At first glance, Community First! Village looks more like an art commune or even a high-end summer camp than what it really is: Austin’s formidable, 51-acre solution to the homelessness crisis.

Marisa Kendall
CalMatters

Nestled amongst picturesque tiny houses and RVs – home to about 350 formerly unhoused people – are a ceramics studio, an outdoor movie theater and a game room. Quiet, winding roads lead past a pond stocked with catfish, a hydroponic vegetable garden and a yurt visitors can rent on Airbnb. The ashes of 36 former residents are interred in a columbarium on the property.

If you want a souvenir, there’s even a gift shop of sorts – a convenience store that sells hats, infant onesies and other swag branded with the community’s slogan: “Goodness.”

“Right up underneath that windmill is where we have the farmer’s market every Saturday morning,” says village founder Alan Graham, CEO of nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes, pointing from a golf cart as he gives a tour of the village. “We have a hair studio here. We got over 300 fruit and nut-bearing trees growing all over the property. This is a big, old pear tree right here. It’s loaded with pears.”