Permanent housing
Private, stable homes organized in neighborhood-scale clusters.
A national solution
Permanent homes from places already built.
Compassion Network proposes transforming closed college campuses, vacant malls, and unused commercial buildings into lasting, self-sustaining communities — replacing temporary shelter with dignity, care, and a place to belong.
HousingPermanent homes, not nightly beds
CareHealth and recovery support on site
PurposeLearning, work, and community life together
The opportunity
Turn vacancy into stability.
Homelessness is rarely only a housing problem. It is a crisis of health, connection, safety, and continuity. The campus model brings those needs together in one humane environment — using existing buildings instead of starting from an empty lot.
A permanent place to land
People can cycle between streets, shelters, emergency rooms, and the justice system without ever reaching a durable exit. A repurposed campus creates that exit: a home paired with coordinated care, daily structure, and pathways back into community life.
The physical plan matters. Smaller residential clusters connect to a central community hub, while accessible paths, shared spaces, clinics, classrooms, and dining facilities make support part of everyday life.
“When we lift up those experiencing homelessness, we aren’t just offering shelter — we are restoring dignity, hope, and the comforting reminder that they are seen, valued, and part of their community.”
Betsy O’Connor · 2026The vision in motion
A campus built around belonging.
See how an existing property can become a connected setting for housing, health, education, daily life, and shared purpose. This campaign film appears once, in its intended place.
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Compassion Campus campaign film
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New films
The vision, in motion.
Two short films from the Compassion Network — the Merrimack village vision, and five questions the Supreme Court debate asked, answered.
A hometown for people who never had one — the Merrimack village vision
Five Questions, Answered — what the Supreme Court debate asked, and how we answer
A complete support system
One roof. Eight pillars.
Housing becomes durable when residents can reach care, rebuild routines, learn, work, and form trusted relationships without navigating a fragmented maze of services.
Healthcare
On-site physical health, mental health, and medication support.
Recovery
Trauma-informed, low-barrier treatment and peer support.
Education
GED, licensing, digital access, and practical learning.
Job training
Skilled trades and work experience connected to the region.
Childcare
Reliable care so parents can train, work, and stay rooted.
Spiritual care
Inclusive chaplaincy and spaces for reflection and worship.
Assisted living
Supportive care for residents who need help for the long term.
1. Assertive engagement & coordination
Assertive Community Treatment: multidisciplinary teams bring intensive care directly to a resident rather than waiting for a crisis or an office visit.
Low-barrier outreach and Critical Time Intervention: trust is built over time, with support increased during vulnerable transitions into housing.
2. Behavioral health & trauma recovery
Trauma-informed care: services recognize survival responses and actively avoid re-traumatization.
Integrated treatment: mental health and substance-use needs are addressed by a coordinated team, with practical de-escalation and conflict-resolution support.
3. Substance use & recovery
Recovery support: low-barrier clinical care, medication-assisted treatment where appropriate, overdose prevention, and peer specialists with lived experience.
4. Healthcare & daily stabilization
On-site care: community nursing, wound care, medication management, and coordinated referrals meet physical and behavioral health needs together.
Independent living skills: step-by-step support with cooking, shopping, personal care, and maintaining a home.
5. Income & legal safeguards
Practical protection: voluntary representative-payee help, benefits navigation, and medical-legal partnerships can address barriers that threaten housing stability.
Animal-inclusive community life
Belonging can include the animals people love.
Pets are family. This vision keeps residents and the animals they love together, instead of forcing a choice between a home and a companion.
The founder’s vision includes welcoming service animals in keeping with applicable requirements and, where appropriate, residents’ companion animals — dogs and cats — under reviewed policies. A safe outdoor dog area could support exercise and relief, and cat-friendly indoor spaces could give feline residents room to roam, with suitable care arrangements and the possibility of pets sleeping with their families.
Animal accommodations and facilities would need legal, accessibility, animal-welfare, and site review. This is a proposed approach, not a current animal policy.
How it works
From vacant property to local pilot.
The model starts with assets a community already has, then assembles the housing, care, operational, and funding partners needed to make one site work — and show what can be repeated.
Identify
Find a suitable closed campus, mall, or commercial property.
Convene
Bring together housing, health, education, government, and community partners.
Convert
Adapt existing buildings into accessible homes and shared services.
