About the Project

Overview

Video: Haven Homes Project Overview

The Haven Homes project aims to convince large-scale real estate developers to build more pet-friendly homes and other Broad Appeal Specialty Housing (BASH) to reduce problems caused by growing homeownership costs.

As an example, we have developed several new animal-centric architectural concepts that would benefit not just the people and pets who will live in these homes, but also the property owners, which makes these features financially viable for rental properties and affordable housing projects.

To prove these claims, we are building housing complexes that model how several pet-friendly features can be cost-effectively incorporated into new commercial multi-family apartments as well as existing homes.

The first of these complexes is Lion Canyon: A quiet enclave of 11 boutique homes conceived on the idea that pets are essential members of the household, and as such designed to take care of the needs of cats as well as the humans who live with them.

Problem

Homes are built around humans, not animals, which means almost all household pets live in a space that was not designed for their needs. This can cause anxiety and health problems in animals as well as property damage, all of which could be mitigated.

For wealthy owners of large homes, these problems usually only amount to inconveniences, but they affect lower-income households disproportionately. The problems are amplified in smaller homes and can severely limit housing options for renters or prevent them from having pets at all.

Ultimately, the lack of purposeful design results in fewer animals having homes and a lower quality of life for those who do have homes.

Theory

Many universal animal-related problems can be alleviated through architecture, and a few key pet-friendly features would make a big difference to millions of people.

This has been overlooked due to the lack of profit incentive: Products can relatively easily be patented and sold for profit, but architectural concepts cannot.

However, desirable animal-friendly features can be independently developed and proven to be cost-effective to those who could profit the most from them: real estate investors who own rental properties.

Large-scale developers can then profitably add these features to their new rental housing complexes, which will benefit the investors, the tenants, and their pets.

Investors

• Pet-friendly features increase the property value and command higher rents.
• Most pet-friendly features help prevent costly property damage, such as water damage or destructive behavior by anxious animals.
• Higher tenant satisfaction means less turnover costs and higher overall occupancy rates. Once tenants get used to a lifestyle improved by these features, they will be reluctant to leave them, especially when few other properties offer them.
• By increasing income and lowering costs, investment in pet-friendly features can be recouped in just a few years, after which profit continues indefinitely.
• The first to market will reap outsized rewards; while others will eventually be forced to follow suit to remain competitive after pet-friendly features become standard.

Tenants

• Pet-friendly features will allow some tenants to have pets who otherwise could not.
• Having happier, healthier pets contributes to a positive feedback loop that leads to greater enjoyment of their pets.
• Work required to care for pets will be dramatically reduced, leading to increased freedom and flexibility.
• Tenants will enjoy a safer, cleaner, more comfortable home with less property damage.

Pets

• By removing several barriers to pet ownership, more animals will have homes.
• More homes will have multiple animals, providing socialization and companionship.
• Pet features will reduce animal stress and anxiety, which in turn will improve health and longevity.

Goals & Metrics

Immediate Goals

Reasonable goals within locus of control and scope of project.

• Provide homes that help residents thrive
  • Enable new lifestyles
  • Help residents get quality sleep
  • Elevate residents’ mood, focus, and productivity
  • Increase amount residents cook at home
  • Improve cat behavior
  • Create perception of good value
• Avoid angering the neighbors
  • Discourage bothersome behavior
  • Eliminate unnecessary noise
  • Attract tenants without cars
• Test experimental housing concepts
  • Test BASH model
  • Test animal-friendly housing model
  • Refine architectural concepts that improve pet health and reduce anxiety
• Help contributing partners succeed
• Milestones / Timeline

Future Goals & Moonshots

Mixing my arrogance with weapons-grade optimism and extrapolating to infinity.

• Prevent millions of animal deaths
  • Soften blow of housing crisis
  • Normalize animal-centric architecture
  • Make pet ownership easier
• Make renting better than owning (BASH)
  • Make semi-communal living compatible with capitalism
• Make San Diego even better than it is today
  • San Diego branding campaign
  • Pet-friendly housing fund
  • Make San Diego safer
• Help people with disabilities
  • Extend/improve the ADA
• Avert major catastrophe
  • Improve mental health through pet ownership
  • Build stronger social bonds through semi-communal living
  • Reduce conflict between socioeconomic classes
• Popularize decentralized ventilation
• 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 small children
  • Homes for people with small children with disabilities
• Build an animal sanctuary
• Advance other projects

Sample Metrics

• Goal: Normalize the concept of pet-friendly features. Increase recognition and usage of general terms for new animal-centric architectural concepts.
  Metrics: Search result volume, Wikipedia article activity, inclusion in major real estate search engine filters.
• Goal: Increase demand for pet-friendly features.
  Metrics: Keyword search trends, real estate market research.
• Goal: Increase the number of homes built with pet-friendly features.
  Metrics: Real estate market research.

Strategy

Target large-scale developers

Large developers drive the market

A significant portion of this project involves increasing awareness of and demand for pet-friendly features. Not only do large developers build many units at once, they also constantly advertise their homes and the features therein.

