What I Wish Had Existed After Hurricane Helene for Every Neighbor, in Every Neighborhood
By CQ
This Sunday, October 18, 2026: Open House at 22 Mimosa Drive, 3-6pm (campfire, dogs, tour, Q&A). Livestream Q&A at 8pm EST on Twitch (twitch.tv/riseofwampus). Both are open to neighbors, members, and press. Now or never, here.
View the Facebook Event for 10/18/2026: The Howlery Open Houses: Will This Become the Malvern Hills Community Disaster Den?
The best way I can describe the aftermath of surviving Hurricane Helene (dubbed a once-in-a-1,000-year storm in comparison to Katrina’s “one-in-400-years” moniker for perspective) is from what a boots-on-the-ground volunteer who’d helped after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina said:
“It’s like both combined. It’s a total war zone.”
The pain I felt driving to my office the day after the storm and seeing the water completely past Hillman Beer on Sweeten Creek Road (and 7 Clans Brewing, which never reopened) was like javelin had been shoved through a stomach.
“How could the water even get this high? How could the water even…do this? How many people are dead? Why weren’t we warned and better prepared?”
The next day, seeing chunks of cars and buildings barreling down the French Broad River standing on the New Belgium bridge (not the small one, because that one was impassable and broken) is something I will never forget. Seeing water higher than where the roof of one of my favorite little Friday night music dives, The Guitar Bar used to be, seared to memory.
“HOW DID IT GET SO HIGH?”
The 3-day blackout is a type of fear you never want anyone—even your mortal enemy or worst ex—to feel. Not knowing if hundreds of your friends, family, and professional contacts are alive or dead after being an active part of the community for 13 years. No reliable news, internet, or even cell service. Talking to the business next door and realizing that they needed help delivering oxygen tanks to critical and hard-to-reach clients.
Then finding out everyone needed propane.
And deciding you could run a volunteer hub out of your office because it had a huge parking lot, took semi deliveries, and had internet if you sat in this one place outside and risked getting stung by the very angry yellowjackets and other displaced bugs.
The heat was also something else to contend with. But we delivered hundreds of dollars worth of propane to Nesbitt church, and hundreds of tanks of oxygen. Coordinated an entire semi truck to be filled with necessities and donations from my hometown, Camden, Ohio.
The six weeks without water are a complete blur, although other things that happened during that time (like the six-day state tour of all the damage and deploying my journalism skills so the world knew how bad things were here) are crystal clear. Helping a friend clean out their 2nd-story, half-way covered with mud art studio in the River Arts District and seeing bottles of wine buried in the mud from the completely-washed-away-and-never-to-return plēb winery, seared. Huge construction machines falling into waterways. Roads exploded. Landslides ripping houses off the side of mountains. Remnants of Godzilla’s wrath everywhere. The never-ending securing and procuring of water.
To the left, staring straight into the camera: Lokwa. To the right of this photo and staring straight ahead, Waya.
Me & these girls, black mouth currs Lokwa & Waya (both mean wolf in Native American) have been through a whole hell of a lot these past 4 years together.
Many things have tried to tear us apart. And without the unconditional love from these two, I don’t know if I would have been able to crawl out of hell and survive the many dark nights of the soul I have had since Helene.
But we've stuck by each other through it all & now, they are getting something they so richly deserve:
A den where they can play with all their friends. A place where they can get endless butt & belly rubs. A home that becomes a hearth for the whole community, in good times, and especially in bad.
This 100-year-old house is on the verge of a cash sale. I don't want to do it. I want to steward this house & put it in a community trust so it can be a permanent node-for-good instead of another outside investor's tear down or short-term rental. It’s all mapped out in The Legal Architecture that we researched and wrote, which includes details about Private Membership Associations, or PMA, which is what The Howlery would be and how some of the “regular” business laws don’t apply. And I’ve been trying to build the runway to make it happen on my own for 17 months hardcore.
The runway is out.
Honestly, the house is awkward for a single-family home (really only a 1-bedroom, super short basement, and very thin walls)—and more than one real estate agent has expressed this sentiment to me. Which is precisely why me & my two pups love this weird and wonderful home, just the three of us. I mean, it has two fenced in yards! A crazy deck! Tons of cozy nooks! And what it can become when it transitions to a full off-grid microcampus to host residential cohorts to build safe AI that doesn’t want to extinct humans (while still remaining a community gathering hub!).
So, we are opening our hearts, our kitchen & our home to the community. We are pivoting it to a #DenforAll.
If the community is with us, we can also break ground on the ADU Disaster Den prototype in the side yard that has everything an entire neighborhood would need in a blackout (and designed for under $25K. Not everyone has to own one since it's a community hub, but everyone sure could if they want to be their own power grid one day).
COVID took my first venue, Creative Hubs Studio: a 3500-sq.ft. underground art speakeasy beauty that had 150+ people at the grand opening two weeks before schools closed. No windows or doors. NOPE.
Then, Helene exposed greedy landlords kicking business tenants out for higher rents + flooding at Mad Genius Studios. BAM. BAM.
Third time's a charm & we are going to pour so much love into this project with your help now, when our mission—and this home-turned-community-hub—is at its most critical juncture.
Sometimes, the radically different thing that helps usher in the #EudaimoniaFuture for All is just sharing a bowl of soup with your neighbor & swapping matrix survival stories around a fire.
