This Texas Homeless Village Evokes California Replicas: Artwork, Motion pictures, Fishing Pond – GV Wire

It’s the same tour he and his team have given to several California officials and service providers, all looking for new answers to the Golden State’s dire homelessness crisis. As a result, Austin-inspired villages are now springing up in California.

These developments add a new twist to the “Housing First” philosophy dominant in California’s homeless programs. In these Austin-influenced villages, there’s a belief that housing isn’t enough—you also need community.

An employee plants sunflowers at Community First! Village in Austin, Texas on May 12, 2023. (CalMatters/Jordan Vonderhaar)

Left: Chickens and other farm animals provide food for Community First residents! Village in Austin, Texas. Center: Leafy greens and other vegetables are grown in an aquaponic greenhouse. Right: Tilapia are grown as part of an aquaculture food operation. (Cal Matters/Jordan Vonderhaar)

The non-profit organization Salt + Light is building an Austin-inspired permanent residential village near Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley. Dubbed Neighborhood Village, it will consist of 53 mobile homes with amenities such as a dog park, garden, columbarium, pop-up cinema, art classes and mobile medical clinics. As in Austin, they will also have “missionaries” — volunteers who live on site, look after their formerly homeless neighbors around the clock and help build a sense of community.

Adrianne Hillman, CEO of Salt + Light, first visited Austin’s small home village in 2018.

“The first time I went there, I actually cried when I got there,” she said. “I was pretty blown away by the beauty. It touched me on a spiritual level.”

Convinced that someone needed to bring the model to California, Hillman turned her life upside down, founded a nonprofit organization, and set to work.

She’s not the only Californian fascinated by the utopian village of Community First, with its small, cute houses, lovingly landscaped gardens and streets with names like Peaceful Path and Goodness Way. Another copycat project arose in the East Bay city of Livermore. Two others are trying to get back on their feet, one in Silicon Valley and the other in Bakersfield.

Two City Council members from Richmond, in the East Bay Area, attended a Community First symposium in April and came home with a vision to repeat what they saw.

“I was really, really impressed,” said Councilor Gayle McLaughlin. She wants to work with Contra Costa County and local nonprofits to build something similar – albeit smaller – on a 3.5-acre site just outside the city limits.

Not enough tiny houses for everyone who wants them

Community First offers several tiny home options. For example, the 200-square-foot micro-homes offer electricity but no plumbing (residents share shared bathrooms), and offer space for a bed, as well as a small living area with a fridge, freezer, microwave, crock pot, and coffee maker. The village also has larger models, including prefabricated houses with an area of ​​about 400 square meters and full water supply. They have a bedroom, a living area with a couch and a small dining table, a mini kitchen and a bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower.

With land scarce in California, it would be difficult to build enough small homes to make a noticeable difference in the state’s homelessness crisis. Even Austin’s small home village hasn’t solved the problem.

Tiny houses used as apartments on Community First! Village in Austin, Texas on May 12, 2023. (CalMatters/Jordan Vonderhaar)

Camps are still plentiful in the city’s green belts, and the estimated number of homeless people in the county rose 40% between 2019 and 2022, according to federally mandated point-in-time census. In 2021, disgruntled Austin voters passed legislation banning public camping, and activists say homeless people are now being forced to move from camp to camp because of a shortage of emergency shelters or long-term housing.

Matt Bradley, 39, said it would be “nice” to move to the tiny home village and not have to constantly worry about someone stealing their belongings. Bradley, one of many people living in a tent in the woods behind Austin’s South Town Square mall, said he’s been on the apartment waiting list for three years. The police come by at regular intervals and check him and his neighbors.

“They calm us down and say help is coming,” Bradley said. “But you know, we’re still waiting.”

