- When I was about four years old, my mom had a knife in her
hand standing on her bed, threatening my dad. (upbeat music) (knocking on door) I'm about to be arrested. - That's like "Grand Theft
Auto" and destruction and all kinds of stuff. - Yeah, a lot of fun. (upbeat music) All of Christianity is a train wreck and the leader is the
Roman Catholic Church. - Pitch me. What's your idea - Why in the most abundant
country in the history of the universe are people
living on the streets? We went out there to feed people. Turns out that food is
the number one connector. We're not gonna make any
progress criminalizing the issue of homelessness. You cannot experience something that is not completely lived. We're only here for a puff of smoke, and I'll be there with the crack heads, the glue sniffers, and the prostitutes. It's where I want to die,
here in our community. (upbeat music) - Alan Graham is really making
a difference in the lives of the homeless here in Austin, and I can't wait to share his story. But first, please subscribe
to "Dad Saves America." Hit that like button. Let YouTube know that
you want more positive can-do things in your feed so
that we can help this country be a better place. (rock music) Alan, welcome to "Dad Saves America." - Great to be here, man. Thank you. - So I'm very excited
for this conversation because I have been
hearing about your work at Community First Village for years. So let's just start off with, what is it, what is Community First Village? - Well, currently it is
a 51 acre master plan community designed specifically to lift the chronically homeless
men and women of the streets of Austin off the streets,
into a place that they can heal and hopefully rediscover
a purpose in their life in the simplest of ways. That's what it is. But it started off as an RV park, and became an RV park on steroids. And that has gained very
significant national attention. In fact, 80 people have
flown in today to start a two and a half day symposium
on how they can replicate this in their cities. - Gimme a snapshot of the impact. This whole conversation's
gonna be about going deep into so many of the things
you've learned from being with these people who are
experiencing homelessness. What makes what you're doing
different than a shelter, for example, and what's the impact? What's the result? - Well, you first have to
begin with the why are people out there up underneath our bridges and on our street corners. And we believe very profoundly
that the single greatest cause to homelessness is
a profound catastrophic loss of family. Because in your family,
and everyone's family that is listening to this,
there's a drug addict, an alcoholic, or somebody
battling a mental health issue inside your family right now. And somehow our families,
which are the safety net to everyone, are able to
come up underneath those men and women to prevent
them from cataclysmically finding their way out onto the streets. But for an extremely small
population of people, less than 1% of 1% of our
population, the nuclear family has been blown to smithereens
and the forged family that would've been around that
nuclear family doesn't exist. - Yeah. - So that's the why. And then the how piece of
it, is built very simply on Genesis 2:15. "And just after God has
created the Garden of Eden, he then takes the man,
settles him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it." Three big words. Settle, this is a God call.
- [John] Yep. - Cultivate, work,
whatever those giftings are that we've been blessed with. And to care for something
outside of who we are. And so the model and the
foundation of that community called Community First Village,
is built on that single scripture sentence based upon the profound catastrophic loss of family. - How does the results
for people that come into the community differ
to what you've seen in other attempts to help people who are in these situations. - In the most simplest of ways. They're no longer on the streets. The collateral benefits of
that to everyone are extreme. There's a collateral
benefit to the community which is struggling. You and I are struggling as a
community with our neighbors that find themselves
on our street corners. And then there's the
impact to the individual that is no longer on the
streets, has a place to heal, to prepare nutritious foods, to hydrate, to seek better healthcare for themselves. But we are not a fix and repair model. In fact, we don't believe
that we can actually fix and repair much in who you
and I are as human beings. And when you look at where
these men and women come from, the layers of trauma that
their life has been built on. - [John] Yeah. - Beginning, you know,
from the very beginning. I mean, their mothers
and daddies may have been smoking crack while they were in the womb. And then feeding them things like heroin, opiates in order to knock them out so they could have parties. And then the physical and
sexual abuse and things that build and crescendo
into a life of trauma can be pretty incredible. And then I have this kind of
fundamental, simple philosophy that there are things about us
that we're not going to fix. So are you married? - [John] I am, yeah.
- Yeah, how many years? - Coming up on 20 years. - Yeah, so whatever it is
that ticks her off about you, (John laughs) are the same things
that was ticking her off back in 2004 and five. - I'm sure that's true.
- And vice versa. And so if you take my wife and my myself, we've been together, we'll be married 39
years together, 42 years. - Bravo. - Hell, my best friend, partner in life, I couldn't have done what
I'm doing without her, our five children, the whole deal. If I wrapped a billion
dollars in $100 bills, in cellophane on a pallet
and put it at a location and just asked her to get there on time. (John laughs) - Or it'll be taken (John laughs)
- Or somebody else gets it. Yeah, can't get there. And I'm over embellishing
this, but it's a truism. Whereas me, you know, I'm
sitting in the parking lot 20 minutes ahead of time,
I'm gonna be here early. That's on time for me. If you're in a meeting
that involves Alan Graham, that Alan Graham is running,
that meeting's gonna start at a Apple watch time
precisely at whatever the designated timeframe was. If you're not there and you
come in later and ask a question that's already been answered,
it's not pretty for you. (John laughs) And so that's my deal,
that's my wife's deal. And how do I learn to accept
those things about her and cease trying to fix that problem, or her trying to fix me? - There's a saying about wisdom
and knowing the difference between what we can and
can't change, right? - Yeah. - [John] Nothing is more
true than in relationships with that, right?
- Yeah, yeah. - So walk me through exactly what Community First Village is. What does it look like when
I walk onto this property? You know, what are the components of it? - Well, currently it's a 51
acre master plan community, expanding right now by 127 acres. - [John] Oh, wow. - So we're gonna go from the
current about 530, 40 homes to about 1900 homes
over the next few years. - What does that mean
for your size relative to the chronically homeless
population in Austin? Where are you on that? - Yeah, I would guess
that on any given night, there's three or 4,000
people on the streets. People really don't know that number- - [John] Yeah. - Of that half or more
are chronically homeless. - So you're building something
that has the capacity to provide a place for
potentially every chronically homeless person in this city. - Yeah, you have to assume
that no more are coming in unless you go upstream
and fix the catastrophic loss of family. And then all the other systemic
issues that are exacerbating the foster care system,
the mental health system, physical health, living wage education, criminal justice system,
all the things that people get dumped into once their
family implodes on them. We're gonna be stuck with this, especially in our intense, large urban environments, like in Austin would be. - What was the genesis of this
idea of doing these tiny... 'cause they're permanent structures, they're not mobile homes. - Well-
- Or they came- - The original genesis
was we went and bought one gently used recreational
vehicle, a fifth wheel, lifted one guy up off the
streets and placed that person into a privately owned RV park. That was the genesis. Then I bought a second, a
third, a fifth, a 20th, a 50th, all along planning on this
idea that we could build a community around that model. But the model has evolved somewhat. You know, basically there's a few products within our community right now. There's what's called a park
model RV, it's not an RV, it's a mobile home that
is about 400 square feet, 399 square feet to be precise. And then we site build, stick
build on site microhomes that have no plumbing, fully
furnished, fully electric that are 200 square feet or less. - But no plumbing.
- [Alan] No plumbing. - What's the premise there? Just because the
infrastructure, it's hard to get the plumbing to the- - There's a cost element to that, there's a community element. - So there's communal sort of- - [Alan] Yeah. - Bathroom facilities and
showers and all of that. - We can rent these units for cheaper. And there's a choice
element to that, you know? - [John] Yeah. - Hey, I wanna live in one of these units. I'm happy to walk, you know,
50 feet to my bathroom. We call our 51 acres, a 51
acre or 550 bedroom mansion. You know? And this unit is your bedroom. Just walk out the door and
you'll be within really a few steps at one of 12
different, very high-end laundry, restroom, shower facilities,
are very high-end outdoor kitchens. - Can anyone come who's on the street and be a part of this community? Is there a way to sort
of vet whether people are ready to participate? 'Cause when you've got a
close-knit community like that, I gotta imagine there's a
certain amount of tending to the garden of the
community, so to speak. - Yeah.
- Right? So how does that work? - So a lot of hoops to jump through to get into the community. One is sticking to our mission of serving the chronically homeless,
and there's a definition around this and- - [John] What is that definition? - An unaccompanied male
or female, no children with a disabling condition. That disabling condition can be physical, mental or addiction. Having lived on the streets
of Austin or this little central Texas area, Travis County-ish. - [John] Yeah. - For at least a year are
episodically homeless, adding up to a year over a four year
period of time, period. That's very important. Federal guidelines, fair
housing, there's lots of things that govern what we can
do, and how we can limit you for instance, wanting to come in and move into our community. - I want to take a step all
the way back to the beginning. Why did this become your mission? How did that start? Where did that start for you? Take me to the seed of this. - That's complicated. My mother was profoundly mentally ill. And the only memory
that I have of my mother and father as a husband
and wife was probably when I was about four years old. And my mom had a knife in
her hand standing on her bed threatening my dad. That's the only memory
that I have of them- - Oh.
- Together. Next thing I-
- So where is this? Are you here in this area, in Texas? - No, I'm in the Houston area, Bel Air. Next thing I know, my
mom is in the hospital, and I have a little brother
that was probably about one, maybe a little younger at the time. And then two older brothers,
one, seven, another one eight. While my mom was
institutionalized in the hospital- - And who did that,
how did that come to be that she ended up in the hospital? - Well, that's a great question. I don't know the precise answer to that. I can- - Wasn't like family or
neighbors, or you're not sure. - No, I can tell you
that my mom had something going for her, it wasn't gonna be my dad. My dad ended up filing divorce on my mom while she was hospitalized
and unleashed an Armageddon of a custody battle
for me and my brothers. Trying to strip my mother
of her maternal rights. But my mom had a mom and dad
who loved her very deeply, and they happened to
be very well resourced. They would be millionaires
in the 1950s and 60s. My grandfather was a successful guy. And my mom ended up in Topeka, Kansas, there's a hospital there called Menninger, which to this day stands at the pinnacle of mental health research in the world. So she ended up there and- - She was fortunate in that way. - She was fortunate in that way. - Yeah. - And then my grandparents also
came up underneath my mother and said, "No", John, my
father, "You're not going to strip her and we're
gonna have the most badass lawyers on the planet battle this deal." And they did. And my mom spent a year
there, but she was subjected to all of the psychotropic
big drugs of the time and electric shot therapy. - What was the year like approximately? - 59, 60. - And the state of the treatment for this, what was it? Was it good? - I would say that the
statement of treatment, and I don't wanna offend anybody, may not be any better today than- - [John] Right.
