Who we are
Everyone deserves a place to begin again — and to stay.
Mai Heaven is a residential care provider opening small, permanent homes for people the system runs out of options for. Veterans. Adults with disabilities. People leaving a hospital, a treatment bed, or a jail cell. Young people who turned eighteen in foster care and were expected to figure it out.
Not a shelter. Not a program with an end date stapled to it. A door that closes behind you, with your name on the lease.
A note from the founder
Why we’re building Mai Heaven
We started Mai Heaven because of a fact that should bother everyone: the people who are hardest to place are the ones who need a home the most. They sit in hospital beds for weeks because there is nowhere to discharge them. They are called “too complex,” refused by one program after another, until the list of places that will even read the referral runs out.
Those are exactly the people we are building for — not the easy placements, the ones everyone else says no to. Adults with disabilities. People leaving treatment or incarceration with nowhere safe to land. Veterans. Young people ageing out of care.
What we hold is a standard: small homes where staff know your name and your routines, where the door locks and stays yours, and where “difficult to place” is a reason to try harder, not an excuse to look away.
A door that closes behind you — and lets you stay.
— The founder, Mai Heaven
Why permanent, and why that is the whole argument
Most of this sector is built around time limits. Ninety days. Six months. Maybe a year if you do everything right.
We think that is backwards, and the research agrees. Transitional housing has historically screened out the people with the greatest barriers — the ones hardest to place, who need it most. Then, when the clock runs out, it puts them back where they started and calls it a completed program.
of people who previously experienced chronic homelessness stay stably housed within a year in permanent supportive housing — and costs to the public fall by nearly half compared with leaving someone on the street.
Sources: National Academies, DESC, National Alliance to End Homelessness
There is a further finding worth sitting with. In a New York City study, people given housing without requiring treatment first were 3.4 times less likely to use substances than those made to earn their housing through treatment. Stability is not the reward at the end of recovery. It is very often the thing that makes recovery possible at all.
What we believe, plainly
Small, not institutional
Six to twelve people in a real house on a real street, not a wing of a facility. Scale is the enemy of dignity. You cannot know someone in a building of ninety.
We do not screen for easy
The people screened out of everything else are the reason this exists. If we decline someone it will be because we genuinely cannot keep them safe — and we will say so plainly and help them find who can.
Your home, not our program
Your room, your mail, your visitors, your door. Rules exist for safety, never for convenience or control.
Honesty over comfort
We would rather tell you a hard thing early than a kind thing that turns out to be untrue. That applies to families, to referral partners, and to the people who live with us.
Recovery is not a rent condition
People stabilise faster when housing is not the prize for behaving. We meet people where they actually are, on the day they actually arrive.
Belonging is the outcome
Beds are countable, so beds get counted. But nobody's life got better because a bed was occupied. The measure is whether someone has people, a routine, and something to look forward to.
The name
Mai — 梅 — is the plum blossom. It opens in late winter, on bare branches, while everything around it still looks dead. It is not a flower that waits for good conditions. It is the sign that the season is capable of turning.
We chose it because that is the moment we want to be there for. Not after someone has put their life back together. During. When it still looks like winter.
If you are reading this because you need somewhere to go
We will always give you a real answer rather than a polite one.
What we can do now is put you on a waiting list that a person actually reads, and tell you honestly whether we are likely to be an option for you. If we are not, we will say that too.
If you are in crisis right now, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). Veterans can press 1. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
Hear from us when a home opens near you
Leave your email and we’ll reach out the moment a home opens in your area — one email, nothing else.
One email when a home opens near you, and nothing else — no newsletter, no sharing your address. Need a placement right now? Please use these resources.