About the Project

Overview

The Haven Homes project is an effort to develop new ways for housing to better serve individuals and society.

Through this project, we aim to convince large-scale real estate developers to build Broad Appeal Specialty Housing (BASH) to reduce problems caused by growing homeownership costs. To prove the BASH concept, we are building homes that model how specialty features can cost-effectively create homes that are lifechanging to certain people, yet still appeal to a wide audience.

To show the versatility of BASH, for our first housing projects we chose two very different specialties—trauma recovery housing and pet-friendly housing—and we built features from both concurrently into two different kinds of structures: Haven House, a group living facility made from an existing residential single-family home, and Cloud Nine Studios, a new commercial multi-family apartment building.

To that end, we followed principles of trauma-informed design and made animal-supportive homes that help their inhabitants—both human and feline—feel better and heal.

Goals

While the original goal was only to popularize the BASH housing model, during the course of the project, additional goals have been added.

For example, we developed several therapeutic modalities to help overcome common barriers that impede trauma recovery therapy. After putting these modalities into practice, we are working to continue developing them and research their efficacy, then share the results to contribute to the emerging field of trauma-informed design.

We also developed several animal-supportive architectural concepts that benefit not just the people and pets who will use them, but also the property owners, making these features financially viable for rental properties and affordable housing projects. Similarly, we are working to continue research and development and share what we have learned so that these concepts can benefit more people and animals.

Finally, so far we have built two trauma recovery housing facilities for women, which are in high demand and short supply. We are working to maximize their impact by coordinating with women’s supportive organizations that are in a position to put these facilities to their best use.

Multiple Paths to Success

While these goals are all interrelated, they each have success conditions that can be achieved independently and in multiple ways.

For example, the project could fail to popularize any concepts—with nobody else ever adopting BASH nor any therapeutic modalities or animal-supportive architecture concepts—but if Haven House and Cloud Nine Studios consistently provide housing to people who need it, that will make the project a worthwhile endeavor even if the ideas we attempt to share never travel a mile beyond where they were conceived.

Likewise, everything else could fail, we could go bankrupt, and the two facilities we built could be sold at foreclosure and turned into generic student housing. However, if a single major concept became widely popularized, e.g., if litter closets became somewhat common, even if only in the DIY community, or if the Recovery Pathway were to be validated as an effective therapeutic tool and used elsewhere, the value of societal good done would likely outweigh the amount individually invested, making the project a net positive for the world and able to be considered a success.

Future Goals & Moonshots

However, this project is aiming higher. For example, by working to bring about this scenario:

• After presenting our ideas to several large-scale developers, one decides to build a sizeable complex of animal-supportive homes.
• This taps into the enormous unsatisfied demand that comes from over half of all renters planning to become pet owners, yet finding truly pet-friendly housing virtually absent from the market.
• The developer rents all the units so quickly that they beat projections and they immediately plan another similar complex, enjoying their first-mover advantage and forcing competitors to follow suit or build different types of specialty housing to remain competitive.
• Capitalizing on the national attention being paid to the local housing industry, the City of San Diego, in partnership with locally-based Petco, launches a jointly-funded campaign to brand San Diego as the most pet-friendly city in America.
• As part of this campaign, grants are made available to fund the additional costs of animal-supportive architecture to affordable housing projects.
• BASH, now mainstream, spreads to other cities and countries. Animal-supportive housing is the universal spearhead, followed by other types that vary by region, ultimately leading to increased home satisfaction worldwide and millions of animal lives saved due to the abundance of pet-friendly housing.

Such a scenario would completely achieve several of our primary goals—and here’s our plan to make that happen—but should that plan fall short of perfection, hundreds of lesser possibilities in which these objectives are only partially realized could still be considered successful.

Below are more of the long-range goals of this project. Admittedly, a few of the later steps in these wishful chains of events are laughably improbable. However, the stakes for society are so high that merely recognizing such a possibility makes us ethically bound to try to make them happen, as the stars have been known to occasionally align in our favor, and landing among them after shooting for the moon still accomplishes a lot of good.

Broad-Appeal Specialty Housing (BASH)

• Make renting more desirable than owning for many
• Make semi-communal living compatible with capitalism
• Develop new kinds of BASH
  • Homes for people in wheelchairs with cats
  • Homes for people with large dogs
  • Homes for blind people with large dogs
  • Homes for people with babies
  • Homes for people with small children
  • Homes for people with small children with disabilities
  • Homes for people with autism

Animal-Supportive Architecture

• Popularize key animal-supportive architectural concepts
• Increase number of animal-supportive homes
• Soften impact of housing crisis on animals
• Prevent millions of animal deaths
• Catalyze the recognition of animal advocates as the world’s largest, albeit decentralized, cult

Trauma Recovery

• Continue research and development of therapeutic modalities
• Measure efficacy and publish findings
• Increase use of art and animal companionship in trauma recovery therapy

Haven House

• Coordinate with local artists to conduct art workshops
• Expand Journey Gallery to secondary gallery for public exhibition

Cloud Nine Studios

• Measure general and specialized demand for BASH via market experimentation
• Secure permanent endowment to allow residents referred by qualified organizations to stay regardless of ability to pay

Haven House and Cloud Nine Studios

• Measure efficacy of environmental design and attitudes toward animal-supportive architecture via anonymized feedback
• Measure longitudinal impact of environment on human and feline health and behavior via optional diaries
• Refine trauma-informed design measures and therapeutic modalities to improve mood and behavioral response
• Refine animal-supportive architectural concepts to improve pet health and reduce anxiety
• Validate findings and share with those working in related areas

Artist Community

• Produce videos for all interested local artists to share via the Artist Connections
• Recognize and promote artists capable of producing Healing High Art
• Share and support app that enables communal art projects that benefit artists

Disability Advocacy

• Prove efficacy of and popularize new building method that benefits people with disabilities
• Update the Americans with Disabilities Act with more effective measures

Mechanical Engineering

• Popularize decentralized ventilation

Promises Fulfilled

• Build an animal sanctuary

Neighborhood

• Avoid agitating any neighbors
• Prevent bothersome noise
• Attract more residents without cars

City

• Establish pet-friendly housing grants
• Launch San Diego branding campaign
• Attract more animal lovers to San Diego
• Make San Diego a refuge of kind, generous, compassionate people, making it even safer and more pleasant than it already is

World

• Help more people recover from trauma
• Improve mental health through pet ownership
• Build stronger social bonds through semi-communal living
• Reduce conflict between socioeconomic classes with greater housing satisfaction
• Avert major war