{"id":277769,"date":"2026-05-04T03:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T03:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/277769\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T03:27:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T03:27:20","slug":"the-astonishing-transformation-of-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/277769\/","title":{"rendered":"The Astonishing Transformation of Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recalled a protest held in 1988, when the city tried to enforce the camping ban. A group of homeless men \u201ckidnapped\u201d a gosling named Homer (actually, they\u2019d bought him at a country store, for sixteen dollars and eighty-seven cents) and threatened to eat him if the city didn\u2019t propose various reforms, including affordable-housing measures. Roger Swanner, one of the goosenappers, told the Austin American-Statesman, \u201cWe just want the people of this city to realize that we\u2019re human beings and should be treated that way.\u201d To keep Homer out of police custody, they launched a Styrofoam barge into the lake, complete with a makeshift cabin. It reminded me of Huck Finn and Jim floating down the Mississippi. Homer the Goose became a celebrity. He got to meet Willie Nelson. He led parades down Congress Avenue. He was detained during a housing protest. The city council ultimately agreed to meet with the homeless delegation, to little effect. In 2004, a handsome shelter opened downtown, but it had about a hundred beds\u2014far fewer than needed. Homer ended his days in an animal sanctuary, but he succeeded in making homelessness an issue in a characteristically Austin fashion. The politics of the city weren\u2019t as brutal then, but they were just as feckless where homelessness was concerned.<\/p>\n

Texas was the first state to pass a law, based on a model bill issued by Joe Lonsdale\u2019s Cicero Institute, that makes camping in public places a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a five-hundred-dollar fine, and prohibits state funds from going to any city that doesn\u2019t enforce the ban. It\u2019s designed to keep homeless people out of public view.<\/p>\n

In 1998, Alan Graham, a former real-estate developer, took aim at the problem, as an act of Christian charity. Two years earlier, he had been on a Catholic men\u2019s retreat and was inspired to create Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which delivered food to homeless Austinites. Then, in 2014, he built Community First! Village, in eastern Travis County. The development currently provides housing for four hundred people. An official head count in 2021 found nearly thirty-two hundred Austinites experiencing homelessness, including people living in shelters. A more recent head count in San Francisco, a smaller city, tallied nearly eight thousand\u2014the great majority unsheltered.<\/p>\n

Graham took me around Community First! Village in a golf cart. \u201cWe focus exclusively on chronic homelessness,\u201d he told me. To qualify for residence, a person must have been on the street for at least a year; the average time is ten years. Residents live in manufactured housing, R.V.s, or micro-homes\u2014one-bedroom houses without kitchens or bathrooms. (Communal facilities are provided.) Graham\u2019s creation has evolved into one of the most consequential social innovations in the country. He and his wife live in the middle of the village, in a manufactured house with an attached porch and some treasured junk out front: an old Coca-Cola sign, a rusted wagon wheel, the rim of a hubcap from a Stutz Bearcat.<\/p>\n

Graham, who is sixty-seven, has a ruddy face, glasses, a sideways grin, and a glistening white beard. He wears a silver San Damiano cross, which he bought on a pilgrimage to Assisi, and a blue gimme cap advertising goodness. He studied physics at U.T. before dropping out to become a real-estate developer and a \u201cserial entrepreneur.\u201d He saw his business crushed by the 1986 oil bust, which pummelled real estate in Texas.<\/p>\n

\"Baby<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMommy and Daddy were just wrestling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cartoon by Jeremy Nguyen<\/p>\n

Graham handed me a sketch that he\u2019d made bearing the legend \u201cHomelessness exists at the intersection of many broken systems and layers of trauma.\u201d These include foster care, mental-health issues, substance abuse, and criminal justice, but the main route\u2014\u201cthe interstate highway of homelessness,\u201d Graham explained\u2014is a \u201ccatastrophic loss of family.\u201d Community First! Village aims to replace those broken family ties with a caring social structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I recalled a protest held in 1988, when the city tried to enforce the camping ban. A group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,7771,57645,302,27,102646],"class_list":["post-277769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-cities","tag-silicon-valley","tag-tech","tag-texas","tag-urban-spaces"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}