Ruby’s Place Tiny Homes

Trauma-Informed Design for Supportive Housing

Restorative Pathways is an Alameda-based organisation that provides services and shelter for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Betty’s Village is the nation’s first shelter for battered women and serves single women and men with children who have experienced domestic violence or human trafficking.

As a development consultant, we assisted in a feasibility study for the shelter. The principal complaint to the organisation was over-sharing of facilities for habitation in the shelters. Due to budget and zoning conditions at the time, a new purpose-built shelter wasn’t achievable at the time.

However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, shared living environments were no longer legal under shelter-in-place restrictions. The City of Hayward stepped in and provided Restorative Pathways with mobile homes, offering individual units where families could safely isolate. The organisation noticed a clear trend: families were staying longer, not because they had to, but because they could live the way they wanted to. They were afforded autonomy and privacy—essential criteria in trauma-informed design.

That insight became the foundation for the Tiny Homes proposal. Using the city’s relaxed planning restrictions and emergency housing policies, we proposed creating a small community of Tiny Homes — permanent, purpose-built units that could replace the temporary mobile homes and provide a more dignified, resilient alternative to transitional living. Restorative Pathways now operates eight Tiny Homes on-site.

What started as an emergency response evolved into a new model for emergency.