Measure
Publish housing stability, health, safety, and resident-experience outcomes.
Architectural dignity
A central town square connects smaller residential neighborhoods, varied unit types, and accessible paths.
Low-barrier services
One front door coordinates care, while clinics, laundry, food, mail, and technology are close at hand.
Culture & purpose
Gardens, cafés, workshops, peer leadership, and voluntary campus roles create meaning and agency.
Local operations
Property management, care providers, educators, and civic partners share defined responsibilities and oversight.
A humane public response
Housing and disability rights come first.
No one should be left outdoors because disability, behavioral-health needs, income, a partner, a pet, or essential belongings made a traditional shelter impossible. The response should make safety, treatment, accessibility, and permanent housing easier to reach — not criminalize the crisis.
A right to a safe home
Create a practical route to stable, accessible housing without excluding people because they need ongoing support.
Support matched to need
Coordinate housing with health services, transportation, meals, and help with daily living when needed.
Protections with accountability
Enforce fair-housing and disability protections, and measure housing stability, health, safety, and voluntary resident satisfaction.
Core campus coordination
Proper care, with dignity and rights protected.
Designing laws around the well-being of unsheltered people requires compassionate care to be balanced with constitutional rights, personal liberty, and medical autonomy. This framework is designed to move people from encampments toward specialized Wellness Care Campuses built for long-term stability rather than temporary shelter.
This is not a proposal to institutionalize people because of their health conditions. It is a public-health and housing framework intended to prevent illness, support disease control, and provide the coordinated services people need to survive and regain stability.
Holistic triage
Establish the campus as a comprehensive healthcare and housing hub, not an emergency shelter.
Tiered wellness housing
Create distinct residential settings for recovery, intensive mental-health care, youth development, and independent transitional living.
Guaranteed rights
Protect personal property, privacy, medical autonomy, and freedom from criminalization for the status of being unhoused.
Individualized placement
Match each person to a safe housing environment and level of support based on their needs, strengths, and informed participation.
Legal balancing of the capacity exam
A physical or mental capacity exam raises significant questions about informed consent and due process. Any law or program must be designed with independent legal review, clear limits, and enforceable protections.
- Entry into the system
- Incentivized consent
- Capacity exam
- Tailored permanent housing placement
- If consent is refused: legal review or harm reduction
Incentivized cooperation
The exam is offered as a pathway to individualized housing tiers and specialized benefits, not through criminal penalties or forced containment.
Clear legal thresholds
No person should be forced into a medical or psychiatric exam unless applicable law permits it under a defined emergency standard. When a person may lack capacity to consent, an expedited, independent legal advocate or ombudsperson should protect their interests.
Privacy protections
Strict data firewalls should keep exam results confidential under applicable medical privacy law and prevent their use for law-enforcement or criminal-prosecution purposes.
Campus housing classifications
Assessment should guide a supportive match — never reduce a resident to a label. Each setting combines a stable home with the care and opportunities most relevant to that resident.
Youth development pavilions
For: Unhoused minors and young adults ages 16–24.
Core services: Trauma-informed care, education continuity, and life-skills mentoring.
Integrated medical housing
For: People with severe physical disabilities or chronic illness.
Core services: 24/7 nursing care, physical therapy, and mobility assistance.
Healing & recovery suites
For: People experiencing severe psychosis, cognitive decline, or active addiction.
Core services: Psychiatric stabilization, medication management, and supervised detoxification.
Independent transitional studios
For: People with high functional capacity who are ready for community reintegration.
Core services: Workforce training, financial literacy, and permanent housing placement.
Policy note: Capacity standards, consent rules, youth protections, medical privacy, and placement procedures must be developed with qualified local legal, clinical, disability-rights, and lived-experience partners before implementation.
The crisis
Beyond emergency shelter.
For some people, crowded or unfamiliar shelters can feel less safe than a predictable outdoor place. Safety concerns, strict routines, trauma triggers, and separation from partners, pets, or belongings can become barriers. This proposal does not ask a temporary system to do permanent work.
Traditional shelter
- Congregate sleeping and high turnover
- Services spread across different offices
- Emergency safety as the finish line
- Rules that can become barriers to entry
Campus community
- Permanent homes in smaller clusters
- Medical, legal, and case support on site
- Stability, belonging, and reintegration
- Safety-focused, trauma-informed expectations
Community & funding
A coalition, not a single check.