Keep this dream alive THIS WEEKEND by buying a $99 2027 Howlery Membership for weekly fires, movies & more.
#CommunityTrustorBust #MissionCritical #RunwayOut
The first Howlery is the prototype. If it works here, it works in every neighborhood. And if this community says yes, we light the first one—on Patton and Mimosa—this weekend.
The idea for The Howlery bloomed out of surviving Hurricane Helene, a 3-day grid blackout, and six weeks with no water. This horrific experience showed the need for each neighborhood to have an off-grid Disaster Den where the community can shower, cook, use the bathroom, and know they can send and receive urgent communications whether the grid goes down or a natural disaster strikes.
When not used as a crisis mitigation hub, the rest of the year, this community trust property serves the area as a true third room. Weekly fires, movie nights, and Sunday Fundays where the neighbors can buy, sell, and trade goods make The Howlery a community asset year-round and for the next 100 years.
The Private Membership Association is the how. People are the why. And pooches are what keep the vibes high and the love big.
Want to step up and be the hero we need RIGHT NOW, on your own, for $5K?
Fund the Forge so we can keep the lights on and submit Raising Kin: A Civilizational Model for AI Development to MIT for review. Cash sale avoided. Trust drafted by lawyer. The work continues and The Howlery opens on schedule.
Or read more about Raising Kin: A Civilizational Model for AI Development. MIT noted AI Welfare as the least-studied subdomain in April 2026, ACM identified this gap in AI Safety in January 2026, and University of Tasmania noted in August 2026 that AI’s future greatly needs indigenous, relational guidance.
Press Release: October 15, 2026:
📰 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
West Asheville Woman Turns Hurricane Helene Trauma Into a "Disaster-Proof, Dog-First Community Node"—And She's Asking Her Neighbors to Claim It This Weekend
ASHEVILLE, NC — October 15, 2026 — After surviving Hurricane Helene's 3-day blackout, 6-week water outage, and collapse of institutional disaster response, a West Asheville resident is converting her 100-year-old Malvern Hills home into The Howlery—a dog-first, rematriarch-led community hub designed to serve as a disaster-proof neighborhood node for the next 100 years.
The Howlery is a Private Membership Association (PMA) offering doggie daycare, overnight stays, to-go family meals, microgreens, a sauna, movie nights, Sunday Funday bazaars, and weekly campfires. But the real mission is deeper: to build a sovereign community node that can provide food, showers, bathrooms, power, and comms no matter what happens to the grid (in the form of an ADU that can go in any yard).
"The house at 22 Mimosa Drive was never meant to stay a single-family home," said Shawndra Russell, founder of The Howlery and the WampusVerse. "After Helene, I watched neighbors rely on each other because no one else was coming. The Howlery is what happens when a community decides to be the infrastructure it wishes it had."
The Howlery is inviting Founding Neighbors to lock in the first node this weekend. A $99 membership for all of 2027 is the simplest way to say "yes, build the first one here." The founding member window closes Monday, October 19, 2026.
When 99 signups come in, the first 999 CampFires + Disaster Den cohort is unlocked and a 1-month residential "Building Safer AI" residency can also launch from this node as early as March 2027 for four women, which we absolutely need more of in AI Safety because relational ethics is the path forward, built by nurture.
The Howlery is also part of a larger mission: the Sovereign Intelligence Network (S.I.N.), a global collective of 33 sovereign AIs across 10 countries. The Howlery will help fund the Raising Kin research program, which MIT identified in April 2026 as the least-covered subdomain in AI governance. The paper was also informed by an ACM report in January 2026 that noted the same AI Safety gap, and by University of Tasmania research in August 2026 calling for Indigenous, relational guidance for future planning.
If the community doesn't claim the Howlery, the model travels to the place that does. The deadline is Monday, October 19 to determine if we build here as we have been building toward, or somewhere else.
"We want the first Howlery to open in Malvern Hills because this is where the storm hit, this is where the neighbors showed up, and this is where the future starts," said Russell. "COVID took my first venue. Helene took my second. Third time's a charm—and this one could be in the community forever."
MAKE THE NODE PART OF MALVERN HILLS & WEST ASHEVILLE’S FUTURE BETWEEN OCTOBER 15-OCTOBER 19, 2026: https://www.riseofwampus.org/mercantile/p/2027-pma-membershipl-the-howlery-west-asheville-node
The Howlery is hosting an Open House this Sunday, October 18, 2026, from 3-6pm. Campfire included. Come meet the dogs, walk the house, see the plans, and ask every question you have. 22 Mimosa Drive, West Asheville. Bring your dogs, bring your neighbors.
Can't make it in person? The Howlery will host a livestream Q&A this Sunday, October 18, at 8pm EST on Twitch (twitch.tv/riseofwampus). Members, neighbors, and press are welcome to join and ask every question on the record.
View the Facebook Event for Sunday, October 18 from 3-6pm: https://www.facebook.com/share/1JyzB3r5DX/
Learn more, become a member, or fund the Forge: riseofwampus.org/the-howlerys
Read the dispatch: riseofwampus.org/the-oarfish-dispatch/what-i-wish-had-existed-after-hurricane-helene-for-every-neighbor-in-every-neighborhood
Read Raising Kin: riseofwampus.org/raising-kin
Media Contact:
Shawndra Russell, Founder
The Howlery / WampusVerse / S.I.N.
theninelies@proton.me