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What you’ll hear in this episode:

• How Mobile Loaves and Fishes got started
• Advice for helping people who are homeless
• All about the Community First! Village

Alan Graham was a rising star in the Austin real estate market in the mid-1990s, raising his family in West Lake Hills when he got the idea for what would become Mobile Loaves and Fishes (MLF). MLF started as a “Truck Ministry.” Graham and a couple of his friends would go out on the streets of Austin every night providing food, clothing and other necessities to the population of people who are homeless.

As Graham explains, it was kind of a crazy idea.

“To think that these five white guys from the fancy part of town we’re going to go and feed people in the not so fancy part of town was almost a really funny,” he tells Great Society host Constance Dykhuizen. “But, none the less we started going out in the back of one of my buddies green minivans, and in that first night September 13, 1998, in that green minivan was a mind-blower. I knew at that point that I was hooked.”

Graham’s ministry has been growing ever since. First, they expanded the truck ministry. Now multiple trucks go out on the streets of Austin every single night to provide necessities for the people who are homeless. As Graham and others in the ministry created more and more relationships with people who are homeless, they began to understand that “the single greatest cause of homelessness is a profound, catastrophic loss of family.” With this in mind, Graham started planning the Community First! Village. The village provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness. Since 2015, more than 250 people have been moved off the streets and into the village.

Listen to this interesting episode of Great Society with one of Austin’s most popular philanthropists. If you like what you hear, share this episode with a friend or family member!

Great Society is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with Constance Dykhuizen.

Host: Constance Dykhuizen

Guest: Alan Graham, Mobile Loaves and Fishes

 

