Rent hikes, zoning changes, and development pressures, displacement is often discussed in such policy terms. But for those who experience it, displacement is far more intimate as it can mean the sudden loss of a home, the disintegration of community, and the unsettling feeling of being unwelcome in familiar spaces. As cities like Seattle grapple with housing crises and rapid urban development, the idea of transitional housing is rapidly becoming more important in architectural and development discourse. Transitional housing can take the form of shelters, motels, and temporary apartments that serve as first stops for people uprooted by force or circumstance. Can applications of design shift these short-term spaces from mere holding stations into environments that nurture dignity, identity, and healing?
To explore this question, I spoke with two people on opposite ends of Seattle’s displacement conversation: Rico Quirindongo, Director at the City ofSeattle’s Office of Planning & Community Development (OPCD), has experience in design, lending important insight into the built environment’s role in supporting displaced communities; and Selam (who preferred not to share her last name for safety reasons). Selam fled war-torn Eritrea in 2018 to eventually resettle in Seattle and she shared what displacement feels like in her body and in her everyday life. These stories reveal the gaps that can exist between institutional definitions and the lived reality of displacement and transition in Seattle. Participatory design can help close this gap by creating transitional spaces where displaced residents can rediscover safety, agency, and a sense of home.
In my conversation with Rico Quirindongo, he explained that Seattle tracks displacement through indicators such as rent burden, median income, and redevelopment activity. “We look at where house-holds are spending more than 30 percent of income on rent and where new construction is likely to push people out,” he said. Quirindongo added that these metrics feed into two key policy tools:
1. Equitable Development Initiative (EDI): a city grant program that channels roughly $20 million annually to community-based, BIPOC-led projects aimed at building economic stability, cultural space, and anti-displacement infrastructure.
2. Comprehensive Plan 2025: Seattle’s twenty-year land-use blueprint that will guide rezoning, housing targets, and infrastructure investments. The plan’s anti-displacement chapter will draw heavily on EDI data and community input.
Selam’s definition was one of a visceral nature, rather than numeric. “Being displaced is like losing a part of your identity,” she said. “You leave your routine, your neighbors, even your corner store. It’s not just moving—it’s being pushed.” She added that the hardest part is the slow erosion of self-worth: “You start to feel you don’t even deserve a home. You’re always a guest—or worse, a burden.” This tension between data and lived experience surfaced repeatedly in both my conversations. At one point, Quirindongo acknowledged it candidly: “We try to humanize the data, but there’s always a gap.” When displacement is treated primarily as a statistic, the trauma, grief, and long-term instability people carry can fade from view. While the city may celebrate moving someone into anew unit, the individual may mourn the loss of everything that made them feel at home.
Displaced residents often cycle through shelters, motels, or shared apartments which are spaces intended to be temporary, yet often are occupied by the same individual or family for months or years. Selam recalled her first few months in Seattle: sleeping on a living room floor with seven relatives, then eventually moving to nonprofit-run shelters. “The walls were bare, the lights were cold, and rules were taped everywhere telling you what not to do,” she said. Fluorescent glare and echoing corridors left
her “feeling exposed and invisible at the same time.” Selam did find respite in her experience of such housing through a modest shelter kitchen, “On Saturdays a few of us cooked dishes from back home. Someone painted flowers on the wall. That room became a place of peace.” For Selam, dignity hinged on the ability to leave a personal imprint: “Spaces you can leave your fingerprints on—they feel safe.”
Quirindongo stressed that such emotional details are starting to influence city projects. “We’re weaving trauma-informed principles into transitional housing—more natural light, acoustic control, and flexible rooms that let families rearrange furniture,” he said. Still, he admitted that budget constraints often lead to functional but impersonal buildings. Designers are routinely in a situation where they must overlook subtle yet powerful sensory cues—smell, ritual, food preparation, prayer, cultural needs, and elements of ‘home’. For example, in her transitional housing unit, Selam struggled to find a quiet corner to pray or a place to cook her own meals. “You’re constantly reminded the space isn’t really yours,” she noted. A more nuanced and human-centered, trauma-informed approach would put the needs of privacy, autonomy, and cultural continuity alongside maximizing a metric such as shelter capacity. This could drastically improve the experience of those in transitional housing which could ultimately benefit their integration into our city and help the development and sustainability of unique and culturally diverse communities. This work is greater than the sum of its parts, it would have a beneficial effect on our neighborhoods, our citizens, our guests, and our city.
Another major design challenge, aside from privacy and cultural considerations, is one of agency: are displaced people co-creators of their environments or passive recipients? OPCD strives for continual community input through public forums, neighborhood walks, and advisory committees attached to programs like the EDI mentioned earlier. “We try to build relationships, not just extract feedback,” Quirindongo said, while admitting the process can remain “too top-down.” Selam’s lived experience illustrates why this consideration matters: “nobody asked me what I needed. They just told me where to go,” she said. Even in longer-term housing, she had no say over layout or amenities. “You feel like a guest, not a resident.” Such power imbalances can nullify well-intended designs as they might be suited for the wrong occupant or fulfilling needs not applicable.
True participation and collaborative design decisions demands more than surveys at the end of schematic design. Suggested methods that could improve these issues include: co-design workshops, decision-making roles for residents, and budgets that value local expertise as professional knowledge. Without these shifts, architecture risks repeating paternalistic tropes—designing for rather than with. Bridging the gap between policy and lived experience is not just about closing a disconnect between the residents and the city metrics, it is also about imagining new relationships between people and place in general. If we are to transform transitional housing into environments of belonging, then architects, planners, and policymakers can begin by adopting strategies that reframe the role of design itself.
First, we should normalize participatory design.This means moving displaced residents upstream in the process—co-creating project goals, developing design briefs together, and compensating participants for their expertise. Community-led charrettes (intense, diverse, collaborative sessions) and story-gathering initiatives should be embedded at the start of the process, not added on after the fact.
Second, trauma-informed spatial practices should be centralized. By minimizing sensory overload, providing zones of choice through features like curtains and lockable storage, and using warm, natural materials, designers can make transitional spaces feel calming and responsive. Flexible layouts with movable partitions and modular furniture can also reflect the diverse family structures and cultural rituals that shape daily life.
Finally, we must celebrate cultural expression. Integrating communal kitchens, prayer rooms, and gathering spaces that residents can personalize affirms both identity and belonging. From art programs to landscape design, design details should echo the cultures of those who inhabit these places in order to help people, as Selam said, “remember who they are.”
These strategies signal a needed shift in such types of architectural practice; one from designing facades to designing belonging. They also reflect Quirindongo’s call to pair policy investments with community-defined outcomes, ensuring public dollars create spaces that heal, rather than just houses. More than a checklist, this is a call to reframe design as an act of solidarity. Displacement will likely remain a reality in many global cities, but our response to this can and should change. My conversations with Quirindongo and Selam show that the gulf between policy and lived experience is not inevitable: it is a design problem looking for a design solution, especially within the realm of transitional housing.
For emerging architects, the lesson is clear: Every space we touch carries the potential to wound or to mend. Cities must become places where even temporary shelter respects permanence in people’s identity, agency, and dignity. That process begins not with data, but with listening; not with solving for people, but with sharing power with them. Architecture, at its best, is a vessel for compassion. Designing with displaced communities at the center means building not just for shelter, but for dignity, memory, and hope. One project, one kitchen, one fingerprint at a time.
