That question came after years of watching friends spiral through systems that were never built for them. Watching housing, healthcare, and social services fail those who are sensitive, overworked, or already on the margins. Watching rural places like Orcas Island get reshaped by outside money and short-term thinking, and realizing that the tools we need already exist, but they’re scattered, underfunded, or disconnected.

Center for Creative Repair is a living experiment in place-based systems repair.
We research and prototype community-controlled, ecologically grounded models for housing, governance, and local economies.

We’re integrating land, culture, infrastructure, and community power into models that are:

• Resident-led — Planning that centers lived experience, cultural memory, and ecological awareness

• Permanently affordable — Legal structures that block speculation and reward long-term care

• Modular and adaptable — Housing clusters that can evolve over time, with real ownership pathways and legal security

• Culturally rooted — Workshops, music, art, and gathering spaces that strengthen identity and challenge extraction

What Makes Us Different

We are not outsiders delivering charity. We are the residents, builders, caregivers, and organizers who live here. Many of us are disabled, working-class, neurodivergent, queer, retired, or deeply tied to the land and local economy. We rely on one another to stay here.

And unlike conventional development, we are not working on a rigid timeline. Our process follows the pace of the land, the materials, and the people. Because durable systems don’t come from speed—they come from trust, relationship, and time.

.