Out With the Old, in With the New at Alexandria Community Shelter

ALEXANDRIA, VA – The 64-bed Alexandria Community Shelter has a whole new look. Yesterday, Carpenter’s Shelter cut the ribbon on the new and improved. In a heartwarming celebration December 11, the facility unveiled the striking transformation. The once somber, industrial-gray walls are gone. In its place is a vibrant, welcoming atmosphere, thanks to the nonprofit Beyond the Blueprint. 

“At Carpenter’s Shelter, we believe that people respond to their environment. It is great to see how these changes add a warm and serene feeling for our residents as they navigate through a very trying time,” said Carpenter’s Shelter Executive Director Shannon Steene.

Community members, city officials, volunteers, and Beyond the Blueprint team turned out on a raw rain-drenched afternoon for the ceremony.

The makeover, which began when Carpenter’s Shelter took over ACS in December 2023, seeks to create a space that feels more like a home. The redesign incorporates trauma-informed design elements, such as calming color schemes, natural light, and private areas for reflection or therapy.

“There are different feelings and emotions that colors can evoke. And so, for instance, we use greens, blues, and purples for the entryway. Those are actually the colors of trauma-informed design, which we kind of live by,” Tianna M. Spratley told Zebra. She is founder and executive director of Beyond the Blueprint. “It’s all about the visual, how it plays a role with your mental. The blues, the purples, and the greens of the world, those are inviting colors. Those are colors that say come on in. It offers openness, welcomeness, it’s vibrant, it’s fun and it’s positive. And then you’ve got colors we tend to steer clear of like red. Red usually symbolizes violence or blood or dark .”

The recent makeover has converted the shelter into a brighter, more comfortable space that feels like home rather than an institution.

LeBaron Frost Jr, an ACS resident, addressed the audience. Afterward, he sat down with The Zebra to talk about his journey. He has been living at the shelter for two months and has one month left to go. The shelter is a bridge, providing residents with a 90-day safety net as they plot their future. Frost, 54, was employed but a series of misfortunes caused him to lose his job, his girlfriend, and his livelihood. He landed at Carpenter’s Shelter.

“I just lost another job about seven or eight months ago and haven’t been able to find another one quick enough,” Frost revealed. “So, I wound up homeless. I came here and it was right before they started renovating, so I did get to see the before and after. It’s been a rough journey. I was in the psych ward, you know, suicidal. It is a challenge now, trying to get employed. It’s been touch and go, but it has been a real blessing to be here.”

Frost wondered about the makeover. He said it was almost anti-climactic, and he questioned whether it was counter-productive.

“It doesn’t seem to mesh with the unspoken message, which is, we want you to get out of here. We don’t really want you to stay here and get comfortable,” Frost mused aloud. “You know, sometimes the tenants will complain about food or something like that and I’ll say, hey, guys, it’s not meant to make you comfortable, it’s meant to motivate you to get out of here. My god, I can’t stand this food. OK, get out. Go do something with your life. Oh, this place looks like a dump. OK, go do something with your life.”

“In that sense, it makes you wonder,” Frost continued. “Okay, now everything looks all plush and you got these nice chairs, and you just want to kind of sit there. It just seems counter-productive to the original message.”

Frost concluded, “We want to rehabilitate you, we want you to get out of here. We don’t want you to call this home. We want you to call this a pit stop and we want you to go get your life together. And so in that way, it strikes me as a bit odd, but it does make sense that at this point in your life, you can enjoy some form of comfort, the simple comforts. “

Zebra posed Frost’s question to Tianna Spratley, Blueprint’s executive director.

“Oh, I love that question!” she grinned. “One resident said thank you to me. This inspires me to get up and get my own. And I said, you’ve got the right mindset because I want you to be comfortable here. I want you to thrive here. But I want that not so that you can stay here or you can reapply and you can give up that hope. Rather, use that energy to push you to want more out of life. It’s just so that you’re comfortable in the in-between.”

Carpenter’s Shelter aims to provide its homeless population with sustainable independence through shelter, and housing placement, guidance, education, and advocacy. Each year, more than nine hundred homeless and formerly homeless children, women and men access Carpenter’s Shelter’s services. Carpenter’s Shelter’s ultimate goal is to transition its clients to permanent, affordable housing.

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