In a North Austin parking lot on a muggy, rainy afternoon, an old dog is practicing a new trick.
Lala, a white and grey spotted pitbull mix, is nestled between the legs of her owner and 14-year companion, Lynda January, who tools around on a motorized scooter outside her apartment building.
They’re both getting used to the scooter January bought a few months back — and the North Austin apartment. For most of Lala’s life — and nearly a decade of January’s — they lived in an RV at the Community First Village in East Travis County. Then, after an Lala bit another dog, January was evicted by her across-the-street neighbor who runs the village, Alan Graham.
“I’ve been there a long time,” January said. “Oh, I begged for another chance. They wouldn’t give me one.”
Michael Minasi
/
KUT News
Lynda January and her dog Lala outside of a Foundation Communities apartment complex in North Austin in July. January was evicted from her home at the Community First Village earlier this year.
January was at a community event when Lala bounded out of her trailer door that had come loose after eight years of wear and tear, biting a neighbor’s small, off-leash dog. January said she tried to make it right.
After paying for the dog’s vet visit, which zeroed out her savings, January said she was given an ultimatum: Give up Lala or leave. She argued Lala wasn’t running wild, that she could find a way to get her trained to alleviate her neighbors’ concerns. She thought, after all these years, she’d be given more of an opportunity to stay. She wasn’t.
“[Almost] ten years I was there,” she said. “I thought I was going to die there. I thought this place was home.”
January is one of dozens of Austinites who’ve had evictions filed against them by the Community First governing nonprofit, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, in recent years. The multimillion-dollar Catholic organization run by philanthropist Graham has seen a rise in evictions since the pandemic. While advocates say that spike is concerning, Graham said it’s just part of doing business at the development that’s drawn national attention as a new model to get people off the streets.
‘Mark on their record’
The sprawling Community First Village started back in 2015. A former real estate man turned staunch advocate for Austin’s homeless, Graham pooled millions in donations to open a first-of-its-kind development that marketed itself as a new way to get people housed in 3D-printed tiny homes. It’s been touted nationally as a solution to homelessness. At last update, the village had 440 formerly homeless residents, and the nonprofit aims to fully grow to as many as 1,900 units across 178 acres.
But over the last five years, the property has drastically increased the number of evictions filed against residents — and the eviction filing rate at the site is more than three times that of Travis County as a whole. Last year, Mobile Loaves and Fishes filed 77 evictions, its highest annual number of filings ever, compared to just six cases in 2021.
The trend has troubled Dani Ward, who runs Queertopia ATX, a small nonprofit aiming to help Black, trans and queer Austinites get out and stay out of homelessness. Ward began raising concerns about evictions at the property in 2023, calling out the nonprofit’s late fee and fine structure that led to scores of evictions.
Ward said vulnerable residents coming off the street often struggle to acclimate. The threat of eviction makes that even harder.
“[For] the majority of people living there, this is the first time they’ve ever had a lease, even in their name, and they’re like in their sixties,” she said. “So it’s very hard for someone to go from not having any type of lease to having to pay something on time. And then if you’re late, they charge late fees.”
Graham said Mobile Loaves and Fishes since changed that fine structure — and that it did so after Ward and others pointed out the potentially illegal lease agreements.
“When we realized where we stood on that deal, we absolutely changed,” Graham said. “Mobile Loaves and Fishes has an absolute record of always complying with the legalities of the law. And if we ever learn … that there’s something that we’re doing that is not in compliance with the law, we’re going to make those changes. That’s what happened in that case.”
Alan Graham founded Mobile Loaves and Fishes in 1998, with only a food truck he referred to lovingly as the “roach coach.” Graham founded the Community First Village more than a decade ago and has gone on to raise millions of dollars to help house Austinites transitioning out of homelessness.
Graham also pointed out that many eviction filings don’t result in someone getting removed from their home. Of the 77 evictions filed last year, 44 residents were ultimately removed from Community First Village. So far, the nonprofit has filed 51 evictions this year, which is a slight downward trend, Graham noted.