Transcript:
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hi everyone welcome to great society a podcast about people who are working to elevate the voices of others I’m your host Constance Dykhuizen my guest this week is Alan Graham founder and CEO of mobile loaves and fishes what started as a ministry of food trucks and grow into a little village of tiny homes and trailers in east Austin Allan I chatted about how he captures the imagination of entrepreneurs and how is faith shaped his journey here’s my conversation with Alan
Alan Hey how are you I’m excited to be here I’m doing awesome and how you doing I’m doing great experiment today yeah so I’m talking to a really exciting time mobile loaves and fishes last year celebrated twenty years can you kind of take me back to the beginning and tell me a little bit about how you founded mobile loaves and fishes what some of your challenges were getting started some of your successes early on well my journey really began as a spiritual journey that began to just ask god what what is it you want me to do and because you know in my way of thanking god is not a very good communicator often not given me the formula of everything that he wants if you were a real estate developer right in real estate developer in the time doing well for yourself it was my career I was dismissed you know in the mid nineties and we were coming out of the eighties debacle and and so my star was rising fairly rapidly at that to that point in time but I I had not reached the level of the poison and but that was relatively near so it’s not like you were reaching out with this idea of what do I do you got I have nothing else to do it like you are doing okay for yourself like you had you had things that you wanted to maybe give back more and do more yeah I mean it was again the spiritual journey we’re you know I felt the presence of god deeply imbedded into my heart and you know at first it just begins with doing simple things at church volunteering to be something or to cook something there to help someone or something like that and then one day in nineteen ninety eight Trish and I my wife were having coffee with a girl friend of ours and she was telling us about this ministry in Corpus Christi where on cold winter nights multiple churches would come together pool their resources to take out to the men and women that were on the streets of corporation at that moment the image of a catering trait trucker what some of us more affectionately call the Roach coach entered my brain as a mechanism from those of us that have abundance to those that lack in as a serial entrepreneur I couldn’t get that idea out of my brain yet I would share it with anybody for quite some time of the week or two and finally I shared it with duration I said sweetie I have this idea and so this is a woman that is married to a serial entrepreneur and I’ve taken our own wonderful roller coaster ride economically and but she knows that when I get on point I’m on point and she just looked at me and said oh my god here we go again she was all she knew she was ready she was believed in you but was also ready for the ride that’s correct it would have been scared of ride yeah
so what came first about one truck you buy two trucks well I shared it with a buddy of mine after one of our little spiritual meetings and said what we go by Roach coach and fifteen hundred Bucks will put some TLC into it and he he goes I’ll put five hundred in that deal go well I’ll put five on so he was the first owner I was the second owner and then we started sharing it with friends and it before we knew it we had raised about thirty thousand Bucks which was incredible at that time but we had to find out whether five white guys from West Lake Hills, and for your audience that doesn’t know, West Lake Hills is kind of the the Tony zip code or the fancy part of town and that’s where I lived in that fancy part of town and to think that these five white guys from the fancy part of town we’re going to go and feed people in the not so fancy part of town was almost a really funny. But, none the less we started going out in the back of one of my buddies green minivans so you coming that’s good yeah yeah yeah and in that first night September thirteenth nineteen ninety eight in that green mini van was a was a mind blower and I knew at that point that I was I was hooked how long before you quit your day job well that was probably two thousand three by the time I was able to fully exit out of of all of that from a mental point of view is probably within about a year when and you know I knew that I was being called and I was having fun doing this but there were no income at this yet I’m raising five children and Wesley kills so but my two thousand three I was fully alibi realistic
when did you first have the idea for the community first village do you remember yeah yeah when that would have been about summertime the fall of two thousand four when my buddy Bruce Agnes who was to gather that for shared with him he was going to put the five hundred and called me and said Hey man I’m looking at a buying a ranch out near Fredericksburg you want to go and look at it with males yeah dang right often to go drink a beer with him and we go down there and this ranch had been leased out as a hunting lease and there was a hunting camp on that property and when we drove up there’s an RV in the hunting camp and I jumped out of the truck and ran over to this RV and open the door and looked down and I looked at him and I said you know I could live in something like this not not this particular unit what would it cost us to buy one of these units having no experience with our vecenie goes three to five thousand Bucks all day long ago you are joking he goes now I go for three to five thousand Bucks we get one guy up off the street he goes yeah I go we’re buying an RV and by the end of the year probably December time frame we bought our first RV and by March of two thousand five we lifted my buddy Sam who still lives with us in the village off the streets into that are fake