The earliest adopters in each real estate market will enjoy the free publicity that comes with introducing new, media-friendly features to their local areas, which will benefit the developers as well as the overall project goals.

Finally, having large-scale builders offer these features will help shift the public perception of animal-centric architecture toward the mainstream, rather than being thought of only as luxury features in custom homes.

New construction is more cost-effective

The best time to add features to a home is during the initial design.

After a structure is built, it can be incredibly expensive to add certain elements. For example, adding a new drain to a kitchen could require demolishing the floor, cutting into the foundation, destroying cabinetry—a good portion of an entire kitchen remodel—whereas adding a floor drain during original construction is cheap and simple.

The path of least resistance to getting pet-friendly features into homes is to target those who do the most original construction, i.e., large-scale developers.

Develop concepts worth stealing

Profitability must come first

For any pet-friendly concepts to be adopted, they must deliver a positive return on investment to real estate developers.

If the benefits don’t outweigh the costs—if they are expensive, or hard to build, or break easily, or people simply don’t like them—developers will never build them.

Focus on basic needs

Create architectural concepts with a broad appeal by addressing the most fundamental needs of animals and the people living with them. Create general solutions to basic problems that nearly all people and animals can use.

Follow universal design principles

All concepts should be simple, flexible, and intuitive, with a high tolerance for error. They should be as easy to understand and use as other common household features, like a sink or a garage door.

Limit risk through design

The first developers to adopt these features will be taking a risk, so care must be taken to limit that risk at every possible step.

For example, units with pet features should not be unappealing to people without pets. All pet-friendly features should be integrated seamlessly into the home so they do not call attention to themselves, and most features should provide a secondary use so they add value to all inhabitants, not just those with pets.

Create common trade terms

When trying to popularize an idea, what the concepts are called can be as important as the concepts themselves. The right terminology is crucial for entering the common vernacular.

The names for these concepts should not be cute, clever, or catchy, but rather simple and self-descriptive and should be consistent with common trade terms used in architecture and various construction trades. Concept names should be linguistically similar to “dog run” and “dog door”– some of the only common terms for pet-friendly architecture in existence today.

Even trademarked terms should be self-descriptive and aim to become the shorthand term most commonly used by tradespeople, like Sheetrock®, Shop-Vac®, Vise-Grip®, and Wire-Nut®.

Prove the concepts

Large-scale developers are in the business of risk management and are unlikely to experiment with unproven theoretical concepts, or even those built into private residences, which are barely regulated compared to commercial multi-family properties.

They know that when developing real estate on a large scale, any new building concept faces dozens of potential practical or regulatory obstacles. Until these obstacles are overcome, such concepts have no real value to them.

For large developers to seriously consider them, all new concepts must be built into a commercial multi-family housing complex to demonstrate their efficacy and illustrate how they can be executed at scale with real-world constraints.

Start small

The problems caused by living with animals are compounded in smaller homes, so pet-friendly features will have their largest impact in the smallest living spaces.

Since features can always be adapted to plans with more resources and square footage to spare, but smaller budgets and spaces present more challenges, these concepts should be designed around the lower end of both spectrums.

Ultimately, designing modest features that fit in small apartments will help ensure they can be executed in affordable housing projects.

Give everything away

Do not treat developed concepts as trade secrets, but rather as gifts to the world. Publicly share all information learned through researching and developing the concepts. Solicit input from professionals in relevant trades and encourage open-source development for improvements and new concepts.

Do not try to capture profit through intellectual property protections; use such protections only in ways that incentivize development.

Tactics

Housing complexes

Build and manage housing complexes to prove the efficacy of animal-centric architecture.

Construct commercial multi-family apartment buildings and remodel existing structures to illustrate how pet features can be built into new and existing homes.

Maintain detailed maintenance records and collect feedback from tenants to refine the concepts and guide future development.

Open-source architecture

Share the concepts

Create documents that describe each pet-friendly concept in detail. Share building guidelines, common options for methods and materials, and tips for getting the best results. Record the building process of each housing complex to create informational videos.

In short, share all information required for others to incorporate any new animal-friendly architectural concept into their own project successfully.

Explain the process

Detail the underlying principles that were followed to create the pet-friendly features developed for this project—not just to explain where they came from, but more importantly to foster suggestions of new and better ideas that could benefit animals and the people who live with them.

Ask for input

Foster open-source development with experts in animal behavior, architecture, and all major building trades to collaboratively improve upon existing ideas and develop new ones. Make it clear that all new concepts are starting points for a discussion, not decrees set in stone.

Solicit suggestions for:

• Improvements to any pet-friendly features
• Improvements to the underlying design principles
• Additional research to consider
• New pet-friendly feature concepts

Offer to help

Offer assistance to anyone seeking to include the pet-friendly features described here in their building project.

Developer outreach

Prepare a case study based on the project, framing it as an inexpensive way to add value to rental units and affordable housing projects. Submit the case study to developer trade publications.

Deliver presentations to large development companies to persuade them to copy the model. Show how the first to market will reap outsized rewards; while eventually others will be forced to follow suit to remain competitive.