- It was then. It's very drug related. There's great drugs in the
world, not arguing against drugs, I'm a fan of pharma, but they're overused. - [John] Yeah. - And they were overused on my mom. And they're overused on my neighbors that live in our village. And they're abused, frankly. - So you have this up close
experience of mental health breakdown and your family
being ripped apart. - We go back to living with my mom. We were living with my
father and stepmother, but we go back with her and she converts to Roman Catholicism. - Hmm, what was the faith of her parents? - Probably Methodist.
- Okay. - You know, mainline Protestant. - How did she get exposed to Catholicism? I mean- - I think that my next door
neighbors were Catholic, and so there was probably
some influence there. But my mom died in 1989. So, I don't know, 20, 25
years ago, I'm talking to my oldest brother on
the phone and I'm going, "What was it?" And he goes, "Oh, you don't know?" And I go, "No, what?" He goes, "Well, she was in our backyard." The backyard was full of
baseballs, frisbees, footballs, and an untold quantity of dog poo. (John laughs) And my mom has this vision of a saint, this is my brother telling me this deal. That tells her to go you
know, into the church. And I go, "What's Saint?" And he goes, "I don't know." You know? And I'm dying to know. - [John] Yeah.
- It's a big thing. - And your mom was alive
at this point, or this is after her passing that you're
having this conversation? - Oh, well after her passing.
- Okay, alright. So you can't just ask her. - You can't ask her.
- [John] Okay. - And my brother writes everything down, I'm the opposite of that. (John laughs) Says, "I think I've
gotten it written down." I go, "You gotta find that, bro." And-
- [John] I do not remember. - But it's never been found. So I'm gonna pretend that
it was Francis of Assisi, who's kind of a thing. - He's a good one.
- He's a good one. I look at that period of time
as really being the genesis, but fast forward a lot, I
get into my latter teen years and I'm abandoning my
faith with gusto, man. - Well, before you abandon
it, so she adopts Catholicism, she converts into- - And drags us all into the church. - [John] Okay, so she- - We're going to mass first communion- - So how old are you
when you get sucked into going to mass and the whole thing? - Six years old.
- Okay, so early. Early enough-
- Early on. - It's the faith experience you
understand, it's your faith- - No doubt about it. And I loved going to mass with her, I became an altar server, - Even as a teenager? (John laughs) - [Alan] Early- - I went to 12 years of Catholic
school, so I understand. - Yeah, well we went
through elementary school with the nuns and the whole deal. Holy Ghost Catholic School
in Bel Air, good experience. But then mom's mental
health began to implode- - Again. - Well, it did when I was in third grade, and then again when I was in eighth grade. And so in eighth grade, you
know, it's late 60s, 1969, 1970. I mean, everything is
collapsing in my family. Drugs, alcohol, lots of things coming in. - So not just with your
mom, but also other members of your family as well. - Well, we're all experimenting. We're all growing up
in that period of time. It was- - The summer of love, so to speak. - All of that, and my
mother had no control over these four boys. And so, you know, there
was no man in the house- - So did your dad just cease
to be in your life after the- - I wouldn't say ceased, my
dad was not an abusive man. He just wasn't present. You, got the every other weekend thing, and basically, the way that I look at it and remember it, we were
labor for mowing the yard and stuff like that. but there was no baseball,
football, scouting or any of the things that
you would normally... that I got to do. - So you're a teenager,
you and your brothers are tearing the town apart. Tell me about this time. - Well, by 1969, 70 my brothers
are gonna be graduating from high school. So I'm in eighth grade, they're
about to go off to college. And it's Easter Sunday, 1970. And I've got two tickets
to see Led Zeppelin on their Led Zeppelin two
tour at the Hofheinz Pavilion. And this was a big deal,
I'm a rocker to the core of who I am. And I don't know, it was about 11 o'clock, maybe noon on that day. (Alan knocks the table) And the knock comes on our
door, and there's several Houston Police Department
cruisers out there. - Several.
- Several. I'm about to be arrested. And they called it car
theft, I called it borrowing and joy riding in cars. - I was gonna give it back, officer. - Yeah, yeah. Well, we didn't in fact- - It just happened to be destroyed. What happened to the car? - Well, there were several
cars that me and some buddies in a vacant field got into
a great destruction derby. - Oh, so you literally
did get a bunch of cars and destroyed them and- - [Alan] Completely destroyed them. (John laughs) - [John] I'm laughing, but holy cow. - Yeah, it was a great experience. And so I'm sitting being
booked at the Houston Police Department. - Can I just stop and say you were living like every boy's dream
when you were doing that? - No, there's no question.
- [John] I mean- - I had the ultimate freedom but- - It is crime and theft.
- [Alan] Yeah. - But man oh man, that
must've been so much fun. - Well, it's primal. It was a primal piece of
who we are, the amygdala in the back of our... the fight or flight piece of our brain. - And then the smash cars part which is- (John laughs) - You know, that's how
we learned how to survive out in a world that wasn't very friendly to you and I as humans. - So yeah, that's like "Grand Theft Auto" and destruction, and all kinds of stuff. - Yeah, a lot of fun. And then, you know, there
were drugs and alcohol involved in that type of deal,
which is way too premature and not good for anyone for that matter. And simultaneously, my
mom is struggling again. And so I'm being booked and
I'm asking the police officer if he could call my mommy. - And how old are you,
this is 1970 how old- - 14 years old.
- You're 14. - March 29th. - You haven't reached
yet, what I understand to be the peak year of
criminality for young men, which I believe is 17. - Yeah, yeah. - So is this the intervention
that halts your... collapse into utter depravity or what? - It moderates it to a level
that made it sustainable to get me through those other years that you just talked about. So didn't completely eliminate
it, but I'm in the juvenile detention center in Harris
County, and my mom is imploding and nobody's coming to get me. I'm thinking that my next address
is gonna be in Gatesville, which is where the juvenile
detention prison is in Gatesville, Texas. - Right. Was everybody involved underage? - Underage- - Your older brothers, you
didn't suck your older brothers fully into your- - My oldest brother is the
intellectual of the group. My second oldest brother is
the academic of the group, and my baby brother just got
screwed in the whole deal. And he's a mess. Mental health issues, addiction
issues, and that whole deal. I turned out to be what
I am, people can describe whatever that is.
- Your some mix. - Well, it got a lot
of everything in there, but I'm not very
academic, that's for sure. - You were spared that vice then. - I was... thank God,
to be honest with you, we wouldn't be sitting
here today if that... - You'd be busy still
researching what's the right way to address this systemic
problem, blah, blah, blah thing instead of-
- That's exactly right, yeah. So I'm in this juvenile
detention center for two weeks, and it's not a very pleasant experience. And, you know, I had some
conflicts inside there, people... I was fairly large for my age. I had matured early. So I'm an eighth grader at 14 years old with full capability beard- - Just looking like a man. - Looking like a man,
and people would wanna challenge that, and it didn't
work out well for them. I got challenged in church one day. I'm sitting in a pew and a
kid comes in and he goes, "That's my seat, you're sitting in." "Well, I'm not moving." And then he tried to forcibly move him, and it did not turn out well for him and- - So you've got some fortitude Alan. - I got some fortitude.
(John laughs) But ultimately in two weeks,
my father, and this is really important too in the context
of the profound catastrophic loss of family, my dad
comes and gets me out. - [John] Right, okay. - And I go live with him
and my stepmother, and- - Was it you and your baby
brother, or I mean was it- - Well, he ultimately
came, initially he didn't. - What comes next? So you've got a certain amount of chaos, but you do have a broader
safety net of your family, your grandparents, your dad. You make it through the teen years. What comes next that sets you on this path to helping these people are
out here on the streets? - Well, in high school,
I got into football. - [John] It's Texas.
- It's Texas. (John chuckles) - You're big. - I get elected to the student council, I ascend almost always
to top leadership roles. I don't know whether
it's inherent in who I am or if it's narcissistic. One of those things in high
school was I became president of an organization called
TARS, Teens Aid the Retarded. And- - This is a very of
its time name for sure. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it morphed into Special
Olympics and stuff like that. But I ended up in pretty
deep relationships with intellectually disabled people, primarily down syndrome types. And look, a lot of it was to
hang around with the chicks, but I- - Like everything when you're
a teenage boy, basically. - Yeah, yeah. But I had a ball, I had
a summer paid internship, you know, one summer, and- - Was there a relationship
that you remember from that? Those can be really- - Oh yeah, not many. You know, I was a softball
coach for our deal. We would travel, back then
before there was the National Special Olympics, there were
the Texas Special Olympics. And we would go and
compete in these track meet type of deals. And we'd go up to Fort Worth or to Houston or, you know, and those were just a ball. I came across this video on
Facebook of a Down syndrome presenting and testifying before Congress. And in the background,
you've got the Down syndrome guy here, and then in
the back is an audience full of Down syndrome people. And this Down syndrome guy
was extremely articulate, and was arguing for stopping
eugenics against Down syndrome. You do not want to eliminate
us out of the population. And he goes, "And the
most important reason why is that you want to
study our genetic makeup so that you can understand
why we are the happiest people in the world." And that floored me. - And that's totally true.
