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Sometimes, a real estate deal gone south is a gift from God. In Brian Boven’s case, the evaporation of a planned closing on a 23-acre Michigan estate in 2019 turned out to be the catalyst to fulfill a vision he and his wife had shared to provide independent living for young adults with special needs. Together with co-founder Kay Wood, they created Homes Giving Hope, which today provides home and community to 18 people in four houses—and it’s growing fast.
But to make it happen, he had to buy the estate himself—a move that surprised his wife as much as it did him. The stately house on the mostly wooded land near the heart of Rockford, Mich., had been built by old family friends as a place to live with and care for their adult son, Marty, who had Down syndrome.
“When they had passed away in their 90s, Marty’s brother and his wife moved in to care for him, into his [Marty’s brother’s] 70s,” Boven says. “When they could no longer do it, they called me to sell the property.” Boven gladly took on the responsibility, though the home’s setup was out of the ordinary.
“I showed the house to a couple who were so ready to buy it, but they called to say circumstances had changed and they couldn’t,” he recalls. “At that point there was that whisper that said, ‘This is the time, this is your house, buy it.’ I came home and told my wife we were buying it.”
Sara Boven was surprised at first by the new investment, but she was fully on board with the mission. Through her work experience, which entails helping adults with special needs to secure meaningful employment, she knows finding appropriate housing is often the bigger challenge. Boven describes Sara’s conundrum: “She said, ‘I’m finding them jobs, but [the adults] are still stuck in their mom and dad’s basement, and the parents don’t know what to do when the day comes that they can’t keep up with caretaking anymore.’”
As serendipity would have it, the day Brian discussed the purchase with his wife, Sara ran into church friend Kay Wood at the gym and told her about the house and the impulse to launch a nonprofit to support independent living. Wood herself had retired as an educator of adults with disabilities and immediately signed on to help. Today, Wood is director of admissions and Sara Boven is CEO of Homes Giving Hope.
Learning to Live on Your Own, and With Others
“Our tenants,” Wood says, “are people who drown in the responsibilities of independent living: planning your day, getting up on your own, taking care of yourself, finding work and getting there on time. But they don’t need or want the heavy supervision of a group home.” They also want and need the community of others. But, building it on one’s own can be a monumental challenge.
“In school settings, students with disabilities often get separated and don’t get the social skills they need later in life. Isolation, loneliness and vulnerability are common,” Wood says.
Today, 18 residents live in three houses plus a duplex, each with a residential advisor who helps manage the household and plan activities. A fifth house is under construction. (If you’re counting, that’s five property acquisitions Brian Boven has engineered in just over five years.)
“I knew we were on the right track when, about six months in, a tenant’s parent told me: ‘For the first time in 30 years my wife and I went on a vacation by ourselves and knew our daughter was being cared for even better than we can.’” —Brian Boven
HGH also offers residents coaching in social skills and opportunities for outings, such as playing pickleball or walking to get ice cream. “In each home we have four planned connection times each week.” That includes devotional time, where “people talk about their spiritual journey,” says Wood. “We are Christ-centered, but non-denominational. There’s not a requirement to go to a certain church.”
‘I Would Have Missed Out on a Lot’
Meghan Beggs was 24 in 2020 when she became the very first resident, moving amid a rush of excitement and more than a little trepidation, she says. “I wanted to move out of my parents’ house because I was there all my life and wanted more independence and freedom. The first few months I was a little scared and sad and then I got over it” as other housemates moved in. “It has become like a family, having a community of friends and doing things together,” Beggs says.
Beggs and some other residents work at the New Growth Project, a farm and store created by her mother and others to employ people with disabilities. “I think I would have missed out on a lot and not made as many friends if I had just stayed at my parents’. I still have really bad anxiety, but I try to push through that,” she says.
Beggs’ mother, Christine O'Driscoll, says HGH has given her daughter a platform to develop independence and be part of a community. “The support for our daughter from the Bovens and the staff at HGH has allowed our daughter to grow in confidence and self-advocacy. We are so grateful for their mission to provide independent living for individuals like our girl.”
The HGH model of supported, independent living with a spiritual dimension has caught the attention of families far beyond Rockford, Boven says. “The word is spreading. We have people from all over the U.S. looking for housing, and others looking for us to mentor them,” to create their own version. “We can’t raise money fast enough to keep up with demand.”
The limiting factor is not landing real estate deals to provide the housing—Boven has that well in hand—but rather finding and retaining the resident staff. “I’m very protective of our staff, because the burnout rate is high.” Although his fundraising success has been prodigious in the first five years, he says, “What keeps me up at night is the next five years of exponential growth. … People are very cautious right now [financially] so it’s harder to raise large sums of money.”
A Real Estate Rolodex and the Heart of a Servant Leader
Wood has every confidence that Boven will meet the moment. “Because of his real estate practice, he knows so many people, and he maintains good relationships with everyone he comes into contact with,” she says. “At each of our two fundraisers a year, he’s out there knocking on doors and bringing in what we need. He finds the places for the homes because he knows people, and he is a great negotiator.”
“Brian approaches everyone as who God made them to be: He sees the person first, not the disability.” —Abigail Woronko, coordinator of residential affairs for Homes Giving Hope
Beyond that, though, Boven has a genuine connection with the residents and an abiding love for them. “Brian treats everyone like a real person,” Beggs says. “Sometimes people don’t know how to act around people with disabilities because they aren’t around them often, and they talk down to us like a child. He talks to me like an adult.”
“He loves our residents hard. He gets people with disabilities and their needs,” Wood says.
“Every single person on our board and in our organization would say without Brian we wouldn’t exist,” she adds. “He’s one of a kind. He works through any challenge or problem. From day one, he understood what Sara and I wanted to do, and he has made it happen.”
REALTOR® Brian Boven of Five Star Real Estate in Rockford, Mich., is co-founder of Homes Giving Hope.
