More than a roof

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 27th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: designed for hope.

Families without a place to live often turn to shelters for temporary housing. Shelters can offer classes, counseling, and job training.

EICHER: But what about the space itself? The walls, the beds, the rooms? WORLD’s Jenny Rough reports on a shelter that sees design as more than decoration. It’s part of helping families heal.

VOLUNTEER: Okay guys come on in!

JENNY ROUGH: Diane Little opens the door to her new bedroom. She lifts her youngest daughter out of a stroller.

DIANE LITTLE: Look, Jayla.

VOLUNTEER: She’s making herself right at home! [Laughter]

The main bedroom for Little and her husband, and another bedroom for their three girls, have both been fully redesigned. There’s colorful comforters, lamps, stuffed animals, and artwork. But just months ago, the family had nowhere to call home. Little initially moved to Durham, North Carolina, in the late 2000s. Finding affordable housing there was tough.

LITTLE: It was terrible. They had Section 8 projects, but it would take a long time to even get that assistance.

She scraped by. Then, she says, her husband was in a terrible car accident.

LITTLE: He fell asleep behind the wheel with his left arm out the car after pulling a double for two days.

His truck flipped and crushed his left arm. At the hospital, doctors had to amputate. Little says the accident, skyrocking rents post-COVID, and a series of bad decisions all led to homelessness.

Last April, the family moved into Families Moving Forward, Durham’s largest family shelter.

ANNA KRECKLOW: Because we’re a family shelter, we have a big focus on children.

Anna Krecklow is the former volunteer coordinator.

KRECKLOW: We provide childcare in the evenings while parents are in their programming. So we have parent programming where our families learn about budgeting, landlord-tenant rights, art therapy, various skills and knowledge so they can be more successful when they move to more permanent housing.

The shelter has also partnered with a nonprofit to incorporate an emerging concept known as trauma-informed design. That’s an idea that suggests comforting physical spaces can improve mental health. A study from North Carolina conducted in 2021, found that over half of those experiencing homelessness reported post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

LOTTA SJOELIN: If you’re struggling with PTSD, your prefrontal cortex shuts down. You’re not able to handle your anger, frustration, organizational skills. You need somewhere where you feel safe.

That’s Lotta Sjoelin. In 2014, she had an eye-opening experience. She’s originally from Sweden and works in interior design. After moving to North Carolina, a neighbor mentioned that a local women’s shelter needed pillows.

SJOELIN: And in my white, Swedish, privileged world, I thought they needed décor, decorative pillows.

Accent pillows of mixed shapes and sizes to add aesthetics to a room. Her neighbor clarified: No, no, no, the shelter needed standard bed pillows. For sleeping.

SJOELIN: The house manager has a goal to give every single child their own pillow to sleep on at night.

Sjoelin filled her car with pillows. When she toured the shelter, she cried. The rooms looked like prison cells. Broken beds with thin mattresses and worn hand-me-down dressers. No color. No comfortable place to sit. No rugs on the floor—not even a bathmat.

The next day, she drove back to the shelter. This time, with more than just pillows.

SJOELIN: New bedding, new towels, rugs, curtains for the windows, bedside tables and lamps.

Sjoelin fully decorated a room for a resident and hasn’t stopped since. As of today, her nonprofit A Lotta Love has worked with 25 different shelters in North Carolina.

SJOELIN: Every single family who moves in here gets a makeover. And it’s personalized with the families in mind.

Researchers assessed her work. In 2022, they published the results in the journal Psychological Services. The conclusion: Designing shelter bedrooms improves the residents’ well-being by boosting their sense of dignity, safety, and hopefulness.

Most items are brand new. Some are purchased. Others are donated from big box companies, small businesses, real estate stagers, and strangers.

SOUND: [Moving bed]

A design costs about $650 per room.

SJOELIN: What if we put the bed here. And then maybe move the dresser there, what do you think?

After rearranging the furniture—

SOUND: [Drilling]

—volunteers get to work.

SOUND: [Hammering]

Volunteers come from high school clubs, church groups, nearby colleges, and even business professionals.

MELISSA CROSS: I mean, you’re going through what’s probably the most difficult season of your life.

Melissa Cross runs an interior design firm. When she learned of trauma-informed design, she knew immediately she wanted to get involved.

Cross says her Christian faith motivates her.

CROSS: The Biblical language of a people in their place that’s all throughout Scripture and knowing the impact that that has on a person’s health, physical, emotional, psychological.

She says God gave us bodies that are tactile and visual.

CROSS: Who doesn’t want to sit on a comfy couch with a cozy blanket? It communicates something to your body about: You can rest, you can rest here.

For Diane Little’s three daughters, shelter lead Jennifer Galloway decorates each bunk with the girls’ initials, wall stickers, and personal touches.

JENNIFER GALLOWAY: One that likes Bluey, one that likes unicorns, and one that likes Cocomelon. So I just got them each a lovey with the character they like.

The family arrives for the big reveal.

AUDIO: She loves it. I like the letters. Aren’t those cute?

When families leave the shelter, they get to take their “room” with them as a starter kit.

SJOELIN: We think it’s just normal stuff, things we take for granted. It’s life-changing for these families. It really is.

Cross agrees. Transforming a shelter room into a pleasing space helps residents feel comfortable and cared for.

CROSS: This is a temporary place for them, but the most that you can make it feel like it’s somewhere that’s theirs, the better long-term these people will be. It’s true of us in our own homes. When things are broken in our homes, when things are sloppy, we feel disintegrated. I can’t overestimate the value of feeling like you have a place to be.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough in Durham, North Carolina.

Click on arrow for more images below.

Bunk beds before decorating Photo by Jenny Rough

Lotta Sjoelin puts finishing touches in the room. Photo by Jenny Rough

Bunk beds are ready and waiting. Photo by Jenny Rough

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