- [Alan] Totally true. - Yeah, I've had several
experiences over my life with folks with Down syndrome. - And you could a hundred
yard dash at this Texas Special Olympics, lose
by a mile and be pumping your fist in the air, you know? - You know, it's so
funny to think about that because we're living in
this time that in one sense is the wealthiest time
in all of human history. And yet in the wealthiest
country, America, we have so much brokenness. We've got so much depression
and anxiety and suicide, and these things that suggest
that at the level of our own happiness, we're not
necessarily making progress. Like our progress on the
happiness front at the level of the society has kind of stalled. And man, he was right. Like there's a lot we can probably learn from why those folks are so happy. - Yeah, there's a organization
in Georgetown called BIG, which is a residential
facility for intellectually disabled folks. It's a phenomenal place
because if you have an intellectually disabled
child, you know that you're going to probably die before they do. And how do you care for
that child if you don't have other children that are gonna... I mean, it's a complex
situation, so they built this residential community,
and it is phenomenal, and they have this gala
every year in Georgetown. And I gotta tell you, I hate
galas, but I love this one. And all of the products that
are being silent, auctioned, and live auctioned off, are
primarily products that are made in partnership with these
intellectually disabled people. When an item of their sales,
they're over there cheering on. And in our population, we
kind of do a similar thing, and, you know, I might commission
you to make a piece of art for me so we can sell in our auction. I might pay you $500
for that piece of art, which is a fair piece. But I might auction that
thing off for $10,000. It's how it works. - [John] Yeah. - And my neighbors get pissed. Like- - And when you say your
neighbors, you're talking about the folks in the community- - Yeah, not intellectually disabled. - [John] Yeah. - But formerly chronically homeless, privileged entitled people. You got the contrast of
people yelling and pumping their fists in the ears to why did you- - You took my money.
- Use me. Take advantage of me like this. - What comes next?
- Well, I'm in Austin, Texas. I move up here in 1976 to go
to UT and by 1978 dropped out. I was a complete fail. - Why? - I would put a combination of two things. I'm not a good student, the
classroom is not my jam. Smoking pot probably didn't help much during that period of time. And so by 1978, working
in a photo map booth, you know, a little kiosk in a parking lot of a Safeway grocery store. And a buddy of mine
drives up in a brand new 1978 Mercury Marquee White wearing a suit, air conditioning blowing on him. And he hands over these
little canisters of film to get processed. He's in the real estate business and it looks like he's
making a lot of money. - He's doing pretty good.
- [Alan] It looks good. - Yeah. - I got into the real
estate business and really, and metaphorically, I learned how to say and to spell the word entrepreneur. And that was a game changer for me. - So what is an entrepreneur,
from your perspective? What's your definition? - It's someone that's willing to risk all that they have for a purpose. - That's a good definition. Someone's willing to risk everything they have for a purpose. I like that. You know, one of the things
I always think about, and we talk about it here
and just is a big part of how I think about the
world, is that we put business in entrepreneurship in this box. Like, oh, it's to make a
profit, or this or that. But all the people I
know, myself included, that have started things, the bottom line wasn't really the animating factor. It's like, we wanna build this
thing, like with this show, we wanna build a show
that's gonna help dads, help families, help young
men and anyone who watches, like embrace a heroic role for themselves. And how can we reach millions of people? That's what we're in it for. (John laughs) - [Alan] Yeah.
- There's a purpose. And then, you know, my friend John Mackey, who's been on the show
says, well, you know, profit's just one of the
many ways you can measure whether you're on the right track or not. But that's not the motivating
force for most people that start a thing. It's too hard, it's too
likely you're gonna fail. - Yeah. - So- - There's easier ways to make money. - Just go be an investment
banker or something if that's all you care about. - [Alan] Yeah. - Not that there's anything
wrong with investment banking, but I mean, there's risking
it all for this thing you wanna do is not...
you're probably gonna fail. So did you fail? Did you succeed? How did it go? - Well, the real estate
business was a roller coaster of a timeframe. It had great moments and
it had moments when my wife and I are $24 million in
contingent debt liability in the 1980s and with- - Texas 1980s real estate. - Yep. - We made it through that. And... - Just real quick, for people
that aren't banking nerds like me, what was happening in Texas in the 1980s in real estate? 'Cause I mean, we're...
I think booms and busts are on everybody's mind right now in 2023. But what was happening then? - Well, fundamentally
there was the deregulation of the banking industry by
the Reagan administration that opened the door wide. And there was just this boom
that went through about 1985. And I was in the middle
of that and made a- - [John] It was the SNLs. - Yeah, and it made an
ungodly amount of money here in Austin. And then I started my second company, real estate development
called Trilogy Development in 1985 and began to
build shopping centers. And I built three shopping
centers here in central Texas. All three failed, went into foreclosure. So we battled that my partners
and I for a few years, and- - Was there an oil bust too,
that was part of the backdrop? - The whole deal was a
factor, the bank failures were a factor, there was
just a number of factors that collided at that time. So not unlike what we're
kinda looking at right now. - Yeah, the bank failure's
happening right now. It actually looks... there's
a lot about what's happening now that looks like the 1980s. - Yeah, but you know, we're
in Texas, we're in Austin and we're gonna be protected
somewhat probably from that, but we'll see, we don't know. I wouldn't change it for anything. It taught me a number of
different, you know, life lessons. I remember Tricia and I,
we were married in 1984 and we had bought a
home in Westlake Hills. - How'd you meet your wife? - She was in her last year
at UT and she was clerking at a law firm that I was a client of. And I'm in there waiting in the
waiting room for my meeting, and she's trying to move a five
drawer lateral file cabinet. And me and one of my buddies is in there. And she asked us if we'd
mule the thing and bam, you know...
(John chuckles) - The principle of reciprocity dude? - [Alan] Yeah, yeah.
(John laughs) - And tight blue jeans. (John laughs) - You know. Oh you were wearing the tight blue jeans. - No, yeah. Well I did that, yeah it was
the pressed Wrangler jeans at the time 'cause it was
the urban cowboy days. And yeah, and we became
tight and married in 84, bought this house, and we had
completely redone this house and moved into it in
January of 85 and probably around March-ish or so my
father and stepmother come up, and I am a legit millionaire
before I'm 30 years old, at this point in time. I got everything going for me. We're out on this deck
overlooking the wild basin, drinking a margarita. And my dad goes, son, have
you paid off your nest? You know? - [John] Hmm. - And I go, what do you mean dad? He said, "This house, it's
your number one responsibility to make sure that your family has a place and always has a place." And I launch into a education
on leverage with my dad. Now my dad- - You don't understand this is easy money, it's cheap money it's like- - No, you know, I'm explaining
this stuff to my dad. My dad is a geophysicist. He is a smart guy and
built a business himself, was very prolific, down
hole, well technology in the oil industry. And here I am at 28, 29 years
old explaining leverage. (John laughs) - And now- - How much eye rolling did
he do during this tirade? - I'm sure plenty. The real estate business goes
to hell in a hand basket. - And leverage is an
ax that has sharp sides on both sides, right? - And the loan on my house
ended up going into the bad bank because the loan to value was upside down. And we're paying on this
thing for two, three years. I can't remember the timeframe. And one August on renewal,
they call me up and they go, we're not gonna renew this
deal, but we will sell the note to you a $300,000
note for 150,000 bucks. And I go, we don't have a pot to piss at. So guess who I have to call? Daddy. (John laughs) - Hey dad, I baked some humble pie. - [Alan] Yeah. - Would you like to watch me eat it? - Yeah. - I mean, at some level it's
kind of a pretty good deal if you've got the money,
it's like, here you go, we're gonna devalue the debt, right? - He knew, it was a great deal, and he knew I was learning a lesson. He didn't even have to say anything. A beautiful thing to be
able to help, but, you know, but out of the ashes there
is a phoenix that can rise and that's the wisdom and
knowledge of having gone down a road and experienced failure,
because failure is far, far, far more important than success. - What was your biggest
weakness as a young, successful person? Like what's your warning to young people who are experiencing success? - You know, look, I would
just tell people to go find what you love to do and
figure out how to do it. Everybody's given these series
of gifts, whatever they are, and that's who you are and what you are. How do you deploy those gifts? And frankly, from a
spiritual point of view, how do you deploy those gifts for the betterment of the kingdom? I can tell you that I wasn't
into the kingdom much. So I was into Alan, the
kingdom of Alan, the hubris is a pretty big deal when you
make the move away from that, that's when the world can
really change for you. - So you have this boom
and bust experience. How do you come back to the church? How do you come back to, 'cause
you're obviously very well deeply connected to your faith. - [Alan] Yeah, well-
- How did that come about? - Yeah, my wife and I are both, you know, I don't like the term
workaholic, I don't know exactly what it means. We're very committed parents and we're- - If you're doing what you
love, you never work a day in your life, right? - That's correct. And you know, but we're seven day a week, it's on our minds no
matter what we were doing. Normally I would go into
the office on Sundays, I wouldn't go into church. I'd get up and read the paper
and watch the morning news, and then go into the
office for a couple hours to get things ready for the week. And you know, one day the
door opens up and I'm looking, and there she is going
out the door with a couple of kids all dressed up. I don't remember how many at the time. There's five total now,
she's going to mass. And I look at that and I'm
going, the train is leaving the station, and I'm not
hooked up to that train. And if I'm gonna be the
dad that my dad was not, I've gotta do something about this. But I wasn't very happy about it. - So that's interesting. So if you weren't happy
about it, what was the draw? - That I had to be there in order- - To be with your family? - [Alan] Be with the family.
