\u201cAfter they were renovated, they were really beautiful,\u201d Moreau said. \u201cThey would try and preserve some of the lobby and entryway and mailboxes and front desk arrangements. And it was amazing to see the social services they provided. I met a lot of residents who had been on Skid Row for years, but now they had an apartment and were working and back on their feet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Raubeson took Moreau aside and explained the economics of the hotel acquisitions, the financing and tax credits. He\u2019d written a book about it that he showed to Moreau. It lit up the finance part of Moreau\u2019s brain. He saw it was something he could do. Today, Moreau leads Foundation Communities, the largest provider of affordable housing for families and formerly homeless people in Central Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that experience really changed my life,\u201d Moreau said. \u201cWhat I saw in L.A. is that this model really works. It\u2019s not that complicated. If you want to help somebody who\u2019s on the street, really help them, it\u2019s going to take providing a stable place to live and then addressing health issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI came back and told my wife, \u2018I know what I want to do. I want to go buy a hotel and serve people who are homeless.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Homeless Industrial Complex<\/p>\n
Austin has a fraught relationship with homelessness. The city\u2019s residents have repeatedly approved bonds<\/a> to provide tax money to address homelessness over the last 20 years. But the issue has also been at the heart of two backlashes against progressive policies: the vote to ban panhandling and camping in public places in 2021, and this November\u2019s rejection of a proposed tax increase called Prop Q.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prop Q was a request by city leaders that Austinites pay higher property taxes to fund a variety of social services. Had it been approved, it would have provided $30 million for a plan to address homelessness created by Austin\u2019s Homeless Strategy Office. The plan would have funded what is called \u201cthe full homeless response continuum,\u201d providing more long-term housing for the homeless, more temporary shelter, and much more money to help people on the verge of becoming homeless.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mayor Kirk Watson and the Austin City Council voted 10-1 in August to put Prop Q on the ballot. Watson stressed that he supported the tax increase because of the homelessness plan. He spent significant political capital in public and behind the scenes to make the proposal happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Save Austin Now, the conservative political action committee which organized the effort to outlaw camping in 2021, began sending out mailers against Prop Q in September. A bitter campaign against the proposal rose up on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Prop Q opponents included personal injury attorney Adam Loewy and former County Judge Bill Aleshire, along with many people with anonymous handles, who denigrated the city\u2019s homeless service providers as \u201cgrifters<\/a>.\u201d Several of the providers had contributed money<\/a> to the Prop Q campaign, including Moreau\u2019s nonprofit, Foundation Communities. The critics insinuated that the contributions amounted to self-dealing, though such donations are legal and common in politics. A homemade website created by a recent California transplant, Nate McGuire, captured the tone of the attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAustin spends tens of millions each year on homelessness response, and most of that funding is outsourced to nonprofits through Social Services Contracts \u2013 creating a \u2018shadow city council\u2019 of organizations that shape priorities without being elected or directly accountable to voters,\u201d a portion of the website<\/a>, titled \u201cHomeless NGO Complex,\u201d read. The page named several of the shadowy entities \u2013 SAFE Alliance, which helps abused women and children; the Salvation Army, one of the nation\u2019s best-known providers of shelter for homeless people; and Casa Marianella, a small group supporting immigrants and refugees.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a post to X, Loewy<\/a> reworded McGuire\u2019s \u201cHomeless NGO Complex,\u201d writing that the city wanted \u201cmore money for the Homeless Industrial Complex.\u201d This term was taken<\/a> up<\/a> by Prop Q opponents. They excoriated city leaders for making Austin \u201cless safe and less clean,<\/a>\u201d a coded reference to the homeless. When Watson celebrated a report showing that the number of people becoming homeless in Austin had decreased for the first time in five years, McGuire posted photos of a disheveled, barefoot homeless person<\/a>, writing, \u201cY\u2019all are doing a stellar job.