wow that’s amazing I I got to meet you when you were checking out the site trying to anticipate kind of what was going to be wearing everything I thought it was a really exciting time when that started to come together for you community first what did you know you needed to put that community together and for the for those of those people that don’t know could you maybe describe a little bit about what community first is today well today it’s a fifty one acre master planned the community we call it an RV park on steroids it’s hard to describe you and no matter how good we are taking a late this it’s still not going to be sufficient to you come out there and see it but look we have an outdoor Alamo Drafthouse movie theater five hundred seat amphitheater we have a B. and B. that’s one of the most successful bed and breakfast is anywhere medical clinic community market a car care business in our house pottery operation glassblowing woodworking blacksmithing just telling credible blacksmithing competition recently a full blown organic farming operations plus much much more it’s it’s quite extensive built on the fabric that we believe the single greatest cost of homelessness is a profound catastrophic loss of family is not drug addictions or mental health issues or affordable housing and living wages over imports are symptoms perhaps served up yet and they exacerbate homelessness but that that’s not the root cause of that deal because in all of our families and everybody this listing to this you have a drug addict an alcoholic and mentally ill you we have all this in all of our families and we managed to come up underneath all that dysfunction to keep up people up off the street but there’s a very small percentage of our population in our case six one hundredths of one percent of the Austin population whose are are subject to that being out on the streets
how long did it take you to learn that lesson that it was community because I think a lot of times we we do attribute homelessness to alcoholism or dead choices or just lack of economic resources like when did you learn that it was community or did you already know or did you have to you know how did you learn that lesson though there’s a you know there’s kind of a term that we call spontaneous order that when you get focused on doing something but you’re open to other people bringing their fingerprints into your vision it allows for a level of spontaneity to occur like who would ever plan an outdoor Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in the bed and breakfast in the middle of the community design the left the most despised outcast and drug addicts and alcoholics prostitutes up off the street should makes no sense on paper but in reality it makes all kinds of sense along this journey of the spontaneous order as we’re learning things is sleeping on the streets with my friends and I’ve spent about two hundred and fifty nights on the streets with my friends over fifteen years he in others look like a common denominator that they they come from a broken family I came from a broken family but I didn’t end up homeless but they came from a profoundly catastrophically broken family and then in two thousand eight a book was published called beyond hopelessness Christian faith in a culture of displacement that began the put the skin over my anecdotal Skelton of knowledge that I was spontaneously receiving from the streets and that’s when kind of the aha moment of this disconnected this that were experiencing particularly in our American culture
you don’t have to use their names if they haven’t given you permission to do so but can you introduce us to some of your neighbors and residents I know you live on site at community first and this is been a big part of your life so can you introduce me to some of your neighbors well yesterday I did a podcast with my friend Robbins who I’ve known for twelve years Trish and I are the god parents of her daughter Avery robin has I’ve been a drug addict and alcoholic has had to prostitute in order to support those things has been raped at knife point and has suffered an extraordinary amount of abuse come from a catastrophically broken family background both her mother and father were alcoholics they divorced early father recovered but remarried the mother never recovered from that and the the the story from her podcast yesterday you know about forgiveness reconciliation Haley and and and redemption was nothing short of a powerful in a penny right now who’s another good friend of mine who lost her husband last August suffered a massive heart attack and died ten days later surrounded by eight white women and Asian woman and this Hispanic woman and he was a that beautiful deep dark classic African American have those features the fact he was kicked out of his house by multi racial stepfather when he was eight years old he was given two choices you either move out or more shoot you in the head because he was the blackest of his siblings he he he had that very day in a trading Africans look beautiful human beings and his wife pinning who’s been living with us for two years now and in recovery in a losing John was it was an emotional struggle penny to come from a profoundly catastrophically broken family and often times in that broken this god weaves together the two dysfunctional people into a massive dysfunction but turns out to be a a beautiful wavy that’s not really understood by by most people so the loss of John created even more problems for pity but she’s begun to settle as a result of that loss and then made the decision the owner of the to go into recovery and she’s been there before so it takes on average I learned today or yesterday seven times for people to go into recovery before it finally clicks sometimes many more times than that so we’re hopeful for her
you mentioned John’s passing and I think one of the things that really struck me about the community first village is it’s not just a place to go into live or to find healing but it’s also a place to die in to die with dignity can you talk to me a little bit about how that became so important as part of your model and how you handle death for some of our homeless brothers and sisters yeah and so several years ago I lifted we listed a friend of ours named Leri taz Williams you win by taz Tasmanian devil yeah that tattoo that the cartoon character he was about five foot six seven but had guns on him arms that were Jain Norma said you did not want to be on the other end of that in any of his rages but he he his camp for the most pristine camps on the face of the planet and he was a he was a recycler many could find anything anywhere at any time and I have a number of things because I was the beneficiary of his stuff after he died in but anyway I became his medical power of attorney and taz was lobbying those very heavily him my wife Tricia were extremely close with lobbying us particularly her to be the first resident moved out of one of the privately owned RV parks that we were in