- Yeah. - Yeah, so I made the decision, you know, because most people aren't
catechized very well as kids. No matter what faith you grow
up in, you're just accepting what your parents are dishing out to you. And so, even though I went
to Catholic grade school and did all the things. - [John] Got all the
sacraments and all that stuff. - All that stuff, it
doesn't really sink in. - I mean, the funny thing
for the non-Catholic that hasn't had a lot of
exposure to the Catholicism's, got a lot of ornaments. We've got these sacraments
and all these different things and there's a lot of stuff. - [Alan] Yeah, a lot of stuff. (John laughs)
- [Alan] Yeah. - It's not just like, oh,
accept Christ into your heart and you're reborn. - Nah, nah, we got-
- [Alan] No, no, no. - We got a lot of steps,
we got a lot of we rituals. We got this mass that
never has very good music. - Yeah. - And the real hardcore Catholics don't even like the homilies. So if you think you're gonna
get a great, a great preacher giving you a bunch of wisdom every Sunday. - Probably won't, yeah. - Probably not here.
- [Alan] Yeah, yeah. - It's kind of a demanding
religion in that way. - It is, but to me, the
liturgical movement of the mass is the most settling
environment that you can be in, when you understand what is going on. And that's a missing
link in my humble opinion for non-liturgical folks. I decide that, oh, okay, I'm gonna go, but I need to bone up on this deal. And so I go to the bookstore
and I buy a couple of books and I'm reading, and I get
enamored with this deal and I read more.
- [John] Really? - Yeah. - And-
- What's enamoring at that? - There's a lot of things
that were enamoring to me from the top line, what
an incredible, unbelievable train wreck this deal is. The whole deal. - I've heard you say
this in other interviews and films and things. (John chuckles) I mean, Catholic church is a
train wreck can trigger a lot of different thoughts
for people, well, yours. - All of Christianity is a train wreck. The whole shooting match and
the mothership of that deal and the leader of the
train wreck, and the engine that pulls everybody else behind it is the Roman Catholic church, period. It's managed by man, and man
is extraordinarily flawed. So you have the heresies,
you had the schisms, you had the wars, you had the
murders, you had the mayhem, you had the reformations,
you have the sex scandals and the this thing and the that thing. And the popes getting
married and the money thing and the power thing. And they had armies until
they stripped the Vatican of its army in the mid 1800s. And you start to look- - You just read about like, we
just got back from some time in Italy, and it's like the
meta cheese and the relation and the church and the
pope and the bishops. And it's like it's all crazy. None of it makes sense
if you're thinking like religion's about God
or and about your soul. - No. Yeah, and so... - It's something like
a bunch of power plays and a bunch of like weird medieval kingdom fighting on earth stuff. - Yeah, and you know, and
even in the Protestant denominations, they've divided into about 60 billion denominations,
and the nucleus of that deal remains completely intact. And I find that incredulous 2000 years, that the idea of Jesus, the Christ, that God sent his only
son, born of a virgin, you know, little girl,
14 years old, impregnated by the power of the Holy
Spirit through the message of an angel. And you know, the death, the
resurrection, the passion, all of this stuff is incredulous
that the apostles creed, "I believe in God, the Father
Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ..." boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That is intact, for all of
us, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, all of that. To me, it's an incredible
journey, and so intellectually I got into that and I had
this very intellectual relationship with Christ. Because there are things
that one, by faith alone must believe that are incredulous things, all those things I just named. But then in 1996, I got invited
to go on a men's retreat at my parish, St. John
Newman Catholic Church. Where had I known that
men were gonna hold hands and pray, and God forbid do
that romance hugging it out. I'd have never gone, that
was not my spirituality, I was going to learn more
about my Catholic faith and honestly to network with
high net worth Catholic men, that's why I was going. St. John Newman is in the
middle of Westlake Hills. - Yeah, wealthy parish.
- Wealthy parish. - Wealthy neighborhood, good place. - Wealthy neighborhood, you
know, I wanna be wealthy, that's why I'll show up. - I'll get coffee. What are you working on? I got a deal. - Yeah.
(John laughs) - No, exactly. - It's a little...
- Yeah. - I don't think Jesus
is gonna come in here and flip over the table. So let's keep talking. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 30 hours later, this
intellectual relationship dropped a complete floor into the depths of the cave of my heart. - So paint the picture for this. So you go to this men's
retreat, is this like the- - It's called Christ Renews His Parish. - Okay.
- CRHP for short. - So what's happening in
there that's transformation. - It's a 30 hour program basically. And there are 10 testimonies, witnesses. Right out off the bat, this
guy would get up in front. There were probably 70,
80 guys in this room. Small room, you're crowded in there. He begins to vomit out stuff
where I wanna go up and go, Hey bro, honestly, some
things need to be held and kept deeply in the
back corner recesses of your skeleton closet. I don't need to hear this. - We got this whole confession
booth and it's closed off. - Yeah, you go do that,
and just do it privately. These are not things that I wanna hear. But then he would connect
them to forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and redemption. And then there'd be another
witness and another witness over this 30 hour period,
10 of these things. And by the end of this deal,
I was looking at myself as the flawed human that I am the hubris being stripped away,
realizing that all the crapola that they're vomiting out
from their skeleton closet is sitting inside this skeleton closet. And I'm like renewed
in a very powerful way. And I come home that night
and I'm like the chatter box, and I'm at the chatter box at home, and Tricia's going, "Wow,
something's happened. Wonder if this is gonna be sustained." And anyway, it was powerful,
and I began to ask, God, what do you want me to do? I wasn't asking God to get me out of... My real estate gig was
starting to go, this is 1996. - [John] It's picking up. - I'm on the upswing on this deal. I'm headed to where I thought,
I was ultimately gonna be. And I was just asking
God, look, I'll become a knight of Columbus. I'll be a Lector or Eucharistic
minister or sacristan, or I'll cook some barbecue on Sundays, you know, whatever. - [John] What can I give?
- Yeah, what can I give? - But ultimately it led
to a series of things that led to the founding of
Mobile Loaves and Fishes, so thank God. - It's the mid nineties.
- [Alan] Yeah. - Is there a homelessness
problem at that point in Austin that is part of the
community conversation? Like what was the situation
in the city at the time when it comes to homelessness? - There was a growing
population, nothing compared to what we're seeing today,
but it was a burgeoning and fairly prevalent, panhandling
on the street corners, you know, a few smatterings
up underneath bridges and stuff like that. But not to the overwhelming
thing that we currently see. - What's the first thing
you do to that brings you into engaging with folks
that are on the street? - In 97, I was asked by our
parish Catholic charities in Austin was a very
naisaint operation, a priest and a volunteer guy
running it in the basement of the Bishop's house. And they were trying to
put a program together called the SACK Lunch
Program, Social Assistance Christian Kitchens. That five days a week
would take 50 sack meals to the day labor camp downtown, day labor site downtown. So that 50 people that
would get a job that day, would have a lunch that
they could take with them. And they had asked St. John
Newman if they would participate and St. John Newman said, "Let me check." And by 1997 they came and
picked on me and said, would you lead this for us? And they said, sure, let
me go, you know, talk to (indistinct) So I went and met with those
guys, Father Jim Evans, a episcopal convert, Roman
Catholic married priest was kind of running the thing. And I met with him and
another guy, you know, they moved a lot slower,
you know, so I don't know if this is narcissism or
leadership, but I came in and said, let me really
dive into this deal hard. And we collectively put
together five communities, both Protestant and Catholic,
that every day of the week, five days a week would prepare. And St. John Newman Day
to deliver was Wednesday. So every Tuesday night, a
group of volunteer parishioners would come in, prepare the sack lunches, and then on Wednesday
they would be delivered by a volunteer downtown. So this is marching along. And so this is my introduction
somewhat into this deal. And I found it interesting
because people wanted to volunteer to do things. And then in the spring of
1998, my wife and I are having coffee with a girlfriend of ours. The girlfriend is telling us
about a 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 living on the streets of Corpus
on these cold nights. And look at that moment, the
image of a catering truck, or what many of us affectionately
call a roach coach, comes outta my subconscious
mind, into my conscious mind as a distribution
mechanism from those of us who have abundance to those that lack. And as a serial entrepreneur that I am, I thought it was a brilliant idea, like every idea that we have. And I didn't share the
idea at that time, my wife, who was married to a serial entrepreneur, and I've taken her up and
down that rollercoaster at some point in time, a week
or two later, I finally got the courage to share it with her. She just looks at me and goes, "Oh my God, here we go again." - So gimme the pitch. I'm your wife, what's your idea? - There's not much of a pitch, really. Maybe I've got this idea
that we could go out and buy a gently used
catering truck, a roach coach. I'd probably already looked
something up on the internet. Internet's pretty new,
you know, at that time, and I'm thinking that
we could go buy a truck and go out on the streets
on cold winter nights. It was that simple. She knows that when I get on
point, there's no diverting me. That's just... yeah. - You're dog with a bone. - I'm a dog with the bone, yeah. And then in that post CHRP
experience, I'm called to lead other men on their CRHP
experience, and so I'm a spiritual director now leading a group
of men through their retreat like I was led. And at the end of these
Sunday night meetings, many people descend into the parking lot and they're just hanging out
there and they're talking their spirituality with other men. It's a beautiful, and I'm sitting there with a brother of mine, Bruce Agnes, and I go, "Man, I've got this crazy idea." You know, we go by a
roach coach, 1500 bucks, you know, put some TLC into
it, and we start feeding people on the streets. And he looks at me and he goes,
"I'll put 500 in that deal." And I go, "I'll match it." So- - [John] Alright. - There it was, the first-
- [John] There it begins. - Yeah, there it begins. And now this year, 25 years
later, 'cause it was this time of year 1998 that that idea came up. - How about that? - And we went out on the
streets on September 13th, 1998 in the back of a green minivan
to see if five white guys could do this from Westlake Hills. And on September 13th,
2023, I am going to step on the Camino de Santiago and
walk 500 miles in pilgrimage to the basilica of Santiago
St. James, where the bones of the Apostle St. James
are buried in Thanksgiving to God for 25 years. I don't know how, I don't
know how we got here. You're gonna ask me all
these things, how, how, how, but at the end of the
day, I really don't know. - So you get in this roach coach, what's the first moments like? What's the biggest surprise? Because obviously people
are gonna be grateful, mostly right, to get food
who are out in the street and hungry and lacking. But what's the surprise? - The relationship. We went out there to
transactionally do something. We're gonna feed people, and
that's not all what we do. We leverage food in that context
to connect human to human, heart to heart. Turns out that food is
the number one connector between you and I as people. We have our little coffee
here, so we're enjoying our time together. Your first date with your
spouse I'm sure was food. - Yeah, noodle shop on
44th Street in Broadway. - Yeah, Jeffries for my
wife and I on Westland. This is how we continue to
connect is through food. Everything else is very secondary. Sex is way down the line, you know? - Well, food definitely comes first. Food and sleep.
