Is trauma-informed architecture likely to help homeless trauma victims? A Denver shelter believes it’s worth $38 million.

CATEGORY: GOVERNMENT PROJECTS

Urban Peak CEO Christina Carlson shows the new shelter

Source: KUNC NPR news
Read time: 1.8 minutes
 
This Happened
On July 27, 2024, a shelter for homeless youth in Denver held a grand opening of their new facility built with trauma-informed design.
 
Who Did This?
Urban Peak is a non-profit organization that provides temporary shelter, permanent housing, case management, street outreach, education, and medical services. The CEO, Christina Carlson, holds a masters degree in social work.
Shop Works Architecture, based in Denver, created the new shelter. The firm specializes in trauma-informed design. They are a believer in the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) narrative; their website links to former California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk on ACES.
 
The Premise
The principle of trauma-informed design is that physical space can be so stressful as to cause mental problems in individuals who have previously been traumatized. Physical environments should promote calm, safety, dignity, and empowerment to protect and heal clients who are trauma victims and staff who suffer vicarious trauma on the job. These are achieved through spatial arrangement, furniture selections, artwork, ample light, soothing color, and greenery.

Graphic (adjacent) of how blockage of sensory input coupled with one dominant source of input creates a “harsh environment with a stress body.” (Source: Shop Works Architecture)

Of the $38 million cost, Denver government contributed $16.7 million, which came from the city’s $260 million RISE Denver bond, which was approved by voters in 2021 to fund a variety of projects.

​An example (adjacent) showing (1) perforated wooden slats preventing anyone from hiding behind them, (2) staff areas with open visual spaces, and (3) soft lighting (Source: Shop Works Architecture).

Analysis
There are neither negative nor positive studies of trauma-informed architecture impact on well-being. Belief in the power of trauma-informed design, nevertheless, is a staple of the progressive vision for how to lift individuals out of poverty and achieve equity of outcomes with government and community assistance. While design elements can promote temporary spiritual inspiration, this vision promotes false hope because it is unlikely to address root causes of human behavioral problems.
Interior design change may seem like a harmless piece of activism, but the problem with calling a class of architecture trauma-informed design is that it lets go unchallenged another attempt to control language and ideas promoting the ideology that human nature is highly malleable, and genetic-based differences play no part in human behaviors. It serves as a constant symbolism of the misguided progressive intellectual framework that the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed, and we simply need to counter oppression with new life experiences to change human nature. Those policies, having no basis in research, will not provide long-term help.
 
Why Did This Happen?
Non-profit organizations often act as quasi-governmental extensions to accomplish tasks that governments can’t do as easily. Government funds can be funneled to non-profits under humanitarian objectives with little debate or citizen input. It’s part of the administrative state to rule by science, and the state decides what the science is even when it is nonexistent.
 
 
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