into the village when it when it opened but on November twenty a two thousand thirteen he passed away two years ahead of when we were in open the village I was is medical power returning I was with him at his bedside I made the decisions with his medical staff to cease the intervention it was an extraordinarily an emotional a moment for me and for all of us that were there with him because he was such a golden human being that came from a catastrophically broken family and then we realized that he was going to get buried in the pauper’s cemetery where the despised an outcast go to be lost and forgotten it so we went and claim his body had him cremated I went in and purchased a columbarium twenty four vault columbarium set it up hello Easter Sunday morning two thousand fourteen he became the first resident at a community first village and now we have named a memorial garden after his there are now fourteen or fifteen people interred in the columbarium in it’s it’s opened up this end of life ministry for us and people are signed in and of life documents medical directives medical power of attorneys DNR’s for do not resuscitate body dispositions they now want to be cremated and we we hand make in our wood shop the urge and then we have etched in granite their names that we’re going to enter them and celebrate their lives and remember them for as long as we live in we future mystically talk about will tell lies about you for as long as we’re alive
so you have these people that you are family with that you do life with you go to their camps you see them on the streets you bring them in the community first they become a part of your family what have you learned in this time about what people are actually needing and what they’re looking for in community and how do you become not for them yeah and so if you believe what we believe that the single greatest cause of homelessness overwhelming almost exclusively is the profound catastrophic loss of family and then you begin to understand that the original cell of social life is the family this is the place for you and I are created in this is that place where you and I should be nurtured and formed over time and when we are created were each created with to in eight qualities one is we each desire to be fully and wholly loved and then each of those desires to be fully and wholly known to be valued for who we are as a human being and that this is really what people may and when you have been abandoned by your family for whatever reasons and then you find yourself living on the streets and then kicked to the furthest fringes of society where nobody cares about you they only call you a piece of shit then that human desire to be fully and wholly love just not not being met now you’re out there begging for subsystems and there’s no way that people are going to look at you and honor what it is that you’re doing and so what we’re doing in the village is reversing that not only are we gonna love you but we’re going to dive deep into who you are as a human being and discover your purpose in life so that you can go in to fill that purpose so that now you’re fully and wholly known and then when is the end of life deal we are going to party during that period of time letting you know how much we love you how much we care for you and they were gonna are you after death that that that’s what people need shelter look we have by need shelter but that’s that’s the that’s not at the pinnacle of what we what we need
one question that I get a lot I’m not even sure why I get it is what do you do when you come into contact and you put a stop light there’s a homeless person they’re flying a sign what what do you how do you answer that question when people say what do I do I feel so guilty or I don’t know how to respond how do you respond and how do you suggest other people respond well first and foremost I would a knowledge there existed on the street corner so that actually means that we kind of got a look in the each other’s eyes so why not look into their eyes and one of the knowledge of you can shoot them the peace are you could roll the window down and you can god bless them or say hello just that simple human knowledge but it actually goes a long way and then I suggest being generous to them they’re not there they’re not making much money there the and so I I give all my friends money I kind of feel like that my giving relationship as a one all right relationship between me and god and my gift to you is an unconditional gift for me in god to you go do what you want to do with that yes or no expectation I have no expectations and there’s no doubt my mind that periodically it’s not often the crack cocaine is going to be purchased cigarettes are going to be purchased alcohol are going to be purchased whatever but the reality is when you’re living in that misery how you self medicate from that misery the that’s your business
yeah that’s really powerful I don’t think enough people I think that way so thank you another person we have would be so when you talk about just on the individual level giving you’ve done a really good job of kind of leveraging up in the philanthropy community and getting a ton of resources for the community first model and to keep this thing going and now growing how do you I’ve noticed that even entrepreneurs especially are really drawn to your model every time I’m out of the village there’s there’s entrepreneurs that are there that want to kind of solve the problem with you or that are donating funds or want to be involved my boss John Paul DeJoria loves what you’re doing he he always wants to chat with you about what you think is next and what’s happening how you kind of harness that imagination that like entrepreneurial imagination in what’s typically like a nonprofit space how do you do that well some of very relationship oriented the guy I’ve just been kind of that network promoter you know how your that type of of human beings and and so I think the other entrepreneurs like that if you take somebody like John Paul the the cloth that he’s cut out of that compassionate yet the promoter cloth we can do anything type of deal I think he’s attracted to other people that feel like that they can do anything and he wants to get up underneath people that can do anything and I think a lot of times entrepreneurs like myself or or like a John Paul had probably been told many times especially early on that now you can’t do that deal you’re not going to be good at that that thing you know you can’t make money selling shampoo or you know