DES MOINES, Iowa — There’s been a lot of talk about Tiny Homes being one way to help the homeless in Des Moines.

Last fall WHO 13’s Erin Kiernan had the opportunity to interview Alan Graham, the founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a non-profit based in Austin, Texas. What started in the late ’90s as an effort to feed the homeless with a food truck, led to the creation of the first Tiny Home Village in the country.

“Well, to us, the single greatest cause to homelessness is a profound catastrophic loss of family,” Alan said. “So, when you think of community, family is the nuclear center of that, that whole deal. But ever since the advent of man, disaster has struck families over time.”

Erin asked Alan why should the rest of us care.

“Well, these are our brothers and sisters, and when I think about your family, I don’t know your family. We’ve never met before. We shook hands for the first time five minutes ago. But, I know in your family right now there’s a drug addict, an alcoholic, or somebody battling a behavioral health issue, and there’s no one watching this broadcast that doesn’t have exactly that in their family and somehow we managed to come up underneath our family members in order to help them out. So, from the same place in your heart that guides you to supporting your family or those close to you, that’s what we need to do as America to help our neighbors that don’t, that don’t have that capability right now.”

What is the Tiny Home Village?

Below is a conversation between Alan Graham and Erin Kiernan, they are differentiated by their last names.

GRAHAM: Well, the dream, the seed of the dream started in 2004, and we opened the village in 2015, and here we are approaching 2025. So, that’s 21 years to get to the place that we are today. You know, look at it. It takes time to get things done. I’m an entrepreneur. Capitalist, have ADD. Very impatient. Uh, thought I had this done in 2008, but we didn’t.

It’s a slow process, and it should be a slow process, and it gives everybody an opportunity to kind of get their fingerprints on it. But, ultimately, we have collectively, as a society, zero choice in this matter. It is going to happen. Otherwise the calamity of this pandemic is going to continue to grow on our street corners and up underneath our bridges.

KIERNAN: So when I, I watched a number of the videos on the website, and what I was most struck by was just the human contact in all of it. How how critical is that to the mission, no matter where it’s happening or who’s doing it?

GRAHAM: That is completely the essence of what we do. People come down and they get enamored with the tiny houses, the 3D printed houses or whatever, but they’re missing the point. The point is really all about community and creating the banquet table that allows people to connect human to human, heart to heart as if there is a family and as if there is a forged family in that environment.

What are the requirements for living in the Tiny Home Village?

GRAHAM: The process for us is, first of all, you have to be chronically homeless, and that definition we’ve modified it a minor amount. HUD definition is an unaccompanied male or female. We modified to having lived on the streets of Austin for at least a year, are episodically homeless adding up to a year over a three year period of time with a disability. That disability could be addiction, mental or physical health disability.

They go through kind of a coordinated entry process in our city and through a number of different agencies that will refer them into Mobile Loaves and Fishes. They have to do a tour because they hold a lot of the same biases and stereotypes that you and I hold about their own selves. So, they have to come and do a tour of the village and we share with them what it’s like to live in the village, what the rules of the village are.

They have to make a decision. When they do that, they fill out an application when that application is complete they end up getting on our list, and then it will take whatever time it takes for them to kind of move up that list.

KIERNAN: You have a wait list?

GRAHAM: Oh, definitely. Yeah, 150 people for sure.

KIERNAN: And all the time, I imagine.

GRAHAM: All the time.

KIERNAN: What are the rules?

GRAHAM: Well, the rules are, you know, there’s an Alan Graham set of two rules and then there’s the Mobile Loaves and Fishes set of rules.

KIERNAN: Give me both.

GRAHAM: So, the Alan Graham rule and the Mobile Loaves and Fishes rule number one, above all, says you must pay rent. We believe very powerfully that when you are invested in something that you’re going to take care of that something better, and that has proven out for us. Rule number two, how do I say this? Don’t be an a**hole.

So, within that rule number two or number of rules, if you have a dog and the dog poos on the yard, bend over and pick up the poo, okay. There’s behavioral expectations that we have. We’re not a drug free or an alcohol free environment, but you can’t allow those things to negatively impact the community. And so we just, we deal with those. We want to create an environment, just like the environment that you live in, in your neighborhood. I have no idea what you do behind your closed doors, it’s your business, okay. But if you come out, you know, raising cane, that’s when the homeowner’s association is going to get a little funky on you.

Addressing the misconceptions around the Tiny Home Village

GRAHAM: The negative naysayers are going to center around two fundamental issues. One is crime. You’re going to be bringing crime into my neighborhood. My kids are going to be at risk. My property is going to be at risk and as a result of you being here, you’re going to lower my property value and my property happens to be the largest piece in my portfolio. Okay, and none of that is true. It’s never happened anywhere at any time, but it becomes our, our guttural instinct. At the community first village, in ten years there has not been one single crime and we share a property line with a 650 unit, single family housing development and there’s all kinds of residential going up around us now. There has not been one single crime reported by anybody from our community, in that community next door, and 13 crimes committed, committed by people that live in that community inside of our community.

And then in 2012, when I closed, when we closed, on that property you could buy homes in that neighborhood for around $140,000, some a little more, but around $140,000. Today that price tag’s about 450. No impact on that deal. Um, and so what I would say to the political leadership is, uh, this is not only a risk that you should take, it’s actually not a risk and you will be a hero for it.