- [Alan] Yeah, yeah, and so- - You can't get to sex if
you don't have those two? - No, that was the biggest deal. And you begin to break
down the stereotypes of your perception of who
these men and women are and begin to learn something
very deep and meaningful. - So when do you call this enterprise, Mobile Loaves and Fishes. - Oh, right away.
- Right away? - Yeah, right away I was
searching the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes stuck with me. It's the only miracle
outside the resurrection that appears in all four
gospels and actually appears six different times. There's a lot that you
can read in theologically into that miracle, especially
in John chapter six, when it's a nameless
little boy that offers up the five barley loaves and two fish. Nameless little boy offering
up everything that he has to God to bless it and multiply it. And it continues to resonate to this day. - What seems to be the
case is that below all the safety nets that the
government at the Federal State, and local level have, there's
a fabric of overwhelmingly faith-based organizations. That's a tighter fabric than
any of that bureaucracy. It is striking that almost
all of these groups, yours included, are driven
by faith to go to the people at the absolute bottom, at
the absolute margin of society and devote themselves to
lifting those people up. What's your explanation for that? - Every Sunday there's a gospel reading, a New Testament reading, and
an Old Testament reading. Every Sunday and every three
years, you're gonna journey through the entire three
year cycle of scripture from Genesis chapter one
to the end of Revelations. And the gospel is central to that. The liturgy of the word. It's Old Testament, new
Testament gospel reading. And you are hammered
with this every Sunday. I think it is just embedded
into our fundamental Christian DNA, and so- - What is being embedded
that says go out there and... I mean, from your perspective, it's like a go out there and serve. - Well the go and do end up
being relegated to very few. - How do you mean? - Very few are gonna answer that call. Most of us are followers. You and I are followers of Jesus Christ, we didn't lead the deal. - [John] Right.
- So we're following. I've answered a call that
is a very small piece of the kingdom work that's
out there and people are following that call. So I could be seen as
a leader in that deal, 'cause I'm going and doing,
but most people aren't. And so I got that call,
I got that call hard and people began to follow. - So I think I can connect us back now to where we started our conversation. You have mobile loaves
and Fishes these carts. You have a background in real estate. - Yeah. - You've got this calling
to help and to help as many people, presumably
as you possibly can. - Yeah. - Where does the permanent
community now happen? - Yeah, so- - What brings us to what
becomes Community First Village. - By the end of May of 2003,
15 of us from St. John Newman- - That's 20 years ago. - 20 years ago, go out and
spend 72 hours on the streets. We leave on a Friday,
that dropped off downtown with backpacks and we're
picked up 72 hours later. - Yeah, what was the idea here? What was like, hey, you
know what we need to do? We need to do this. - In a very simple way,
it was a sleepover, it's a kindergarten, first grade sleepover with their friends and
going into their home, which was the Wallace
Streets of downtown Austin. Initially you would say that we were there to experience homelessness. We learned on that retreat
that that is not ever possible. You cannot experience something that is not completely lived. It's that simple. And so it really became
a retreat environment, just like the CRHP retreat
or any other silent retreat that you might go on
with our retreat center being the Wallace Streets
of downtown Austin. And we would jump into
that river with no rudder, and we would be taken wherever
God was going to take us. And that became very profound. So what was intimately being
developed from the truck, those that were serving
and those being served, were on the same side
of the serving counter. And it required a one-on-one connection. Hey, my name's Alan. - Yep.
- Yeah. And so if I went out the
next time on a truck run, and I saw you and I remembered your name, and I called your name
out, and you happened to remember mine and called
my name out in return. Oh man, we have created
something, you know, and that's what was building. And then now we're spending
the night on the streets. And you're taking me to your
places, you're taking me to your living room where you get coffee, where you're gonna get
breakfast the next morning, where the free stuff is,
where the safest places are. Just the sleep. - This is my life, this is where I'm at. - [Alan] That's correct. - Let me show you how this life works. - Yeah, and when I talk about the vomit in the men's retreat,
the homeless population, there are men and women that are extremely transparently vulnerable. They will tell you everything. Oh yeah, I'm a crack addict,
my father used to rape me. And you know, I mean,
you just, oh my God... And so you end up in these pretty deep, intimate relationships. And that's where our philosophy
of the single greatest cause being a profound catastrophic
loss of family began to grow. There's also this giant
question mark of why in the most abundant
country in the history of the universe ever, that we're aware of, are people living on the streets. And in 2005, I got this idea
to go and buy a gently used recreational vehicle. And we went and bought
one, lifted one guy out. That guy lives with us to this day. And at that point, as a
real estate developer, I started dreaming about
building an RV park. That wasn't a large stretch. - How far outside of a
town is Community First. - From the University of Texas? It's about seven and a half miles. - Yeah, it's not far.
- [Alan] No. - That's one of the things
that's neat about Austin as a city relative to say New
York, which is where I lived before, which is you
don't have to go that far to get to relatively abundant land that's not astronomically
expensive, even in 2023. - Yeah, honestly bro,
that's everywhere almost. - New York's pretty tough. Jersey, you gotta get to
like affordable land outside of New York is called Pennsylvania. - Well, but affordable
land is, to me, I mean, that's almost an oxymoron. We live in a multi... I
mean, our two new phases that we're under development on right now is a $200 million project. - Yeah, that's not nothing.
- No, it is nothing. It's actually nothing. Is close to nothing. In the context of a
multi-trillion dollar economy. - Yeah, well, sure. Fair enough.
- It's not much. And you have to put it into context. And we as humans take
things too personally, and we don't think from
a global perspective, now, $200 million to you and I. - [John] Yeah, yeah.
- I got it. I see the shock and awe to that number. But it is literally a
pathetic amount of money in the scheme of the
economy that we live in. - Well, when I look at cities like Seattle and San Francisco in particular,
that seem to have pursued policies that objectively
by their own measures have not worked. They spent billions, and
billions, and billions of dollars on programs that don't seem to work. They do help individuals at
some level, but they also seem to perpetuate a lot of problems
and build bureaucracies and all this other stuff. So how are you deploying
that trivial amount of money by the economy
standards differently than Seattle or San Francisco? How do you think about that? - You know, mobile loaves and fishes wants to be a truth teller. So we want people to be
confronted with the brutal facts. And if you believe like we do
that the single greatest cause is a profound catastrophic
loss of family up here. - [John] Yeah. - At the top of this river,
that's where you get in that river, that uncontrollable river where you are completely
rudderless, you're in it and you encounter the foster care system, it's a broken train wreck. You encounter drugs and alcohol, it's a broken train wreck. You encounter the criminal justice system, it's a broken train wreck. You encounter our
pathetic education system, the way that it's unfolded today. It is a train wreck, the
mental health system, the physical healthcare system. And we're down here at these
level five rapids, you know, after people have been
flowing out and we're fishing people out of that river. We're doing nothing up here
to transform what's going on in our culture. So in a lot of ways, we
are putting a bandaid on a carotid artery bleed. It's necessary, it's
necessary to feed people, it's necessary to give
'em the best healthcare that we possibly can. It's necessary to fish them
out of that for a variety of reasons and allow them
this opportunity to settle. But we're not fixing this thing up here. And that is singularly the
failure, and if I could do anything in the world while
we're fishing people out down here, is get us back onto a track where we recognize how valuable the family and the forged family is
to the success of humanity. - How do you think about
the role of dad at the top of this river that flows
down to people suffering from homelessness and catastrophic
collapse of their lives? I mean, you look at the
family, at the core, fathers play a really
important role in that. If we could manage to bring
dads back into the picture and close this gap, is
there a bigger thing, in your opinion, to do at the
top of the river than that? - We we're not gonna be
be able to say singularly, it is the key. And I'll try to explain why,
but I believe it is a big piece of that puzzle. 70 something percent of all
live African-American births are to a single mother,
about 50% of white, and 50% of Hispanic to a single mom, and growing by the way. - [John] Right. - These are cataclysmic trained
wrecks, no doubt about it. But even within our intact
families, we put our families onto the escalator of brokenness
from the very beginning. We want our children to
have the finest education on the face of the planet. We now place children
in elementary school, in advanced mathematics
and advanced English, thinking that we're doing
them well and we're not. We are pushing them up this escalator. And when they graduate from high school, in my Westlake experience, we
want our children to go off to the finest colleges that
money can possibly buy. And we send them far away,
we used to not do this. They used to all be here and local. We send them off, you know,
to New York, to Boston, you know, to Indiana, and our
children are doing what it is that we wanted them to do. They're gonna get the finest education that they possibly can. And then we are asking them to
go get the highest paid jobs that they possibly can
and earn all the money. And suddenly we find our
children working for Amazon and Microsoft up in Seattle, Washington while we're down here in Austin, Texas. - What's wrong with this picture, so far? - Profound catastrophic loss of family. So now you're gonna meet
and marry somebody up there in Seattle, Washington,
you're gonna procreate and you're gonna start having grandkids. If you're lucky, you might
get to see your children twice a year, and your
grandchildren will never know you. And this is what we do, this
is what we do as Americans. This is anthropologically,
never really ever been done. - So it's actually quite
painful to hear this for me, because I moved, I never saw
myself leaving the northeast. So my whole family is Italian-American. And they all basically
lived in South Philadelphia, like a little Italian ghetto in Philly. My parents met down the beach
at the shore, Jersey shore, but their parents lived close by. When my mom and dad married
and moved just like 45 minutes outside the city, my mom acted
like my dad was moving her to the other side of the
planet because she grew up in a neighborhood environment
where her grandmother and aunts and uncles were right
there at the corner store. And so I experienced this thing firsthand, like most of us have now. I went away to Penn State,
which was still in State, but it was three hours away. So I kind of got inculcated and not seeing my parents that often. And then I moved to New York
City and worked in television for over a decade. And I saw my folks frequently,
but not that frequently, and then the lifestyle
there was so difficult and the commuting and the
way it kind of broke me that we moved here to Austin to try to have a better life for ourselves. And every aspect of life
has improved with that move, except I'm now a flight
away from my parents and it's this sort of broken part of me. - They're still alive.