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The attacks on the homeless probably had little to do with the outcome \u2013 Austinites seemed more concerned about housing affordability \u2013 but Prop Q was rejected by 63 percent of voters. Now, many of the city\u2019s homeless services providers are working to save projects already in construction. Foundation Communities and Mobile Loaves & Fishes are worried about the financing for Burleson Studios, a joint project with tiny homes and a three-story apartment building slated to open next fall. The Other Ones Foundation may not be able to expand Esperanza Village, its own tiny-home compound. SAFE Alliance, Caritas, LifeWorks, Family Eldercare, and the Urban League have projects in the works they are concerned about.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe immediate response is to triage the most critical projects and programs at risk of closing and see if there\u2019s some funding to keep them going,\u201d Moreau said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to go backwards. We don\u2019t want to create harm.\u201d<\/p>\n As they work to save their projects, homeless services providers and their supporters remain confused by the Prop Q insults, particularly being called grifters. \u201cI think it\u2019s truly unfortunate, especially because a lot of those folks who make those kind of comments and accusations have actually never set foot inside of a homeless shelter or a Foundation Communities property or an Integral Care health clinic,\u201d David Gray, the leader of the Homeless Strategy Office, said. \u201cThey\u2019ve never really seen the transformative work that\u2019s going on there. But I would extend the hand and invite anybody who thinks that our nonprofit partners are grifters or beneficiaries of a homeless industrial complex to come in, walk with us, explore, tour, and see the good work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Moreau agrees. \u201cLet\u2019s go have coffee some morning at one of our supportive housing communities,\u201d he said. \u201cOr come to a supper club and meet our residents. Come see our work in action.\u201d<\/p>\n 31 Projects and Counting<\/p>\n Walter Moreau has worked at Foundation Communities for 31 years. The group is opening Norman Commons, its 31st affordable housing community, this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Norman Commons is located across from Norman-Sims Elementary School in East Austin. It will provide affordable apartments for 156 families, with 16 of them set aside for families at risk of homelessness. It will provide an afterschool program and a food pantry. It will offer free income tax preparation, health insurance enrollment, and other services to make life easier for its residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moreau is a soft-spoken man of average height, with a voice reminiscent of the angel Clarence in It\u2019s a Wonderful Life. His eyes brighten when he talks about his projects. He\u2019s still talking about his 29th project, Balcones Terrace, which opened last summer. Balcones Terrace is one of Foundation Communities\u2019 supportive housing projects, created specifically for people exiting homelessness. It\u2019s a renovation of a Marriott hotel near the Arboretum, with 123 furnished single-room-occupancy apartments. It has on-site health care programs and counseling services, gathering spaces, and an area for dogs to play. Moreau talked about the community that has sprung up there.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always interesting in the first year to see how that community forms and comes together,\u201d he said. \u201cAt Balcones, we have weekly supper clubs. There\u2019s a karaoke group. We have a really amazing blues singer who usually performs. There\u2019s a poetry group, a gardening club, a walking group. It\u2019s really pretty cool.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Moreau joined Foundation Communities in 1994. The group was begun four years earlier by friends who\u2019d worked in UT\u2019s very weird student-run co-ops of the 1970s and 80s \u2013 co-ops like the Ark, New Guild, and the 21st Street Co-op. Moreau met Foundation Communities\u2019 first director, Francie Ferguson, while he was completing a master\u2019s degree at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, a couple of years after returning from Skid Row.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey had this vision in the Eighties that Austin ought to have not just student co-op housing but family co-op housing. I remember Francie describing it as, \u2018We have nonprofit hospitals and we have nonprofit universities, and Austin ought to have a nonprofit affordable housing provider that grows over time and really maintains the properties for community use, so people don\u2019t get priced out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Foundation Communities opened its first property, the Sierra Ridge apartments on St. Elmo, the year it was formed. It still owns Sierra Ridge today. In fact, part of the group\u2019s original vision was that it would never sell any of its properties, and it never has. The year after the group opened Sierra Ridge, it bought the Cherry Creek duplexes off Stassney Lane. The year after that, it developed the Buckingham Place duplexes, also in South Austin. For the next two decades, the group opened a new community every year.