Community First! Village
This incredible trip has taught me so much, and I feel
like I'm just beginning to unpack it. I'm certain that these lessons will
overflow into future posts as well, but I wanted to give you an introduction to
the Community
First! Village here in Austin, Texas. As shared on their website:
Community First! Village is a master planned neighborhood that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women who are coming out of chronic homelessness. A development of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, this transformative residential program exists to love and serve our neighbors who have been living on the streets, while also empowering the surrounding community into a lifestyle of service with the homeless.
This amazing endeavor began over twenty five years ago. As
a part of their street outreach, Alan
Graham and his partners began encountering people on the streets who
needed a leg up. If you’re interested, you can read more about it in his book,
Welcome Homeless*. The impossibly high cost of housing was unattainable for these
precious people they met, but necessary none the less. Their ministry, Mobile
Loave and Fishes, began with a few RVs, Fifth-wheels you'd call them, and
after a while they had quite a collection parked around town. What they
realized, though, was that:
As a result of the multitude of
connections we’ve made with our homeless neighbors, we’ve learned that the
single greatest cause of homelessness is a profound, catastrophic loss of
family.
God designed people for community. You can't just take
a homeless person off the street and plop him into an RV and call it good. And
so the Community First! Village was born. They gathered up those RVs on
some land and started building from there, adding Micro homes, 3-D printed
homes and park models. They started filling the village with
"Missionals" whose purpose was to facilitate community amongst the
"Neighbors." They planted gardens, built community kitchens, and
found opportunity after opportunity to draw people together. Community
really is first here!
Today, the Community First! Village comprises 393
formerly homeless individuals now housed in personal domiciles with doors that
lock, a very important thing indeed. Incredibly, they are working on Phase III
across the street from where I sit right now that will house even more! This is
a HUGE undertaking! They utilize more than 10,000 volunteers a year. The staff
is amazing here as well. These are about lives changed, people shown Christ in
a real and practical way every day.
The community aspect
of the village doesn’t just have to do with the residents though. After a
couple of failed attempts to get established, Mobile Loaves and Fishes realized
that buy-in from their surrounding community was critical as well. They’ve
incorporated parts of the Community First! Village specifically for people in
the surrounding area. For example, just behind the home we’re staying in this
week is an amphitheater where they show movies on Friday nights. The community
is invited to come, spread a blanket and watch a movie together. They can
accommodate about 400 people! They also facilitate volunteerism from
surrounding churches and organizations. The more people become personally
involved in the village, the more they get how important it is and how good it
really is for the whole community. While we were here, we saw groups taking
tours, serving breakfast, planting in the community garden, all over. They
truly are a part of the community at Community First! Village!
I’m ashamed to admit
that when I came here I had some basic assumptions and inherent bias that I
wasn’t aware of. I guess I thought that if you take a homeless person off the
streets and put them in a house, in a community, they become “normal.” I
expected the Neighbors here to look and act like the people I go to church
with. Guess what. Moving someone from one place to another doesn’t intrinsically
change them. Turns out the people here look and act like people I’ve
encountered on the streets of Tacoma, and that surprised me. Dumb, I know. What
that means though is that although one problem, that of having a roof over your
head, has been solved for them, they still have lots of life to work through.
Addiction, mental illness, trauma, it all exists here, in community. Community
First! Village has worked from its inception to come alongside Neighbors and
walk with them through this life, being Jesus with hands and feet. They have
recovery programs, group therapy, art therapy, and much more. They have regular
church services, and we got to attend the Maundy Thursday Holy Week service
while we were here. It was beautiful watching staff, volunteers, missionals and
neighbors coming together to celebrate what God has done in their lives.
One of the key factors that keeps things working here is that
“Everybody pays.” From missionals to a newly moved in neighbor from the street,
no one gets a handout. This is a part of building the community. You take more
ownership, and appreciate more something that you contribute to. They are also
going to have more respect for missionals who choose to live with them and pay
as they do. How do homeless individuals come up with enough income to pay rent?
You might be surprised to learn that many homeless people actually have some, small
income. Whether it’s from Social Security Disability or Veterans benefits, a
small pension or maybe even tribal income. Others who don’t already have a form
of income, likely qualify for one and can receive help to attain it. In
addition, the Community First! Village offers Neighbors “Dignified income
opportunities.” This might look like cleaning the community kitchens and
bathrooms, working in the gardens, or doing housekeeping for their Airbnb
properties, like the one we’re staying in. They also have an Entrepreneur Hub
for artists to produce ceramics, paintings, jewelry and more. We had the
blessing of being able to tour this with the fine arts director who is also a
missional. She shared with us so much of the process, but the cool thing is
that Neighbors keep 100% of the profits from the works they sell. They need
only pay for some of the supplies. For example, in the ceramics shop they can
buy a pound of clay for $1 or a premade vessel for $4 that can be
painted/glazed and fired then sold at the price the artist sets, within
direction from the studio. If you’re interested in checking out some of their
pieces or maybe purchasing one, you can visit their online store.
When people move into the village, they are coming
from extreme housing insecurity. They've lived on the streets. They've lived in
shelters. They've had a couch to sleep on for a while, until they got kicked
out. When they come home here, they are assured that this is their,
"Forever Home." They are even given the opportunity to make end of
life plans. The average age of a new resident is 55 and the average age of
death is between 57-59. Life on the streets is really hard on you. You see,
when someone dies on the streets here in Austin, Texas, as it is in most
places, if their family doesn't claim their body, as they often don't, they are
placed in a "pauper's grave" without so much as a marker showing that
they were a person who lived on this earth, a person who mattered. At the
Community First! Village, Neighbors are given the opportunity to sign up to be
a part of the Memorial Garden. The village will pay for their cremation and
give them a marker where they will remain a remembered part of the community
forever. One of the resident artists also does portraits of Neighbors who have
passed that hang in the "Living Room", a community hall used daily by
Neighbors.
Here's the Thing: Many have dismissed homelessness as an impossible problem to solve. While the Community First! Village is not a complete solution, it is clearly a step in the right direction. Alan Graham, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, and the thousands of volunteers are making a difference in the lives of real people here every day.
*Hi! I'm an Amazon associate and when you purchase something from a link like this I will receive a small bonus. It does not change your price at all but helps support all I'm doing at the Salty Zebra Blog!
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