06/21/2026
Sunday Thoughts with Louie- Rambling realizations!
(long post)
I have been working this weekend on a presentation for a national shelter conference where I've been asked to share the story of our new Shelter Home, the struggles to get it built, and the lessons we learned along the way.
As I sat down to work on it, I found myself thinking about the unexpected gifts of our new Shelter Home. Things I did not even know to imagine!
For six years, we talked about designing a trauma informed shelter for our guests. Every decision was centered around creating a place where people could feel safe, find stability, and have access to the things they needed to heal and move forward. We talked endlessly about privacy, healthcare, food, workforce training, recovery, family spaces, education, and all the pieces we believed were necessary to help people thrive.
What we didn't talk about nearly enough was what that same design would mean for the neighborhood. When we first proposed this project, many of our neighbors were scared. They looked at our old shelter and what they had seen around homelessness in downtown areas and imagined those same challenges moving into their neighborhood. And honestly, I understand why.
Our old shelter was 10,000 square feet. Guests slept in dorms. We didn't have a kitchen. We didn't have classrooms. We didn't have a clinic. We didn't have family spaces. Most of our guests had to leave every morning because there simply wasn't room for them to stay.
The people creating the impacts everyone worried about weren't bad people. They were people with nowhere to be.
Then COVID happened and for the first time we moved families and medically fragile guests into a hotel and learned something important. When people have privacy, stability, and a place to be morning, noon, and night, they do better. The hotel was what inspired us to find a new space to reimagine shelter for the people we serve.
But this weekend as I began writing I realized that the design that is essential to our guests is also essential to our community.
If people have a place to be, access to healthcare, meals, recovery support, education, workforce training, and community, they aren't spending their day trying to survive.
This is a first of a kind shelter home so as we designed and reimagined shelter we had nothing to compare it too. We bravely challenged the system to try to do better but this shelter home has gone far beyond our imaginings. The guests are thriving and so are our neighbors!
Our neighbors now volunteer inside it. They teach classes, they help in our garden, they share meals with us and they know our guests by name.
Somehow we spent years arguing about whether a shelter belonged in a neighborhood, only to discover that the neighborhood itself is part of what makes this shelter so special.
I don't know that I fully understood that until this weekend. Maybe that's the lesson.
When we design beautiful spaces that truly care for people, we aren't just serving the people inside the building. We create better outcomes for our guests, our neighbors, and our community. We create a place where our neighbors can be part of the solution.
I love that!
