What comes to mind when you think of home? The physical bricks and mortar, the woodgrain of your hardwood floors, the resolution of your television screen? Probably not. For most of us, “home” is the faces of family members or roommates and feelings of safety and connectedness. Home is grounding and belonging. It’s the one place where you can always be 100% yourself. Alan Graham with Community First! Village sums up this sense of home as embodied habitation, and he is moving beyond theory and metaphor to make it real for hundreds of people who have been living on the streets of Austin, Texas. For Graham, fixing homelessness is about much more than a roof and four walls. “To truly understand homelessness, you must first understand home…The single greatest cost of homelessness is the profound, catastrophic loss of family.” It’s about connection. Mobile Loaves and Fishes Graham was a successful serial entrepreneur making a lot of money in real estate. He never imagined he would become the leader of a nonprofit organization, but as a deeply committed Christian, he found himself at a crossroads. He felt an undeniable calling from God to help the homeless. Ever biased toward action, Graham did not wait around for permission. He decided to start by meeting the immediate needs of people on the streets, delivering food directly to them in a catering truck. These humble beginnings eventually became Mobile Loaves and Fishes, now a fleet of food trucks with 19,000 volunteers. They drive the streets of Austin 7 nights a week, 365 days a year to deliver food, clothing, and hygiene products to the homeless and impoverished. It is now the largest food distribution program in Austin, Texas. An Embodied Philosophy Mobile Loaves and Fishes exists to meet needs on the streets. Community First! Village, its sister organization, was created to get people off the streets entirely. Graham has sown his connection-oriented philosophy into the very soil of Community First! Village. The 51 acre community sits just outside the Austin city limits. RVs and tiny houses pepper the streets, contoured in curved rows for maximum neighborliness. Though they are given the dignity of their own space with yards, individualized decor, and privacy, residents live close to one another by design. They know one another. They host cookouts together on their front lawns. They live as a de facto family of neighbors. The village also serves as an incubator for entrepreneurialism. Residents can create products in the local art house or practice carpentry in the woodworking center. They are resourced and educated to sell their items online. With community kitchens, a cinema, an inn, a health center, and even an organic farm on site, there are no job shortages. People are empowered and held to high standards. Everyone pays rent. Everyone contributes. Everyone takes responsibility for the quality, cleanliness, and safety of their community. Community First! Village is social sustainability actualized. There are ground rules similar to HOA guidelines. Residents are required to obey civil law. They are trusted with the dignity of autonomy and personal responsibility. In many ways, the village is setting a higher standard for neighborhoods everywhere. Most of us will never be as connected to our community or as knowledgeable about our neighbors as the Community First! residents. Goodness. Way Graham doesn’t run the organization from a distance. He and his wife live in the village on “Heart Over Pocket Street,” just up the road from “Goodness. Way,” two of the village’s philosophy-affirming street names. There is a period at the end of the word “Goodness” on purpose. For Graham, goodness is everywhere and in everyone, no matter where they come from. And he believes this goodness should never be withheld. “Goodness is ubiquitous across all faith and non-faith cultures. Our goal is to build a banquet table and invite anyone and everyone. We want to be extraordinarily welcoming.” The project is almost entirely funded by individual donors. It didn’t start that way, but Graham’s belief in the fundamental goodness of humanity gave Community First! an opportunity to become what it is today. It is still sustained by the goodness of ordinary people. Your Community First! Despite his business savvy, Graham’s vision for national expansion was quelled by deep compassion for his own community. “We decided not to expand because I love my city.” He isn’t hoarding the concept though. He invites everyone to come take one of the three weekly tours, study what they are doing, and dream up ways to replicate the Community First! philosophy in their own context. “I can’t create in San Diego or Chicago what we’ve created in Austin. But you can,” says Graham. “Humans want to be fully known and fully loved–that drives everything we do.” Fully known. Fully loved. That is what community and home should feel like. We don’t have to build an entire village for the homeless to start embodying those values in our cities. However, Graham has shown us that big things are possible when individuals make the decision to serve their communities first.
Read 
