Reasons Not to Live Here

Women are more likely than men to experience specific types of trauma that carry a higher risk for PTSD, such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and childhood sexual abuse. In America, at least 9 million women meet the criteria for PTSD or CPTSD, and worldwide that number is in the hundreds of millions.

Millions of women could benefit from living at Cloud Nine Studios, but few places like it exist. On top of that, Cloud Nine is tiny: With only nine apartments, it is but a drop in an ocean-sized problem.

This makes Cloud Nine Studios a scarce resource, and our mission goal is to provide these homes to the people who can benefit the most from living there, not maximize revenue by just renting to anyone who can afford them.

To that end, we ask you to carefully read through this list to see if there are any reasons why Cloud Nine Studios might not be the right home for you.

1. You don’t fit the mission criteria.

These apartments were designed exclusively for women with PTSD who wish to live on their own or with up to three cats. If this does not describe you, then unfortunately you would be taking a very limited resource away from someone who needs it.

IMPORTANT: For a limited time, Cloud Nine is welcoming women without PTSD as well.

As this is a brand new project, we need baseline feedback data from women who do not have PTSD, so for a limited time, women without PTSD may also live here, provided they agree to provide very simple feedback about their experience living here.

2. You’re not sober.

If you have an active addiction or a chemical dependence on any mind-altering substance, these homes are not designed for you. Fortunately, there are numerous other facilities that specialize in helping you manage and overcome substance abuse so that you could be ready to live here in the future.

3. You lead a loud lifestyle.

If you blast music at max volume, like to host lively parties, play the drums, or can’t help but shout at the television or while playing games with friends online, then this is not the place for you. Cloud Nine Studios has a noise limit policy that is strictly enforced to ensure all residents have the peace they need to heal.

4. You hate cats.

If you just don’t like cats or have a non-life-threatening allergy to them, you should be fine. However, if you cannot stand the sight of cats, this would not be an ideal place for you, because many residents will have them and you will likely see some in their front windows when coming home. Note: If Apartment #4 is available, that unit can be reached without passing by or even seeing any other apartments.

5. You love too many cats.

A great deal of scientific research went into the design of these homes, and based on that research, the living space is properly sized for one adult human and two cats, or three if they get along well. In the interest of the well-being of both the people and animals who live here, if you have four or more cats, then unfortunately you would need a larger home.

6. You have a dog.

This is a facility purpose-built for women with PTSD and their cats. A single dog barking could disrupt the sleep of all nine residents, possibly retraumatizing some of them, and the mere scent of a dog on the premises could raise the stress levels of every cat in this compact complex. As your property manager, I want to assure you that this has nothing to do with my personal preferences—I love dogs and am heavily allergic to cats—but at Cloud Nine Studios, even a single dog would cause too much harm to too many people and animals to allow them.

7. You need a lot of space.

These homes are very small and designed to provide almost everything you need, but there is not a lot of extra space or room for large items.

8. The rent is too high.

If you are an otherwise ideal candidate who would greatly benefit from living here, but just can’t afford it: I’m sorry. It’s difficult to convey just how sorry I am.

An overwhelming number of the people who could benefit most from this type of housing won’t be able to afford it—even if priced to just cover operating expenses—and that feels terrible.

I’m sorry I was not able to make it more affordable, and I’m sorry I even have to charge for this at all.

I’m working on a solution. Specifically, I am actively seeking alternative sources of funding to either partially or wholly subsidize the rent so that more people with PTSD can live here to help them heal.

FAQs?

(Show chart of costs, illustrating how land, fees, and minimum construction costs would have made even the most modest homes expensive.)

Yes, all the extravagant features did raise the total costs, but building anything in San Diego is expensive. After the fixed costs, like land, taxes, permits, inspections, design, architecture, engineering, legal, insurance, financing, site prep, and minimum material costs, even building a set of plain, empty rooms would have been expensive—especially considering how much material and labor costs skyrocketed over the last 5 years since I began working on this as my Covid project.

Building new affordable housing seemed mathematically impossible at a small scale for someone pathologically incapable of cutting corners on construction quality, especially when it comes to health and safety. So, since I couldn’t make anything truly affordable, I decided instead to make something extraordinary at a reasonable price. (Thanks to the many, many people who contributed to this project.)

Big builders with their much larger economies of scale could steal all my R&D, copy this strategy, and execute it more affordably—and I hope they do exactly this (that’s why I published everything), because millions could benefit from it.

I set out to create a new type of housing that would benefit society, and I ended up making a type of housing that I don’t think people should have to pay for.

Because of all the specific therapeutic benefits of this place, it’s sort of like I set out to build a house and ended up building an MRI machine. It’s this neat device that could help a lot of people heal, but it’s terribly expensive to run and I am wholly unqualified to operate it, even though I designed and built it.