- [John] They're still alive. - How old are they? - My parents are pretty young. My mom's just turning 70 and my dad's three years younger
than my mom, so he's 67. - Okay, but let's say that you're lucky and you got him for another 20 years. You see him twice a year,
let's say it's three times. - [John] Yeah, three, four times. - Yeah, you got 60, 70 more times that you're gonna see your parents. - Yeah. - So I hate to throw that
in, but this is reality of what- - You're trying to make me cry here, Alan. - No, this is what we
have culturally done. - [John] Yeah. - I'm trying to make the
point that we can look at the people up underneath the bridges and on our street corners
as being homeless, but we are missing the
point of what homeless is really all about. And some of the most homeless
people that I've ever met in my life, live in the
most extraordinary houses that you could ever possibly build. Let's not be confused by what's
going on in this country, and the same thing can
happen to your children. Or they're gonna go and
do, they're gonna get on this escalator that we put them on. - It's a radical critique. And it's something that
I have struggled with, and have brought my focus
on more now than I used to. I'm 45 years old, my
son's about to turn 18. So we're thinking about
college and whatnot. And I would even dare say,
and I'm a big capitalist, that it's a quirk of
freedom, not just capitalism. 'Cause capitalism is
just the free enterprise. It's just freedom.
- Yes. - Just we can do whatever
we want so long as we don't hurt each
other, that's capitalism. So freedom, it has this cost.
- No, it does. - This is a genuine cost.
- [Alan] Yeah. - No, it's not all
benefit to be disimmobile. - You're hitting on some extremely interesting conversations. Our constitution is an
impediment to family, because everything is
focused on individual rights. I'm pro constitution, by the way. - [John] Yeah, sure. - But when everything is
focused on the individual rights over and above the
rights of the community, which is where we have
navigated to over the past several generations. It's an erosion of the
rights of the community in order for the rights of the
individual to be at the most. It's a complex conversation, but it's one that we should be compelled to have. It's the same conversation
if you do the math on how many times you're
gonna see your parents before they die. And look, mom can have the big one day after tomorrow and
you're not even there. And this isn't a guilt trip. We all live in this, it's the reality of what the escalator that we are putting, and it's even becoming more distant. Your mom just moved 45 minutes away. - For the decades that
remained of me living at home. This was the fight in
our house, regularly. You moved me away from my family. And I mean, like, it
was a 45 minute travel. Like my commute every
day to and from our house in New Jersey into Manhattan
was double at a minimum how long it would take for
my parents in Allentown to go visit South Philly
and see my grandparents. - Well, there's a Bedouin
community outside of Israel. They live in tents, and it is possible and probable that a eight
or 10-year-old child could be sitting on
the lap of their great, great, great grandparent. Five generations in the same household. Anthropologically man, biblically, all of that stuff gets connected. Elon Musk was asked
recently what he thought the greatest catastrophe
that was looming ahead. They're thinking climate change. - If you know anything about the research, that's not the case, yeah. - It's population.
- [John] Yeah. - It's population, there's
a book written by a guy, I can't think of the name of it right now. It's a former guy from Stratfor and- - [John] Yeah, Peter Zeihan. - Yeah.
- That's him. - It's the truth, we as
Americans are in decent shape because we're a country of immigrants, and we're gonna import
the things that we need. But China and Europe are in a dire mess. and we're gonna get to
see that in our lifetime. - I wanna share something. So we just spent two weeks in Italy. So we were there for Holy week
for Easter, which was amazing 'cause we're in this little
Sicilian town of Noto on Easter Sunday, and
they've got a procession and this like, beautiful
statue of Jesus is being hauled through the street and everybody's old who's playing the instruments,
but it was amazing. I'm still processing
the lessons of spending these two weeks, the
three of us as a family, and we have one son together. It's difficult, 'cause one
of the things about Italy, especially as a Catholic,
as an Italian Catholic, is you have this connection to antiquity 'cause the antiquity is everywhere. So you feel the physical
building component of a multi-generational existence. There it is, here we are at this church and it's a thousand years old. And in these smaller
towns, you have a sense of what a good life the La
Dolce Vita looks like, sort of. But even there, they're not having kids, those towns are sort of
economically a disaster. So you have this like, it's
like a shadow of a part of the human experience that
we have turned our backs on, but that we go to visit for vacation and is deeply enriching. We go to visit this
former life and it's like, wow, I feel renewed, that's what I feel like there's an answer in that. And then we come home and
slowly that becomes a memory and we're back to it. And I don't know how to
process this 'cause it's like, I don't really know what the answer is. We're off on the beaten track
a little bit, but we're up at the top of the
headwaters of this stream. Is it just about
inculcating in our families to stay together and to stay
close and to stay connected? You forget that the societal level, just at the individual
level, what do we do? - I'm an entrepreneurial
capitalist to the core. At what cost are we willing
to break up our families and our communities for that philosophy? And so that's complicated. - It used to be the case that
the only way you could pursue certain careers was to
move to a city far away, probably from your town,
because that's where the industry was, that's
where you were gonna... Like I went to film
school, so I was gonna move to Los Angeles or New
York if I wanted to be in the big time. And it seems like for more and
more jobs, that's not true. I don't need to necessarily
leave my hometown, if I like it and if I want to be there, and if those values have resonated with me as a young person that I
wanna stay close to my family. You could do it now more
than you ever could before, and I wonder if this is an
opportunity that's being... like the technology and the
freedom and the progress that has driven a truck through our lives of our multi-generational lives. Is it a chance that we
could back that truck up with new tech and say, now we
can have a multi-generational dynasty of a family. And yea, you can be a tech
entrepreneur and you can be a artist and a musician
and we can still live in this town together and see each other for Sunday evening dinners,
and go to the basketball games of our great grandkids and
yet experience our potential, the things we wanna try to
achieve that are our potential and that are out there
calling us to do things. - That'll be an interesting
evolution to watch. I live in the community,
I work in the community. I wake up... we have
90 something employees. I'm engaging with them every single day in a community that is vibrant. I don't know how people can
work out of their house. I'm sure they're thinking
on the other end of the deal maybe how-
- I can't do it. I need to come to a
place that's (indistinct) - And so I wanna see, the
anthropological evolution of that. So I'm gonna hold on the
nugget that technology might be able to drive people closer but- - It's hard.
- I don't see it. - So you've built this community
together with your team and your staff, and the
folks that have donated to your efforts. What kind of transformations have you seen in the people that live there? And is it meant to be permanent or is it a stop on a journey? Do you want them to ultimately leave? I mean, I would think you do. - I do. But the ultimate journey will be heaven. So I want them to die
here in our community. It's where I want to die. Death is the-
- [John] Interesting. - Most incredible experience
in this community. If you die in this community,
if we know that you're dying or you have died, there will
be a hundred people outside of your home until that body is removed. It's incredible, never seen
anything like it, every time. 22 people died last
year, probably nine or 10 or have passed away this year so far. It's incredibly moving,
beautiful experience. If you give us the rights to
your body, we will cremate you for free and inter your
remains on that property with your name etched in
granite and a column barium that's at the center of the property. Yeah, so the journey
is from here to there. whatever there is. Actually, I think there is right here. We just can't figure it out.
- Yeah. - It's not like it's in
the Andromeda Galaxy. - Right, right. - That's not what heaven
is, it's right here. Just like the Celtics believed
the thin place, you know, it's that very porous
place that you enter. Sometimes you kind of talk
about it in this little Italian town where there's
this porous connection between heaven and earth. You know, you experience something there. When you come into the
village, what I experience is that very porous place, that thin place that connects me more than
any place else on the planet between what heaven is
like and what the reality of earth is. So my goal is for people
to be able to settle here, settle means not moving. - So you are trying to provide genuinely and you are providing
it sounds like homes. - [Alan] Yeah.
- Not housing. - Well, your mother got unsettled
45 minutes away from home. - [John] Right. - She never... the home was not over here. - I think she's still ultimately
doesn't feel fully settled. It's that hardhead Sicilian thing too. So she's like, nah. - Yeah, well maybe she's just
wired anthropological thing. - Yeah.
- You know, she got- - I mean, that's a radical and
kind of controversial vision because your peers that
try to serve others that are suffering like this. Or whether it's Alcoholics
Anonymous or other programs that work with the homeless,
the Salvation Army, et cetera. They're trying to put
themselves out of business that in the best case
scenario, they're trying to solve a problem for people
and get people on and up and out and into the world. And you are on the street
and now you're an investment banker with a wife and kids. And that's what success looks like. That's not what you're
saying, which is radical. - A friend of mine did a
movie called "Happiness Is" and it starred Willie Nelson,
John Cougar Mellencamp, Matthew Dowd, the Dalai
Lama and Alan Graham. (both laugh) In there I make this
comment that our children should be our 401k. - We certainly invest in
them a whole heck of a lot in their early years- - Well, never before in
history have we ever done what we're doing today,
where we're saving up all this money. And then you and I get warehoused
in some assisted living old folks home at the end of
the day living off of the money that we had to save in
order to be able to do that. That's never happened. - Even like the financial
markets are based on this, like these savings that fund
the capital, that when you go and get a bank loan, you are borrowing somebody's grandparents' money. - [Alan] Yeah.