\u00a0<\/p>\n These early projects were developed for low-income families rather than the chronically homeless. But in 2002, Foundation Communities opened Garden Terrace on William Cannon Drive, its first community created specifically for people exiting homelessness. It was a big shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe models are different because they have different services,\u201d Moreau said. \u201cIn the family properties, there\u2019s more emphasis on afterschool programs for kids. Supportive housing is much more intensive. We have nurses, we have case management to help people with health challenges. But the core idea is the same: that housing should be a foundation, but it should be more than just a cheap apartment. We really believe in community-building. We want neighbors to get to know each other, to create social events.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Moreau said that residents of the family housing and supportive housing communities follow the same rules as any other kind of renter. They have to pass background checks on their rental and criminal histories. They have to pay rent.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have some apartments at a very cheap rent, some at a middle rent, and some at a higher rent, all of it affordable,\u201d Moreau said. \u201cThe housing is permanent insofar as there\u2019s no deadline like in a program that comes to an end. But residents do have to pay their rent. It may be $550 a month, all bills paid, which is within reach if somebody is disabled or retired and their Social Security check is $1,100 or $1,200 a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-five percent of our units for the chronically homeless are typically vouchered. We work with 12 different programs that help pay the rent. So for some residents, they may pay nothing or $50 a month. But it\u2019s not free housing. People are still on the lease. They follow the rules. They have to pay their share of whatever the rent is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n With the completion of the Parker Lane apartments in Southeast Austin and Balcones Terrace last year, Foundation Communities is now housing over 10,000 Austinites. One thousand of those were formerly homeless, making the group the largest provider of supportive housing in Central Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you didn\u2019t have Foundation Communities in this role, you would see two things happen, I believe,\u201d David Gray said. \u201cOne is significantly more homelessness on our streets, because of the fewer housing opportunities. But you would also see more working poor who get trapped in an unending cycle of payday lending, the working poor who are paying $2,500 to $3,000 a month to stay in extended-stay motels across the city, more families sleeping in their car because they have no place to go with their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n Cicero Institute\u00a0<\/p>\n Nate McGuire\u2019s likening of Austin\u2019s homeless services providers to a \u201cHomeless NGO Complex\u201d echoes language used by a national think tank called the Cicero Institute, though McGuire told the Chronicle he\u2019s never heard of the group. The Cicero Institute is headquartered in the heart of West Campus at Rio Grande and 22nd Street. It presents itself as a group of policy experts who value liberty and accountability. The group disparages unions and public education, and calls homelessness a \u201cracket<\/a>.\u201d An article in last year\u2019s In These Times<\/a> summarizes its influence: \u201cThe Cicero Institute has helped transform homelessness policy from a niche fixation<\/a> of a segment of Silicon Valley into a rallying cry in the culture war<\/a>, bringing new levels of both visibility and cruelty<\/a> to the issue.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Cicero Institute is harshly critical of Housing First and the kind of long-term support provided by Foundation Communities. \u201cPermanent supportive housing doesn\u2019t address homelessness \u2013 it creates demand for more homelessness and supports cronyism,\u201d the group\u2019s website reads. \u201cGovernment-funded NGOs and activist groups exploit taxpayer dollars to push failed, ideological policies.\u201d The group also insists that homeless services providers\u2019 only goal should be to get people living on the street back to \u201cself-sufficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n The think tank was created by Joe Lonsdale, a confidante of Elon Musk<\/a>, who, like Musk, is a tech worker who immigrated to Central Texas from the Bay Area in the early 2020s. Lonsdale is also a prot\u00e9g\u00e9<\/a> of tech mogul Peter Thiel and a co-founder<\/a>, with Thiel, of the defense contractor Palantir Technologies, which has been given close to a billion dollars by Donald Trump in the last year to create a digital profile<\/a> on every American citizen for use by the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. As the creator or co-creator of several other firms serving the government, Lonsdale\u2019s net worth<\/a> is estimated at $3.2 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the Cicero Institute\u2019s main goals is to persuade states to change their laws governing involuntary commitment, so that homeless people suffering from mental illness or drug addiction can be seized against their will and forcibly medicated. On its website<\/a>, the group recommends changing civil commitment laws \u201cto extend treatment requirements for those most severely ill from months to years<\/a>.