Transparency Isn't Optional

I hate asking for money. Hate it. Every time I hit “send” on an email or draft a campaign page, a voice in my head that says: Who do you think you are?

 

That voice is loud. It tells me people will laugh. It tells me they’ll roll their eyes at the idea that one woman with no real estate license, no construction company, no deep-pocketed family, could possibly build something like this.

 

And some days? That voice almost wins.

 

Transparency is uncomfortable. It means pulling back the curtain and daring people to judge what they see. It means admitting when something is hard, or when the numbers don’t work out as neatly as I wish they would. It means saying out loud that housing at a truly affordable price point may be nearly impossible to build today — but we’re going to keep trying anyway.

 

That means sometimes I’ll have to say things people don’t want to hear. Sometimes I’ll have to admit that we can’t solve everything at once. Sometimes I’ll have to be blunt about what’s broken and how long it may take to fix it. But that honesty is part of the work.

 

For me, transparency isn’t a strategy. It’s a philosophy.

 

If people are going to trust me — as a founder, as a disabled woman, as someone bold enough to start a company built on “impossible” — then they deserve the truth. The whole truth.

 

And the truth is this: I’m scared. Some days I feel small. Most days I wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. And some nights I lie awake imagining the people who will dismiss me before they ever understand the vision.

 

But here’s the other truth: I’m still here. I’m still pushing forward. I’m still stubborn enough to believe this is possible.

 

Transparency means I won’t act like building homes at truly affordable prices is easy — because I know it’s not. I won’t act like I have some secret safety net — because I sure as hell don’t. What I do have is lived experience, fire in my gut, and a refusal to believe that the way housing works today is the way it has to keep working tomorrow.

 

That’s the whole of it: messy and imperfect, but real. And if Little Haven is going to exist, it has to be built on nothing less.