Community First tiny home community for the homeless expanding

AUSTIN, Texas - Austin's homeless crisis continues to pose a challenge for city leaders, with just not enough shelter and housing space to meet the need.

The city also recently learned that there are thousands more people without a place to live than originally thought.

The non-profit Mobile Loaves and Fishes has been taking matters into their own hands by building a whole neighborhood full of permanent affordable housing.

FOX 7 Austin's John Krinjak spoke with Alan Graham, founder of the Community First Village, about the community's efforts to combat homelessness.

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JOHN KRINJAK: So we spoke to you last, I believe, in late 2022, as you guys were kind of on the precipice of this big expansion. Tell us what has happened since then. 

ALAN GRAHAM: Well, currently, Mobile Loaves and Fishes sits on 51 acres, and there's about 535 homes. We just completed our last home in phase two, at the end of 2023. In 2023, spring time, we broke ground on 51 acres directly across the street, and four or five months later broke ground on another 76 acres overall for Burleson Road. That's going to add approximately 1400 homes to the inventory of our ability in the city to lift our neighbors up off the street. So it's a big deal, big expansion.

JOHN KRINJAK: You hear a lot about, you know, issues happening in shelters, some of these new makeshift shelters that have gone up in hotels, you know, issues with crime. Why do you feel like this approach works where people actually they have a home, right? They have a tiny home that they live in. Why has this sort of made sense in your mind?

ALAN GRAHAM: No matter what neighborhood you live in in Austin, Texas, there is crime in your neighborhood. No matter what neighborhood you live in Austin, Texas. There are drugs being consumed. Our neighborhood is not dissimilar from every neighborhood in Austin, Texas. We just have a level of control over that neighborhood and management over that neighborhood, where we like to call it. And my wife and I live there. We've been there for seven years. After having raised our family for nearly 35 years in Westlake Hills, the most phenomenal neighborhood, the most peaceful neighborhood that we've ever lived in. With a side salad of tension.

JOHN KRINJAK: What does it do for people who have lived there? In what ways does it change them to have that place?

ALAN GRAHAM: So our model is extraordinarily relational as opposed to transactional. A number of people believe throughout the United States that we just need to get people into housing. Obviously, we're a big believer in housing, but we believe that housing is necessary, yet insufficient. So you have to bring this community aspect, and that's what we're doing. That is actually creating this new movement around the U.S.

JOHN KRINJAK: We saw some new numbers from the city of Austin saying about 6,000 people are currently homeless at this point in time. What would you like to see the city do? Would you like to see more action like you and others have taken? How do we solve this?

ALAN GRAHAM: Well, we're not a big fan of the word solve. We're a big fan of the word mitigate. So I would actually engineer our strategy around mitigation of this pandemic as opposed to solving it. Oftentimes there's this focus on a single solution, and when you understand the complexity of homelessness and what's driving homelessness.

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JOHN KRINJAK: So it's not just building 6,000 of what you guys build. 

ALAN GRAHAM: Not at all. And if we do that, we're going to end up if we just stack them and rack them by building units and stuff on them in there. We're going to end up with another disaster.

JOHN KRINJAK: But you would like to see this replicated in some way? Can you talk a little bit about what you've already seen around the country? I know you were featured in The New York Times. It's kind of a model for, you know, at least an idea that that could spread elsewhere. What have you seen, and what would you like to see in the future? What would you like to see others do?

ALAN GRAHAM: Well, what we believe is that we are a powerful tool in the toolbox of mitigating this pandemic right now. There's about 50 people from all over the United States out at the Community First Village for a two and a half day symposium. We've been doing these symposiums for 6 or 7 years now. We've had over 800 people from 43 different states. I can't remember how many cities. And there are replicators all over the country that are under construction or have completed projects themselves. Mirroring the work that we're doing here in Austin. The key really is to get the federal government on board with what we're currently doing.