About seven years ago, Kent Redding was driving in Austin, Texas, to his job selling real estate and stopped to speak with a woman he’d seen countless times on a particular corner. She had been living on the streets for years, with only a cardboard box to rest in.
Redding convinced her to go with him to seek an application to live at Community First Village, a neighborhood designed for homeless people just outside the city limits. She settled in a so-called tiny house where she could permanently live, as long as she paid rent and followed the neighborhood rules.
“It was very difficult at first because she missed those people on the street that she waved at and talked to every day,” Redding recalled in an interview. “But she had a lot of mental struggles out there, and I’ve seen that fade away. When you’re not living a life where you have trauma every single day, normal becomes a little more normal.”
Last week, Redding, who is now president of the Austin Board of Realtors, and his colleagues organized an early Thanksgiving meal for the woman and her more than 370 neighbors at Community First. It was a small but central element of the board’s commitment to the village, to which it made a $1 million gift in 2020 spread over a decade to help pay for new houses.
The village is operated by Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a nonprofit that began operating food trucks to feed homeless people in 1998 and added housing to its mission a few years later. Founder Alan Graham, a former real estate agent, convinced landowners to donate 51 acres to kick-start the community's development. There are now 550 homes on the site, with another 1,300 or so planned on two nearby properties. Most of the village’s funding comes from private donations, though the government of Travis County, in which part of Austin lies, provided funds to help with the group’s planned expansion.
Most people live in two types of detached houses at the village: microhomes between 150 square feet and 250 square feet, and recreational vehicle-sized units of about 400 square feet. The microhomes do not have indoor plumbing, so their residents use shared laundry, restroom and kitchen facilities.
Residents typically don’t pay more than $550 monthly in rent, said Sarah LeNoir, a village spokesperson. They can use federal Social Security or disability assistance to pay for it, but many earn income from work either in programs within the neighborhood or in the surrounding city.
From the Homes.com blog: What is a tiny house?
Services help residents adjust
The woman that Redding met seven years ago is now about 60, he said, which puts her close to residents’ average age of 57. She met the primary criterion for living at the village: She chronically experienced homelessness, having lived on the streets for a year or longer. The average resident spent nine years in that condition, according to LeNoir, so the woman's challenges in acclimating to a permanent living space are common.
It can take up to a year and a half before most people get used to it, LeNoir said.
The village offers numerous services to help residents on that journey. For example, staff and volunteers help them obtain identification so they can receive Social Security or Department of Veterans Affairs checks.
In addition, neighborhood council and quarterly town hall meetings give residents the opportunity to voice their concerns. There are about 40 residents who have not experienced homelessness but choose to live in the village to provide spiritual care and relational support to residents, LeNoir said.
The houses are organized to encourage people to interact with each other. The homes, each of which has a front porch, are clustered around common areas. There’s an outdoor movie theater, an organic garden and other places where residents come together.
“Something we say is that housing alone cannot solve homelessness, but community can and will,” LeNoir said. “It’s not a fix and repair model, it’s more that we meet people where they are and love them and wrap them up in community.”
Besides Thanksgiving, the board of realtors organizes occasional bingo games with a free lunch for residents, Redding said. The real estate group has also helped raise walls for several of the microhomes assembled at the village.
Outside of its work with the village, the board has advocated in recent years for the city of Austin to loosen its development rules to allow more housing to be built in neighborhoods with the hope of addressing the city’s affordability challenges.
“Donating money’s one thing, but being on the ground with the neighbors, getting to know them and starting relationships, I think is even more meaningful, and it certainly feels like it is to them,” he said.
Not long ago, Redding brought another person he met on the street to live at the village. The veteran who had been living in the woods now enjoys the comforts of a 3D-printed home. As for the woman he brought to the village, she got married there. Redding walked her down the aisle.
“Think about it: from living on the streets in a cardboard box to finding a companion and getting married. That’s pretty incredible,” he said.