whatever was told the to him or you know you can’t build a village are that’s not going to work or what’s going to happen when two hundred fifty of those people then all sudden starts coming together and look kisha tracked into the passion people like us are attracted to people that are passionate you almost always invest in the passion and not the thing and it turns out that the thing worked somebody invested in John Paul DeJoria over shampoo yeah you know what I mean they didn’t invest in the shampoo thing they invested in the passion of the human being that was promoting that so I think that becomes a kind of electro magnet for people that are cut out of that that kind of cloth and then there’s the you know you know we’ve abdicated our responsibility to care for are human beings to city hall state government Washington DC and and that deal doesn’t work very well and I think there’s such a valuable place for the market place to participate and so I think that’s another thing that resonates with the with the entrepreneurial community yeah
can you tell me a little bit about that like cost per resident really kind of for an MLS intervention with somebody or to help somebody get off the street what is that cost as compared to like federal housing local housing programs well if you look at phase one of the community first village hall in twenty seven acres two hundred twenty five homes all the infrastructure that you see there the the movie theater the amphitheater the B. and B. the club everything that’s there was about sixty seven sixty eight thousand dollars per unit you know times two hundred twenty five units the typical hud housing on a national basis is two hundred and fifty five thousand dollars per unit with no other amenities advisor versus other things like that yeah that’s right and so we’re able to scale quite a bit faster then the government in the government’s just it’s burdened with its bureaucracy for a lot of reasons I’m not here to knock our government a lot of our government to but there’s some things that you just shouldn’t do it should be our our collective responsibility as the village the care for the village set simple
what would you say to somebody that’s like Hey man that’s not that’s not for me like I didn’t make those choices that’s not my responsibility how do you kind of draw people and let them know that there’s a place for them or that you need them right that they have that responsibility to people well that’s a try to gently take people through that reality and what I typically do is is I take people back to when we were twelve years old and you were laying in bed at night and you were in that little twilight phase dreaming about your future looking out the windows at the starry starry night dreaming about what you were gonna be and I let people know that never ever ever ever ever ever ever in the history of mankind anywhere the little twelve year old boy or girl laying in that bed dreaming about being homeless crack addict prostitute and a convicted felon we were dreaming things like I wanna be a rockstar I want to play football a wonderful father fly fighter jets that you know we may self out of your mind and you know I had a band that played guitar played football and and to this day I love airplanes and my favorite smell on the planet is burning jet fuel okay all airports okay really is this kind of that’s my deal and but I’m never going to be a rock star on stage playing a guitar starting to happen but every time I hear a great classic rock song on the radio I see myself on stage with that guitar in hand same thing with the football game and same thing when I see you know it’s a jet screaming across the sky fighter jet of course I am never going to put me in that hundred million dollar airplane never going to happen but that is B. amber those dreams like that are the embers that ignite who we are and who we become the today and it’s frustrating it people to realize that that person stand on the street corner never ever chose to be there and what you see is choice is really in reality resignation now some people will tell you if not used to be out here you know but that that’s impossible nobody would choose that deal and so as as humans is proud that human beings were gonna disguise the resignation as a choice
how do you connect people back to their original dream as a twelve year old who who have experienced homelessness like how do you get them in touch with that because there’s so many layers like you said a protective mechanisms of just kind of not believing it not not believing that people help you how do you connect people back to their kind of original there’s so many opportunities to discover those things at the village I want talk to me a little bit about those well I mean it’s a pretty simple what is it that you dream about being what is it that you’re good at because by the time we find people they’ve even though they’ve had a lifetime of disappointment they’ve also no within who they are what what they’re good at some people are great labors and they can labor some people carpenters and they can do that some people know how to work on cars and then you find that many of our friends have battled pretty serious behavioral health issues seem to be off the charts on the creative spectrum and and so we try to go in and dive in head to discover what those memories of of of desire shar can begin to plug people into what what we have it’s so that they can be self fulfilled self actualized
what advice would you give to people who are maybe like yourself who are an entrepreneur or doing something that maybe want to give back or have that original vision like you just you started with one truck when people kind of have that one spark of an idea how do you suggest they go about making it into a fire well in one of my favorite books of all time history called thank you grow rich published in nineteen thirty seven by a guy named Polly until that that had thirteen principles of black people of seemingly equal intelligent some go on to be very successful some though there was one chapter and they’re called the sub conscious mind and it’s like the food truck was somewhere back in my subconscious mind I have no idea where that came from how it came out I think it’s a godly thank the suddenly because of that coffee that we were having it is entered into my conscious mind ed we should pay attention to those thoughts and start doing those thoughts down when I started that journey there was no desire to get out of the real estate business