.

They form something like a little Levittown, rows of houses differentiated by an architectural detail or two and set along curving cement sidewalks, or a Pacific Northwest subdivision for tiny-home-dwelling hipsters, picked up whole and set down on Troost Avenue in Kansas City. Veterans’ Village is a transitional housing program for homeless veterans. Bryan Meyer, a founder, claps his hands. “Let’s do it,” he says, with the affect of a football coach or, you know, a former Marine. “Let’s take a walk.” The houses, which are either 240 or 360 square feet, are the size of the tiny apartments New Yorkers pay thousands for. The project received national press when Brandonn Mixon, also a founder, appeared on Netflix’s “Queer Eye” earlier this year; the presidential primary candidate and veteran Pete Buttegieg visited the site in July. A new community center, scheduled to open this fall, will include a computer lab, a barbershop and a veterinary clinic. Homeless pet owners often decline emergency shelters and transitional housing accommodations that don’t allow animals. Here, pets are welcome. The scale model in the Veterans Community Project office even has a dog figurine standing outside the door.

Model of a Veterans’ Village home.