Haven for Hope

Haven for Hope, a 37-acre homeless transformational campus located near downtown San Antonio, TX is the largest facility in the United States dedicated to treating homeless. Haven for Hope is a private non-profit aimed at transforming the lives of homeless men, women and children in the San Antonio/Bexar County area. Partnering with 78 governmental, non-profit and faith-based agencies, Haven for Hope seeks to transform the lives of the homeless by addressing the root causes of homelessness through education, job training and behavioral health services. While most “shelters” feed, clothe and shelter the homeless, Haven for Hope and its Partners will provide critical social services to help the homeless become self-sufficient individuals on a long-term basis. www.havenforhope.org

Designed by San Antonio-based Overland Partners Architects in association with San Antonio-based O’Neill Conrad Oppelt Architects (OCO), the $60 million project includes 15 buildings of approximately 300,000 square feet of total space, with 998 beds and the capacity to sleep an additional 500+ individuals in the courtyard. It is the largest and most comprehensive homeless facility in the United States and has already been visited by delegations from more than 40 cities, quickly becoming recognized as a new national model for homeless transformational centers. Using their experiences gained from designing The Bridge Homeless Assistance Center in Dallas, Overland Partners was able to help identify the major issues and design goals for Haven for Hope.

Unique Design Aspects:

·      Transitional entry - The design team used existing railroad lines to define the boundaries of the campus and create a main entry point where the two lines merged, near an area where a large number of the chronic homeless congregate. Designers located a large courtyard immediately beyond this entry point to not only provide a safe atmosphere for the chronic homeless to sleep, but to also be engaged by social workers to enter one of the several Haven programs.

·      Residential-scale housing - “warehousing” people in industrial high-bay spaces, a common way to house the homeless, was of the highest concern; only non- residential facilities were placed in the existing warehouses, with new dormitory-style housing built from the ground up.

·      Community accessibility - Unlike many homeless shelters, Haven for Hope offers medical, vision, dental, childcare and more to the surrounding community members as well as to the homeless. These areas demanded accessibility the surrounding community and homeless guests at Haven while maintaining the safe and comfortable environment that both groups require.

·      Multi-services setting – the campus is a “one stop shop” of services for the homeless and adjacent community. The Haven for Hope campus houses 78 San Antonio-based non-profits and government agencies, providing a central hub for the various services to treat the root causes of homelessness. These services cover nearly 150 different types of functional assistance including comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, vision and mental health), education, job training, legal, case management, public-run services and benefit programs, childcare and more.

·      Security - The campus site design addresses the challenges of keeping populations (men, women, family and children) separated while still providing common gathering spaces to encourage guest interaction.

 

Other spaces within the campus include classrooms and conference rooms, a library and learning center, mail center, barbershop, exercise and recreational areas, a chapel, a childcare center with an after-school program, and even a pet shelter service center with a seeing-eye dog-training program.

 

ABOUT OVERLAND PARTNERS

Overland Partners Architects, founded in 1985 in San Antonio, Texas, is a realization of a vision to bring together a wide range of talents in architecture and planning, in order to provide comprehensive and multi-disciplinary design service.  Sensitive to the environmental and aesthetic context in which we are asked to design, the firm strives for a thoughtful integration of technology, art, and craft through highly sustainable solutions.  Overland Partners Architects offers its clients the ultimate goal of creating a beautiful, functional and enduring design through a process that inspires long-term relationships and is rewarding to the entire project team.  For more information, visit www.overlandpartners.com.