A campus-scale permanent supportive housing project requires a layered capital plan and disciplined local partnerships. Its strongest case combines adaptive reuse with recurring support for health, operations, education, and resident services.
Public housing funds
Federal, state, and local housing programs can support acquisition, rehabilitation, leasing, operations, and rental assistance.
Healthcare funding
Eligible Medicaid services and healthcare partnerships can help support on-site behavioral and physical care.
Private philanthropy
Foundations, faith communities, local employers, and major donors can contribute catalytic capital and program support.
Earned community revenue
Carefully planned training, food service, event, and community-space programs can support operations without replacing public commitments.
Important: Every property, tax treatment, reimbursement stream, and operating forecast requires local legal, planning, clinical, and financial review. The model is a framework for a serious feasibility process — not a guarantee of revenue or tax status.
Reduces street homelessness
Moves vulnerable people from unsafe public spaces into managed homes with support.
Creates local jobs
Supports healthcare, social work, food service, maintenance, security, and administration roles.
Builds routine
Shared dining, walking paths, care, classes, and daily responsibilities create stability.
Anticipates concerns
Local planning must address safety, scale, transportation, and neighborhood questions transparently.
The proposal’s self-sustaining model
The original concept pairs reimbursable residential care with community programming and space use. These figures are planning assumptions from the proposal, not audited forecasts; local reimbursement rates, occupancy, staffing, eligibility, and property conditions will determine feasibility.
| Illustrative annual stream | Low | High | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 Medicaid / Medicare beds | $14.5M | $17.5M | Government / institutional |
| Conference & event rentals | $150K | $300K | Private pay |
| Culinary program & café | $250K | $450K | Consumer pay / tuition |
| Tech & learning labs | $100K | $200K | Education partnerships |
| Theater, driving & events | $130K | $300K | Tickets / fees |
| Total estimated gross revenue | $15.13M | $18.75M | Before operating costs |
Gross revenue is not profit. Residential care, food, clinical staffing, insurance, utilities, and maintenance create substantial expenses. Qualified advisors must validate every assumption before use.
Program references: HUD Continuum of Care. Funding eligibility depends on current rules and the specific project.
Who it serves
Built for people temporary fixes leave behind.
Different residents need different levels of privacy, care, and daily support. A campus can hold that range without reducing anyone to a category.
People experiencing chronic homelessness
Permanent supportive living for people who have cycled through streets and shelters for years.
Young people without stable housing
A structured community with education, mentorship, and pathways into work.
People who need ongoing care
Accessible assisted living with healthcare, meals, transportation, and help with daily life.
Explore the program
Six topics that make the case.
Each part answers a different question a mayor, agency, donor, care provider, or community partner needs to resolve before a pilot can move forward.
Property conversion
How campuses, malls, and commercial buildings can be screened for adaptive reuse.
Supportive care
How housing, clinical services, recovery, and daily-life support work as one system.
Campus operations
How smaller residential clusters connect to shared food, learning, health, and community spaces.
Community impact
How a pilot addresses street homelessness while creating jobs and restoring vacant property.
Funding & feasibility
How public programs, healthcare reimbursement, philanthropy, and earned revenue can be tested.
Rights & accountability
How fair access, resident dignity, public transparency, and measurable outcomes guide the work.
Printable resource
Community Campus Living Educational Handbook
A downloadable, printable introduction to the model is planned at $19.90. The purchase and download are coming soon; join the interest list to be notified when the handbook is ready.
A concept to shape with the right partners.
All care, staffing, childcare, clinical, training, hospice, and animal-support elements described here are proposed. They would require qualified partners, safety planning, legal and licensing review, funding, and site validation; no service or facility is presented as operating or guaranteed at every location.
This is a framework, not a shortcut. Each potential community requires independent validation before implementation, with the local context shaping the path ahead.
A responsible starting point
- Property suitability and accessibility
- Zoning, legal rights, and neighborhood impact
- Clinical operations and transportation
- Financing, reimbursement, and long-term outcomes
Bring it to your state
Start a serious conversation.
Request a confidential briefing for your agency, administration, faith community, philanthropy, or legislature. Share the place you serve and what you would like to explore.