\u201d The group provides model legislation<\/a> that state lawmakers can copy and paste.<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s policies on homelessness could be lifted from the Cicero Institute. In July, Trump issued an executive order<\/a> calling for states to criminalize homelessness by adopting and enforcing camping bans. He ordered that federal money not be used on Housing First programs. And he ordered that states relax civil commitment laws so that homeless people may be locked up indefinitely, writing, \u201cShifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings \u2026 will restore public order.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Plans to round up homeless people and force them to take medication are already underway in Utah. According to an October article<\/a> in The New York Times, Utah\u2019s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has located 16 acres on the outskirts of Salt Lake City for use as a camp to house as many as 1,300 homeless people. Hundreds of them would be mentally ill and held against their will. \u201cIt is involuntary, OK?,\u201d Randy Shumway of Utah\u2019s Homeless Services Board told the Times. \u201cYou\u2019re not coming in and out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n We asked representatives of the Cicero Institute if it will work with Texas Republicans to relax civil commitment laws in the next legislative session in 2027. A spokesperson told us that as a nonprofit entity, the group is \u201ceducation-focused\u201d and does not lobby. We asked Gov. Greg Abbott if he would support a bill to loosen civil commitment laws. He did not respond. However, Abbott has used homelessness as a political cudgel before, sending state troopers<\/a> to clear out homeless encampments in Austin in the weeks before the Prop Q vote. Attorney General Ken Paxton has also played politics with homelessness, writing in an October press release<\/a> that Foundation Communities\u2019 donation to the Prop Q campaign was \u201ca sham, and it could be illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n Though he has also been willing to politicize homelessness, Save Austin Now\u2019s Matt Mackowiak does not offer a full-throated endorsement of involuntary commitment. When asked whether he supports holding and medicating people against their will, Mackowiak slipped around the question, saying that Save Austin Now has never commented on it before and that it\u2019s an issue for the state to decide. But Mackowiak\u2019s ally, Adam Loewy, was more willing to go on the record with his doubts about involuntary commitment, recalling a past in which addicts and the mentally ill were held in mental institutions and asylums.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily agree with it,\u201d Loewy said. \u201cThe people that don\u2019t want that help, to force them to do it, I think, is a very serious constitutional problem. If people want to go live in the woods and not work and just be homeless, I think that society can\u2019t compel them to [do otherwise]. This has been an age-old thing where we used to have institutions and asylums. So I think what that argument is getting back to is an asylum theory. But I don\u2019t necessarily support that.\u201d<\/p>\n Unconditional Positive Regard<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a term that social working people use called \u2018unconditional positive regard,\u2019\u201d Sofia Barbato, director of supportive services for Foundation Communities, said. \u201cIt\u2019s really just thinking the best of people. Trying to be patient and thinking the best of folks.\u201d<\/p>\n Barbato and Moreau sat across from one another at a long table in the otherwise empty meeting room at Garden Terrace. Sunlight pushed through the windows at the end of the room, but where they sat it was only half-lit. Dozens of assembled jigsaw puzzles, 2 by 3 feet, 3 by 4 feet, hung on the walls.<\/p>\n Barbato was describing the groundedness it takes to stand beside someone who is suffering from mental illness. One in five Americans suffers from anxiety or depression, she said, but the homeless and formerly homeless have more debilitating illnesses, like schizophrenia. They may repeatedly sink into, and rise out of, psychosis. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of just holding on and trying to have that relationship,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Barbato told us she began working at Garden Terrace 12 years ago, when she first became a case worker. Some of the facility\u2019s 110 residents have lived there that entire time. Eight have lived there since the facility opened in 2003.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo those relationships are really solid, and it\u2019s nice, because then when folks have trouble again, we remember: \u2018A couple years ago, what helped you in this situation? Is your sister still living in Roanoke? Let\u2019s connect with her.