Thesis: Temporary and long term housing for mentally-ill

Access to stable housing is crucial for individuals with mental illness and comes in many conceptual forms (from clinical institutions to supervised group housing, to supportive housing), and with many challenges (ensuring affordability, self-determination, physical needs, and discrimination-free environments). Countering disappearing access to affordable housing for people suffering from mental illness in Los Angeles, The Head & The Heart seeks to establish a long-term strategy with a multi-layered approach. First, it expands on the Housing First model, which has been shown to improve mental health outcomes (and reduce homelessness along the way) by prioritizing immediate access to permanent housing without preconditions for individuals. Second, it builds on a limited equity co-operative setup, which both guarantees long-term affordability and allows permanently housed individuals to become collective owners, participants, and decision-makers within their living environments. Third, it stablishes design principles to create buildings that benefit individuals with mental illness by offering a mix of secure, open, intimate, and communal spaces: Constant visual connections to the outdoors, a central communal space, and across the bedroom wings; no cul-de-sac corridors but multiple open ended paths to access and walk through the building; a central staircase and a multi-story collective living space to foster social encounters; small nooks and spaces of retreat for privacy within the collective spaces; shared kitchens to encourage collective activities and interactions, etc. And fourth, The Head & The Heart integrates its new housing units and other supportive program (caretaker units, community center, green spaces) into existing sites, creating cohesive urban compounds with mutually beneficial programs. For this project, The Head & The Heart envisions to cooperate with Boyle Heights’ St. Mary’s Catholic Church and its affiliated school. Mutually funded by the church, as well as Federal, State and City of Los Angeles agencies, the provision of stable housing for people with mental illness thus simultaneously transforms the whole site into an estate for collaborative use, providing communal programs for its inhabitants, the church, the school and the neighborhood.