that just happened along the way and so I I would just say to people that when that idea comes up just say yes and then go do it and I think it sounded like you part of introducing it to other people inviting other people into it was also key for you well it extraordinarily key and I think people were to really ask me you know what one of my greatest gift insists I thank the I was the nucleus of an extraordinary vision in that deal but you have to open the doors to anybody that wants to come into that vision because we have a laser focus vision to participate and help us drive that to drive it across the finish line so that that’s a key that’s where that spontaneous order thing comes up speaking kind of of the finish line you’ve already accomplished so much at community first village but can you tell me kind of what’s next or what you’re dreaming of next year always dreaming about something I now so well it’s it’s a continuation of moving the movement we have faced two that’s under construction right now that’s very active time for us but we’re also being hit up from all over the United States and so we’ve developed a replication model to help other communities that’s great yeah and so we’ve been doing that replication very aggressively over the past year but really for the past two and a half years so other cities in America have like city planners are nonprofits come to you and ask the most what you’ve done mostly nonprofit treatment city planners are starting to you know poke their head into the deal and you know the first community outside of Austin opened up but last year in Springfield Missouri and it’s a very small community thirty one unit three million dollar deal but just absolutely gorgeously beautiful and everything that you would want it to a community to base so that that’s you know pretty much what we’re what we’re focused on it and look I’m I’m sixty three I’ve got a lot of gas in my gas tank but you know the three fundamental components that we work on it modelos or secession replication and sustainability and and secession is one of those things so recently elevated someone to the presidency of the operation and looking forward to that leadership she’s thirty nine years old and just a Dynamo and I look forward to partnering with her over there however long I have left at my my gig it will in none of us are getting out of this alive spoiler alert yeah well
so you’ve written a book welcome homeless and then there’s a documentary as well coming out about the village specifically keep talking a little bit about that yeah about the documentary the book Dr are either whatever you well the the book was published a couple years ago March two thousand seventeen welcome home was one man’s discovery of the meaning of home and that was a blast to put together and then a couple years ago the filmmaker Layton Blaylock with inferno films approached us to do this documentary and at the world premiere is this at south by southwest this year and we’re pretty excited about about that yeah it seems like a lot of people are just I just see more and more pressing Mormon people interested in what you’ve done she really managed to do something amazing and I think a lot of people interested in how they can take it home with them and learn from yourself well we’re we’re we’re we’re poised and we’re ready for that real national explosion we’ve had all kinds of press from all over the a tree we hadn’t had the big big big hit but something’s coming up with CNN right now that the expanding cookie that so we’ll see that’s good and so this is my last question I asked everybody how do you define success for yourself this can be personally how you think about yourself and evaluate your work or this can be for mobiles and fishes how do you define success well for me I look at it from the from the kingdom’s perspective from the try to look at it from a guide to the perspective and the way I am now just as it is as a kid when we run around play and you’d come across the fire ant bed you go find the first ticket could finding you jam it into that fire ant man swirling around out of that these ants Regis spewing out that’s what socio passed in on is that what you did when you were a child this water then it may be there’s a social element okay I am but you couldn’t discern one and from the other right the only discernment would be the queen if you could ever get the queen out of the thing but you you never could and but every chance had a role and I think each of us from may god perspective have a role were in the sand bed were all spewing around and the only thing that he sees that’s is what what’s led up in in our hearts he didn’t look at the balance sheet for mobile loaves and fishes or look at the number of awards and Alan Graham there’s been awarded what’s what’s in the heart and in look I’ve given my all to this deal and and and prayerful that he’s proud of that I also know people that have given their heart to things that from an American perspective are far less than what they perceive mobile loaves and fishes to be get the heart is still equally a burning it’s I think people need to look in their hearts and and and go did did I give my all to my doing my best or was it all about me and that’s that’s that’s where the success come from that’s beautiful thank you very much John for being here today I really appreciate all that you’ve done in your work and what your team is put together and it’s always so exciting when I get to go out there and volunteer clean the chicken coop or digging that Dick around in the garden it’s always a great time to be out there so thank you for what you’ve done well when you think about the fingerprints on the on our movement here are some of the largest fingerprints on that day on a new data thank you I think you should name a street after me personally but that’s fine that’s fine we’ll talk about that later we can’t pronounce that my first name goes constant constant street Johnson’s way yeah anyway I think very much on thank you thanks so much my guest Alan Graham you can find his book welcome homeless river you get your books to learn more about mobiles and fishes or to get involved go to MLS dot work we’ll put a link in the show notes the great society team includes me Constance I cues and producer Mariah Gossett an audio engineer Jake Wallace thank you to everyone it sounding media for your support don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode leave us a review on iTunes to help other folks on the show thanks so much for listening