- That's what you're doing. - [Alan] Yeah. - You as a young person,
you're a new homeowner, you go to the bank, you get
a loan to buy your house that is somebody else's
grandparents' retirement funds that you are borrowing. - [Alan] Yeah. - And that your interest
is partially paying somebody else's
grandparents' fixed income. - Yeah, all I'm trying to do
is go, we need to look at this from a different perspective and marinate on the impact that it's having. I'm not laying out the
answers to this deal, I'm just saying there
is a negative collateral impact to what we are doing today. And we are seeing the
fruits of that devastation unfold right before our eyes. And you can see it in the
woundedness of our society, up underneath our bridges
and on our street corners. That's the greatest manifestation
of the festering boil on our culture. All along the way,
there's many other issues. There's our culture of
death, the lack of caring for each other from the
moment you are conceived to the moment that you
naturally die in this deal and everything in between. And it becomes radical
thinking because we have become so individually minded
thinking hyper individualism. You know, I've got a
piece that I carry around with me everywhere I go that describes, you know, what we're faced with. And by the way, that is a
Rome, Italy intersection. (John chuckles) A roundabout that you're
crazy as an American to drive through that
into a Roman roundabout. But these are the roadways
that are entering in and the profound
catastrophic loss of family being the big one. But you see hyper individualism
is one of those deals you can have that. - Oh, I really like this. I agree with that. - [Alan] Yeah.
- I agree with that. And I think one of the
things that's become so hard, I feel like, and maybe it's
just a function of maturity, is that we have to somehow
hold a lot of different, often contradictory values
together in our mind and in our lives. Like that individual freedom is essential, because how am I gonna
discover what I'm capable of if I don't have the
freedom to go out and try? And yet there is this cost, if
I don't have any other value, but me pursuing my own,
inside my head exploration of the world with no regard
for becoming enmeshed with others, that I'm not necessarily gonna end up very happy. I could be at the top of a mountain alone, and solitary confinement is
torture for people in prison. - Well, I'll give you an
example of in my humble opinion, where our individual
rights have gone awry. If you can track cancer or
heart problem or diabetes, you get to go to your doctor
and you get to make decisions with your doctor and your family about what your treatment
protocols are gonna be. In the mental health
world, it's the same thing. When you become or diagnose
mentally Ill, say a paranoid schizophrenic, and you don't
have the cognitive capability to actually make decisions,
you still have the right, civil right to make that decision. That alone has caused a problem. A great documentary called
"God Knows Where I am," beautiful peace done
as a result of a woman who suffered mental illness
and died mentally ill with their civil rights
intact, while her daughter and her sister were struggling
to try to rescue her and get her the help that she
needs, but the woman refused. - This feels like it's one
of these really challenging, 'cause I'm not an expert in
this, but because of the work that I've done with films
to try to... and interviews and conversations like
this, I've gotten a hint that there's been this
legal transformation that started really, I guess under JFK, because I always hear this, oh, Reagan, shut down all the institutions. But I think it was actually
JFK that did that then? - No, well, it started with JFK and then the exclamation point came with Reagan, and it was a phenomenal
move on both parts. - So can you just explain what happened? (indistinct) - It was really de-institutionalize
the mental health institutions recognizing
that people should actually be able to live in community. And they were Right. And I'm making up a
number, 95% of the time. So 95% of the people that were living in these institutions were- - [John] These state run things. - These state run deals - Nurse ratchet type experiences. - Those experiences
were completely capable of living in community
under some level of guidance and supervision, and it
was beautiful, 5% were not. - And we have not found a
way to rebalance yet legally. - And we have not found
that rebalancing act, and that 5% are the ones that are standing on our street corner screaming at us. And in order to help mitigate the pain of their mental health
issue, they're smoking crack- - Self-medicating basically. - Self-medicating on top
of the psychotropic drugs that they may be on if
they're on those very complex. - So a couple years ago
here in Austin, a law was... I guess it was a law that was
passed by the city council that removed what was a ban
on camping on public grounds, on the sidewalks and et cetera. And basically moved
that from being illegal. And the cops could come
and move you and say, no, you can't do this to saying
no, they're not gonna act. And almost overnight, many
parts of the city saw explosions of like tent cities. And then to fast forward,
I think it was last summer or the summer before a sort
of public led initiative reinstated that ban. I don't know how to think about it. It doesn't seem like
compassion to just let people live on the sidewalk and
turn into these sort of diseased favelas that have like the typhus and crazy things that start
to happen and rape and murder. But at the same time, like
from a compassion perspective, just saying, well, you can do all of that, but just do it down in the
ditch where no one can see, also feels like not a solution. How do you think about that? How do you think about what's
happened here in the city? 'cause it's been replicated elsewhere. - We're we're not gonna
ever make any progress, criminalizing the issue of homelessness. Converse to that the
decriminalization of that had the impact that it had. The famous congressman
that passed away recently, John Lewis, when people would
bring legislation to him, would always ask a simple
question, who does this hurt? If you want my support
for this legislation, I wanna understand who
this is going to hurt. Because every piece of legislation is going to hurt somewhat. And so when you undid the
ordinances and people could go wherever they wanted it, it
was hurting a lot of people. There was a lot of help that was happening to the homeless population. They were actually safer the
more visible they were versus hidden in the woods, because
when they shut that deal down, there was a giant camp of a
hundred people right here, and they all went there, hidden. They were not prepared on either
side, but it's complicated. I understand both sides of the equation. We don't wanna see that, we
don't want 'em in the front door of our businesses. We don't run 'em at the front
door of our neighborhoods. These tent encampments. There's fear and then
there's the reality of fear. The probability that
anybody's gonna be attacked by a homeless person is
probably the lowest ever. They're not the marauders
of our community. - Yeah, I think that's fair. - That's factual, but if you
are a paranoid schizophrenic, having delusions while you're smoking meth on a street corner and
you're yelling at someone that you're gonna come and get
'em, it's a frightening deal. Okay. We see it every day. - Yeah.
- Okay. - I mean, you're on the
front lines of this. - We're on the front lines and that's not where the violence is. Now they may steal your car
stereo or your kids' bicycle, these are things that we
don't want, but let's not get too attached to our stuff
when people are starving, and living in complete
filth on our street corners. - When we focus on the work you're doing with Community First Village,
explain just what it is. What happens, what do they have access to? How does this experience unfold for them practically speaking. So like I'm on the street, you
come up to me, what happens? Walk me through the experience. - Depending on the housing
type that you want to get in. You want to get into a micro
home, it's gonna take you three to four months. - Are you gonna build me one
or there's probably gonna be one that becomes available? - No, that one will become available. You're on a list with 180 other people. - What am I doing while I wait? - You're living under the bridge. - [John] Okay. - Or wherever you're living, theoretically and legally, you can't go
and move into a hotel room. - What does that mean legally I can't move into a hotel room? - Our definition of serving
the chronically homeless people is an important definition
from a legal point of view that limits our ability
to rent to anybody else other than the chronically homeless. And if you move into a
hotel room, you cease to be chronically homeless. This is a federal fair housing
issue, it's more complex, I'm gonna just give the simple answer. - Why do you have to pay
any attention to that if you bought the land? It's your land, why can't
you just do what you want? - Oh, you just can't. We live in the United States of America, you just can't do anything
that you wanna do. - But I mean, I'm asking
that seriously though. So is it because, do you get some funding from like hud that comes
with strings attached? Why is it that that rule applies to you. - It's not any different than
you get your driver's license and you just can't go out
and drive 180 miles an hour on the highway. - I wanna push on this a
little bit, 'cause I wanna make sure I understand it. Because that I'm getting on a
highway, there's other people- - You're taking a housing
unit away from somebody else. So in a country where we
should have equal access equally all of us. - So if I can get temporary,
a temporary buffer because I know this is
coming, I disqualify myself by improving my situation while I wait. - [Alan] Correct. - That seems super weird and kind of like a corrupt situation. - If you go from the streets
into a recovery program where you're recovering
from the use of drugs and alcohol and you spend- - Which seems like a
pretty good place to start before I move into a community. - [Alan] That correct.
- I disqualify myself. - You disqualify yourself. - Alright, I'm trying not to see red. My libertarian government screws up from every angle stuff
is getting triggered. - There's the opposite side of that where people will abuse the deal. - So it's a double-edged sword. I'm not advocating for
that deal, I'm just saying that's the reality of that deal. - Somebody had to write a
regulation about housing land use that would permit you to do this. They're like, we don't
want people abusing it, so we have to put on paper
some sort of protocol. - Yeah and our mission-
- And so this is it. - Honestly is to the
chronically homeless men and women that are living
on the streets right now. - So you've gotta be desperate enough that there's not really
anything you can do until you get in there
to help yourself really. - [Alan] Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, fair enough. Alright, so I've waited,
there's a unit open. What comes next? - You're gonna be called
in for an interview. There's been a whole
application process and a number of different hoops that
you've already jumped through. Now you get through that
interview process well, you will be notified about two weeks out that you're gonna be
able to move into a home. You come back to the village
and you go pick your home, and we put you in a golf
cart, drive you around to the available units
that we have available. And you pick the one
that you wanna live in. In that interview process, you tell us, God I'm a Kansas City fan, or
I love butterflies or Disney. And when you move into that
house, it'll be fully furnished and decorated to your personality. - It's a big step up, what comes next? Do I have to pay anything? Do I have to-
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - How do I have to reciprocate for all this generosity? - Yeah, well, number one rule
is that everybody pays rent. - [John] Okay.