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n We asked Barbato what she likes about her job. She gestured to the puzzles on the walls. \u201cSo there\u2019s these two residents who love doing puzzles together. And they are two of the most opposite people you would ever meet. But they both love puzzles, so they just do them together. And that\u2019s a kind of bond. You know, it seems strange to think, \u2018Oh, my reason to get up today is to finish this puzzle.\u2019 But for some people, it really has just those connections.\u201d<\/p>\n Moreau cut in gently: \u201cSofia, I\u2019m not sure you answered the question.\u201d Barbato paused. She started again.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really is about my faith tradition. I feel like we see God in other people. That is what I see here. And I feel like there\u2019s no difference between me and the folks that live here. We have different jobs, and it has turned out maybe a little bit differently for me. But if I really think about it, I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m here to help these folks. I feel like they have helped me \u2013 to know that you see the face of God in people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Foundation Communities\u2019 Last Supportive Housing Project<\/p>\n The idea that homeless people, or formerly homeless people, or anyone, should be compelled to become self-sufficient is ridiculous to Moreau. He told us he\u2019s 58 years old and doesn\u2019t feel self-sufficient. He needs his wife and his friends and his church.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe certainly want to help people get a job when they can,\u201d Moreau said. \u201cBut the reality is, many people you encounter on the street, you wouldn\u2019t offer them a job. That\u2019s not true of everybody \u2013 you see some guys panhandling and washing windows, and they\u2019re working, so you do respect that. But then you see other folks on the street who are actively psychotic. They\u2019re talking to themselves, and need a lot of help. So it\u2019s not just one answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the most frustrating thing that I\u2019ve experienced in my career. Every few years, there\u2019s some new prevailing opinion that \u2018this is the answer to homelessness\u2019 \u2013 you know, the silver bullet. And that\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s too complicated for one answer.\u201d<\/p>\n Moreau\u2019s friend, Alan Graham, founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, agrees. However, there is one principle that Graham, Moreau, and their peers believe is crucial to helping the chronically homeless \u2013 community. \u201cWe say that our model is built on the foundation of Housing First,\u201d Graham said. \u201cWe also have a phrase: \u2018Housing alone will never solve homelessness \u2013 but community will.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Graham\u2019s reverence for community is reflected in the name of his tiny-home project in East Travis County, Community First! Village<\/a>. Mobile Loaves & Fishes developed the project over several phases beginning in 2004. It is made up of dozens of tiny homes built around communal facilities \u2013 kitchens and dining halls, restrooms and laundries. The design provides residents a mix of privacy and community. Four hundred formerly homeless people<\/a> live in Community First! Village, making Mobile Loaves & Fishes the second-largest provider of supportive housing in Central Texas. But the project is still expanding. Graham envisions it serving more than 1,900 people when it\u2019s complete.<\/p>\n Graham has known Moreau for over 20 years. He calls him \u201cthe greatest affordable housing developer that I\u2019ve ever seen around the country, and I\u2019ve been to a lot of places.\u201d He also calls him a \u201cgoober.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot only are Walter and I good friends, our organizations are connected, and we leverage off of each other,\u201d Graham said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re faced with different kinds of issues \u2013 it could be things like, \u2018Here comes the great freeze\u2019 \u2013 we\u2019ll ask, \u2018What are you guys doing? How are you guys dealing with those issues? How do you guys best deal with people that aren\u2019t paying rent? What are you guys doing with the profound mental health issues that are happening?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Foundation-Quote1.png\")
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Adam Loewy speaks at an election night party after Prop Q\u2019s defeat Credit: Brad Johnson \/ Courtesy of Adam Loewy<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Foundation-NormanCommons.jpg\")
Norman Commons, Foundation Communities\u2019 newest affordable housing project Credit: John Anderson \/ Design by Zeke Barbaro<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Foundation-Lonsdale.jpg\")
Joe Lonsdale of the Cicero Institute Credit: Photo by Brian Ach \/ Getty Images for Tech Crunch \/ CC BY 2.0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Foundation-Barbato.jpg\")
Sofia Barbato and Walter Moreau Credit: Brant Bingamon<\/p>\n
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Credit: John Anderson \/ Design by Zeke Barbaro<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Foundation-Quote2-1.png\")
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