But just filing an eviction can have an impact down the road for people transitioning out of homelessness, said Carl Guthrie, an attorney with Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas.
For residents, Guthrie said, an eviction is a “mark on their record” if they try and get housing somewhere else. Texas law doesn’t allow for eviction filings to be expunged from a tenant’s permanent record. If they apply for housing somewhere else, that’s a huge hurdle for people transitioning out of homelessness, he said.
“I think a lot of a lot of housing providers just maybe don’t even understand that, or they do and they just don’t care,” Guthrie said. “Or maybe they don’t understand the damage that comes from the filing alone.”
Graham said the first rule, like at any rental property, is to pay rent on time. He reiterated that many filings last year didn’t result in residents being evicted, but he didn’t realize the filings themselves stayed on former residents’ records.
“If you don’t like the law, which is fine, we should change the law,” he said. “We have an extraordinary level of grace and mercy.”
‘Nothing’s perfect’
Community First’s mission has been — since day one — to help homeless Austinites pick themselves up off the streets and get into stable housing and employment.
The nonprofit’s unique in that it also employs residents, contracting them through its Community Works program. Residents can help do landscaping, clean facilities or sell art through the Community First store in-person and online.
Honey Plavidal makes a ceramic cup at Community First Village on Tuesday, July 18, 2026.
That’s how Brandon Graham, a former Community First resident, made money while he lived at the property. He, too, had a dog that was at the center of his eviction, along with late rent payments and other fines in 2023 and 2024. In late 2024, he filed a fair housing complaint against Mobile Loaves and Fishes for not accommodating his doctor-approved service animal. The nonprofit began the process of evicting him in February 2025, a case that Graham is still fighting in a Travis County court.
Graham, a painter, was banned from selling his art in the Community Market ahead of his eviction. He said he felt targeted and that it was “traumatizing” that he couldn’t sell his work to help pay his overdue fines and fees. It’s a difficult spot to be in when your landlord is also your employer, and he said Mobile Loaves and Fishes’ decision to shutter its print shop, woodshop, autoshop and forge over the years has limited the ways residents can be self-sufficient.
“You brought them in, gave them a house, gave [them] a job, and then you take the job from them, and then they don’t pay rent, so then you take the house from them, kick them back on the street,” he said. “While you’re telling everybody — the whole planet — that, ‘Hey, we bring them in, we give them a job, they can earn a decent living, they can pay their own house.’ It’s all a lie.”
Mobile Loaves and Fishes said its Community Works program helped distribute nearly $1 million in income to people living at the village last year.
Ward said the reduction of programming has been a complaint from her clients for years. She said the nonprofit should set up clients — many of whom are older or disabled — with social workers when they move in.
“For me, like 90% of the problems there could be solved if people were assigned a case manager upon getting into Community First, but they don’t believe that,” she said. “They have a very pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality.”
Alan Graham said the village doesn’t come after its residents, and it partners with nonprofits to connect residents with social services. But rent must be paid, Graham said, and he and other staffers work to avoid evictions at every turn.
“We’re not here to put people on the streets,” he said. “We have a history and back it up with hundreds of millions of dollars spent lifting people up off the streets unlike anybody has ever done, including the people who complain. They’re not living in this like we do.”
January said she doesn’t have any hard feelings. She considers Graham and her former neighbors family, and “like any family we can agree to disagree.” She’s grateful nonprofit helped find her a new apartment, but it’s more expensive, and the third-floor space is much harder on her knees than when she lived at the village.
“Nothing’s perfect in this world, only heaven is. That place, to me, that was like heaven on earth,” she said. “I’m sad, I am. Lala loves it here, but I’m sad here … but I’m grateful I have a place to live.”
Support for KUT’s reporting on housing news comes from the Austin Community Foundation. Sponsors do not influence KUT’s editorial decisions.