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Homes That Heal

The Haven Homes project is an effort to develop new ways for housing to better serve individuals and society. So far, through this project we have built two trauma recovery housing facilities for women:

Haven House

A safe, relaxing group home for women undergoing partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient trauma recovery therapy. Designed for health, harmony, and happiness with emphases on natural materials, art immersion, and animal companionship.

Cloud Nine Studios

Small, quiet apartments with nearly all the features of a full home, sized for a single individual. Designed especially for long-term healing from serious trauma for women who wish to live on their own or with up to three cats.

What Makes These Homes Different?

Living in these homes is unlike being anywhere else. Some of these differences come from management practices, like our quiet policy or the free benefits for people with cats. Hundreds of other differences are built into the environment to create a truly unique living experience. These differences fall into three broad categories:

Trauma-Informed Design

Trauma-informed design is a multidisciplinary approach to creating spaces that are safe, supportive, and conducive to healing for individuals who have experienced trauma. Here, practically all aspects of the environment have been made through the lens of trauma-informed design, ensuring its most basic tenets were followed before branching out.

Therapeutic Artwork

Building on this foundation, we aimed to create an inherently therapeutic environment, i.e., one where people experience specific, measurable psychological benefits. Specifically, we set out to identify the most prevalent barriers that could possibly be mediated through environmental changes and take steps in the home environment to help break down those barriers.

Animal Support

Animal-supportive homes move beyond an human-centric view to embrace a more inclusive design philosophy that recognizes and values the place of animals within our built environment. Haven House and Cloud Nine Studios include several features of animal-supportive architecture that integrate the living needs of cats into the home, which, collectively, have significant therapeutic value for the residents as well.