The Lavender Home Project is a culmination of years of research, community work, exploration, and self-reflection. Started as an extension of Drue McPherson’s Master of Architecture Thesis, HOUSE, HUMAN, HOME (2025), the Lavender Home Project focuses on the collected histories, domestic life, community building, and safety of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, Plus (LGBTQIA2S+) individuals and communities. The house, the site of domestic performance, becomes the background in a series of self-discoveries. Houses create a separation from the exterior environment, allowing for a sense of privacy. The representation of the self, the collection of objects and memories, a sense of security, and emotional connection create a perception of home that remains deeply personal. Home and the domestic realm can represent a wide variety of sentiments by LGBTQIA2S+ individuals; good, bad, and neutral. The image of the house in Western culture carries cultural value, which has historically been viewed as heterosexual and family-oriented. The consistent tension between LGBTQIA2S+ individuals and the house and homemaking, have produced insecurity, trauma, and a need for many LGBTQIA2S+ persons to find community and build upon chosen family.[1]

Queer-identifying individuals face systemic housing challenges that are disproportionate to cisgender, heterosexual individuals.[2] Queer housing instability, ongoing discrimination regardless of protective laws, political beliefs, Christian-centric norms, and a lack of inclusive spaces within culture further create inequity for queer individuals. The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that forty percent of unhoused youth identify as LGBTQIA2S+ in the United States.[3] A study by the Williams Institute at UCLA[4] found that seventeen percent of LGBTQIA2S+ individuals who participated in their surveys over three years (2016-2019) had experienced houselessness during their lifetime.[5] Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and Transgender individuals face housing insecurity at a higher rate than cisgender, sexual minorities.[6] It is undeniable that the political climate in the Trump era of 2025 and beyond will continue to create deeper disparities in discrimination and housing insecurity for LGBTQIA2S+ people.

Advocacy, creating access to resources, and innovative housing programs help to foster resiliency and empowerment in the queer community. Housing, community, and home-building help to provide safety and security for queer people. The Lavender Home Project will remain an ongoing community of artists and makers that create representations of queer homes and queer domesticity. The Lavender Home Project store will feature items designed, painted, or handcrafted by queer people to create awareness of queer housing insecurity. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to OutFront Kalamazoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan, an organization currently working on housing projects that create security and community for LGBTQIA2S+ individuals. Working with local existing LGBTQIA2S+ organizations helps to maintain a connection to local communities and further develops programs that are built on social justice frameworks.

José Esteban Muñoz has argued that “a queer aesthetic can potentially function like a great refusal because art manifests itself in such a way that the political imagination can spark new ways of perceiving and acting on a reality that is itself potentially changeable.”[7] Many queer individuals seek creative forms of making, art and/or craft, to explore their place within culture. Muñoz used a rejection of traditional aesthetics to reimagine a utopian future that renders the queer body as harmonious and accepted within dominant culture. Within The Lavender Home Project, Queer Home Portraits embrace and celebrate the domestic spheres of queer individuals who have created lives through their individual and collective explorations of home making. Each painted home portrait is representational of a queer individual, family, or chosen family as participatory stakeholders in domestic performance and resistance.  

The Lavender Home Project is currently contributing twenty percent of art sales from local artists and makers and collecting additional donations for OutFront Kalamazoo. Of the many programs offered by OutFront Kalamazoo, Legacy House is a six-bed transitional housing facility that serves queer-identifying youth between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who are experiencing houselessness. Legacy House is a branch of the OutProud Safe Program at OutFront Kalamazoo that focuses on combating queer houselessness in Kalamazoo County. Legacy House operations and programming strive to be evidence-based, trauma-informed, and equity-focused.

[1] A chosen family is a group of individuals who intentionally support, connect and love one another, often distant from family of origin.

[2] Bianca D.M. Wilson, Soon Kyu Choi, Gary W. Harper, Marguerita Lightfoot, Stephen Russell, and Ilan H. Meyer, “Homelessness Among LGBT Adults in the US,” Williams Institute, UCLA, May 2020, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-homelessness-us/.

[3] “Homelessness Among the LGBTQ Community,” National Coalition for the Homeless, March 8, 2023, https://nationalhomeless.org/lgbtq-homelessness/.

[4] The Williams Institute is a leading research center focused on US law in regard to sexual orientation and gender identity.

[5] “Homelessness Among LGBT Adults in the US,” Williams Institute.

[6] “Homelessness Among LGBT Adults in the US,” Williams Institute.

[7] José Esteban Muñoz, “Just Like Heaven,” in Cruising Utopias, New York and London, New York University Press, 2009, 135.

CITED 

Muñoz, José Esteban. “Just Like Heaven.” In Cruising Utopias: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 131-146. New York and London: New York University Press, 2009.

“Homelessness Among the LGBTQ Community.” National Coalition for the Homeless, accessed January 3, 2025, https://nationalhomeless.org/lgbtq-homelessness/.

Wilson, Bianca D.M., Soon Kyu Choi, Gary W. Harper, Marguerita Lightfoot, Stephen Russell, and Ilan H. Meyer. “Homelessness Among LGBT Adults in the US,” Williams Institute School of Law, UCLA, May 2020, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-homelessness-us/.