Austin vs California

Left: Caravans serve as homes at Community First! Village in Austin, Texas on May 12, 2023. (CalMatters/Jordan Vonderhaar). Right: A Tiny Home Village as an affordable solution to housing the homeless in Sacramento on September 29, 2022. (CalMatters/Rahul Lal)

In a way, homeless service providers in California are inclined to like what they see in Austin. State and local politicians have increasingly embraced tiny homes as a solution to homelessness since the pandemic, when concerns about the spread of COVID-19 in overcrowded shelters shaped state policy. Gov. Gavin Newsom is distributing 1,200 tiny homes for homeless residents in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego counties.

However, there are some major differences between Austin Tiny Homes and most similar programs in California.

In California, tiny houses are almost exclusively used as emergency shelters. Residents are expected to move from the micro-apartments to traditional apartments — sometimes in just a few months and often with low success rates. In contrast, Community First is permanent housing. Residents pay rent (ranging from about $370 to $440 a month for a tiny house including utilities, or $450 for an RV — plus electricity and propane) and can live there until they die.

The sheer size of Community First also sets it apart from other tiny home projects. It’s probably the largest in the country for the homeless. Built on 120 acres just outside the city limits, the nearly 400 habitable homes are home to 345 formerly homeless people and 40 missionaries. By the end of the year, the number is expected to increase to 530 apartments. In addition, construction is underway on another 600 houses across the street, which are expected to be completed over the next six years. Travis County recently contributed $35 million to build an additional 750 homes on a separate lot 15 minutes away.

The county’s commitment is the first time the organization has received public funding. Until then, it had depended on private donations and large donations from wealthy donors such as Michael and Susan Dell. This is another departure from California, where tiny home projects typically rely heavily on city, county, and state funding.

Related story: How Texas shrank its homeless population and what California can learn from it

In the major California cities where homelessness is most prevalent — Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, for example — it’s nearly impossible to find huge lots that would fit hundreds of tiny homes.

“The tiny houses are often just not big enough to be helpful,” said Marybeth Shinn, a professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in homelessness.

And there’s a debate over whether tiny homes should be accepted as permanent housing. About two-thirds of tiny houses in the village of Austin have no plumbing, forcing residents to leave their units to access shared bathrooms.

The units with no bathrooms do not meet the housing quality standards set by the federal government, which has some activists thinking.

A resident cooks breakfast for his neighbors in one of Community First’s communal kitchens! Village in Austin, Texas on May 12, 2023. (CalMatters/Jordan Vonderhaar)

“The focus has to be housing someone,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California political scientist at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “And housing means having a bathroom, a kitchen, a sense of privacy, tenancy rights and the stability that comes with that. That must be the end goal. That’s what ends a person’s homelessness.”

Austin’s Graham says it’s “bullshit”. If people want to live in a small housing unit they can afford, with no bathrooms, that should be their right, he said. Also, no one in his community has to walk more than 100 feet to a toilet, he said.

“People should have a choice,” Graham said, “and we should get people out of the misery in which they live as soon as possible.”

A sense of belonging

Graham, who lives in the tiny home village himself, describes the community as cheerful with a “side salad full of excitement”. Many residents have mental health issues and it’s not uncommon to see someone walking down the street naked, he said. The program does not require residents to be sober, and many have addictions. But after moving into the village, residents who use drugs report using on average 80% less than on the street, Graham said.

Blair Racine, 69, has lived at Community First in Austin for five years. He pays about $500 a month to rent an old 1990s RV — one of the original dwellings before the organization started building fancier tiny houses. Racine, a University of Minnesota graduate and former real estate agent, said he ended up homeless after a former business partner got him into financial trouble and left him without family support to fall back on. He spent four years on the streets and in homeless shelters.

Now Racine feels like he belongs. People here call him “the Mayor” and he spends his days offering a listening ear and emotional support to his neighbors. He plans to live here until his death. Then he wants to be buried on site.

“I came here and found this to be my place,” he said. “And the rest is history.”

About the author

Marisa Kendall reports on the California homelessness crisis for CalMatters. She previously covered homelessness for the Bay Area News Group, the courts for The Recorder in San Francisco, and crime for The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida. She is a graduate of American University in Washington, DC

About CalMatters

CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to explaining California politics and politics.