- Yeah, no matter what. Average rent out there
is 400 bucks a month. - Yeah, so it's not nothing, you gotta get 400 bucks a month. How am I getting 400 bucks a month? - 80% of the people that are gonna move in probably have SSI or SSDI. So they're earning about 800- - So social social security disability. - Yep, yep. And then we have a number
of micro enterprise programs on site. People last year earned about
a million and a half bucks doing a variety of things. - Are products being produced
that are getting sold to people outside of the community? Or is it all just funds
that's being donated and then sort of, if
I can be uncharitable, kind of doled out to people to do things? - No, there's not the
dole out piece of it. There's a big farming operation on site, we have 51 acres that has
to be mowed and beautified. That's being done. - Yeah, that's work. Somebody's gotta do it. - We have an aquaponics
hydroponics operation. We have hundreds of chickens producing free range organic chicken eggs. We have a car care business, we have a bed and breakfast, we have- - So folks are working on things that if they weren't doing it, you'd have to buy it from somebody. Food, all kinds of stuff. - We would outsource and
some things are outsourced. - Yeah, cool. - We have an art house, we have ceramics, we have jewelry making. We have a great partnership with a company called Kendra Scott. - [John] Oh yeah. - That your wife should be well aware of. (John chuckles) - I am fortunate to be married to someone that isn't a huge jewelry- - [Alan] Yeah.
- Fan. (John laughs) - And so we have lots of
opportunities for people to earn dignified income and earn it. We expect people to earn it. - How important is earning it? - Well, it goes back to
Genesis chapter 2:15. "The Lord God took the man,
settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it." It's key to who we are as human beings. And only when we are settled
and we're cultivating, are we really in a position
where we can care for the things that are outside of our own selfish need. So on the street corner, the
hands out in the village, the hands up, it's a different model. When we had things like
Snowmageddon and the big freeze and the, this, that, and
the other that happened, watch what happens in our community. - People jump in. - Jump in, making things
happen, helping people out. - So I'm there, I'm working. What else is there to help me? I was addicted to methamphetamines. What's going on? - Well, you could still be
addicted to methamphetamines and there are plenty of
people there that have that on their back, there is
a recovery program there. We have a partnership with
Communities for Recovery, they're on site with
a number of employees. But you gotta remember
that your recovery depends a thousand percent on you. - [John] Right. - Nobody else is in charge of that deal, you have to go and do all the work. - Is Alcoholics Anonymous on site? Is that a thing that
people participating in? - Yeah, there are AA
meetings and NA meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous. Those are there, those 12 step programs? Most people have been through
multiple 12 step programs and they get sick of 'em. I'm a fan of the 12 step program. - Yeah, I understand they work - Well sometimes. - [John] Yeah.
- Yeah. - But you've said in
this conversation that making this your home,
making this your community such that maybe you will
die in this community feeling connected, feeling loved. Or is there stuff saying,
hey, you've got aptitudes or you had a degree in
this thing and you can go and get a job out there where
you're gonna make enough money where you don't need to be here anymore. What's happening for that? For the person that has the potential and wants to ultimately-
- [Alan] Yeah. - Move on. - So the average one
average age is 57 years old. - Oh, wow. Okay, that's interesting. - 65% of the people that
live in this community, self-reported, have two
or more comorbid diseases. 66% use illicit drugs. Average time on the streets
is nine years, okay? Which means somebody's
been there 40 years, somebody's been there
a minimum of one year. The average age of death is 59. - Oh, that changes the way
I'm thinking about this quite a bit. - Yeah, yeah there's no fix and repair, these are, when I say unemployable, that doesn't mean unpurposeful. We have an extraordinary number
of very purposeful people, but they're not gonna come
and work at McDonald's and Walmart and be a good employee. They have mental health
issues, they have physical health issues, they have addiction issues, they have issues of obedience. Most of them are very entrepreneurial, ADD type of people like me. - Is that a function of selection? Is that a snapshot of
the chronically homeless? - It's a accurate snapshot
of the chronically homeless population. - I know that most people that
you will see on the street will spend less than two weeks there. - I don't know if that's- - Is there something like that? - The case, you'll hear
all kinds of different- - [John] I don't know, if you know, it's- - Numbers. I don't really know what
the trends are if you look at the numbers, and we
have an organization here in town ECHO that
manages the homeless management information system. And there appears to be a
trend down in the age range. We went from an average
age of about 58, 59 to 57, which was a significant drop. Is that trend going to continue to fall? Which means younger people are coming in and that will dictate some
things for the future maybe, we don't know. If younger people are coming in, what the hell is wrong with our country? - Do they tend to be
someone who's had a broken life from early on? - [Alan] 100%. - So they've kind of come
in and out of being engaged in civil society and
like gotten on the train and falling back off and
gotten on and falling back off. - Look, when you come from
the life that these men and women have come
from, they are virtually never getting off that train. Imagine you selling your son
when he's 12 to other men. - Yeah, no, I can't do that. - Read chapter nine of my book
about my buddy Will Langley, who died this past year, my age. His father was selling him to other men. And if your daddy was
raping you as a 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old,
and your brothers got in on the action, then the
uncles got in on the action. And by the time you're
12, you've left home and you're riding the rails as a woman. Guess what's going on in that deal? You know? And you're on the streets for 40 years. This is who lives, that's
my next door neighbor in the community. Trauma that you can't
fathom and you don't heal from this healing, is
made up in our brains. You don't heal from this level of trauma. You could ask virtually
every woman in our community, about 25 to 30% of the folks that live in our community are women. How many times they've
been sexually assaulted in their life? - No, I've gotta imagine all of them have more or less many times. - Well, but they can't answer how many. I mean, you know, if you
get into your peer group, you know, one in four of the
women that you know out there statistically have experienced
a single sexual assault moment, which is traumatic
in and upon itself. - [John] Yeah. - What about so many times
that there's no recollection of the number. Oh, it was 52 times or 24 times or... - How often do you
encounter folks, frankly, like myself coming into this conversation, who they're thinking that
your job and the promise of what you do is to help
these people that they see on the street get out and
become productive members of society, and can't
get their head around what it is that you're actually doing. Because I came into this
conversation with a different understanding than I have now. Is that the story that you have to tell the most to people who come in. They're like, oh, you've got the answer, you've got the solution. We can replicate what
you're doing in my town. - Yeah Mobile Loaves and Fishes
has five corporate goals. Goal number one is to
transform the paradigm as to how people view the
stereotype of the homeless. So this comes at me every single day. - [John] Yeah. - Are they violent? What's security like out here? How long are they gonna live here? And embedded in that question is, are you fixing and repairing them? And they're gonna get an
apartment complex in Pflugerville and get married and get a car
payment and a house payment. Yeah, no, every day. Which is good, this is what we wanna do because the more we educate
people to the realities of what we're dealing with, the
more people will understand and get even deeper engaged
in the work that we're doing. - You said there's five,
so that's number one. What, what are the others? - To help people rediscover
their God-given gifts to do purposeful work,
to reconnect people, to self, family and community. To inspire people into
a lifestyle of abundance by giving their best first. And my old brain here is, oh,
to connect human to human, heart to heart through the fellowship of food and hospitality
and... pretty simple. - [John] Very good.
- Yeah. - You know, we've talked a
lot about brokenness in this conversation, but you're
doing hopeful, beautiful work. You're engaged in a community that clearly enriches your life. Are you fundamentally an
optimist or a pessimist? How do you think about- - No, fundamentally an
optimist, but I don't operate on the fix and repair, cure solve spectrum that people would want. I'm a realist. There's a poem that was written,
I can't remember by who. And it had something to do
with Father Oscar Romero, called "Prophets of a Future Not Our Own". And you know, we're only
here for a puff of smoke, poof, that's all. In the scheme of time, poof,
you're here and you're gone. We're gonna be dead, and during
our lifetime, the movement that you have in terms of the kingdom work is infinitesimal almost not measurable. No matter how big you think
you are, no matter how this all comes out, no
matter how big the village and the movement becomes,
it's teeny tiny over the scheme of infinity. The hope that I have is
the hope that the work that I'm doing is the work
that God has called me fundamentally to do. I know at my core that I have
been called, he came to me, he spoke to me through that
catering truck, and has led me for these 25 plus years down this road, to make a difference in all
kinds of people's lives. Not only the lives of the
people that have been lifted up off the streets, but also
our lives that are being transformed because our
stereotypes are changing. And I can take people and
I can drive up underneath this bridge right here,
right out your front door and show 'em hopelessness. And I can drive 'em about
eight miles from here and show 'em hopefulness. You know, I raised my family
for 34 years in Westlake Hills, the same house for six and a half years. I've lived in this village and
it's the most extraordinary, most diverse, most joyful
place that I've ever been. And it's got a side salad
attention that's hard to fathom because I've got the meth
guys, the crack guys, the fentanyl guys, the
heroin guys, the alcoholics, the convicted felons,
people dying all around us in a beautiful way that is
just hard for me to describe. You and I wanna hide ourselves,
that's why when we push everything to the furthest
fringes of our society, and we don't get to see it
because we don't want to see the bicycles being
stolen or the prostitute after turning 10 tricks last night because she needed the crack cocaine or the male that's
selling himself in order to support his drug habit. You and I don't want to see
these things that are happening ubiquitously all around us in
this neighborhood right here. It's happening right now. And the only way that we're
ever gonna be able to manage it is to bring it in close to
us and really love it the way that God fundamentally called
us to love the most despised and outcast of our society. I'm extremely hopeful
and I love getting to do what I get to do. It's bottom line. - Before we wrap up, I
have some other questions I wanna have. I try to end every
conversation with some things that are universal. So let me... I'm gonna pull 'em out here. - That's a stack of universal questions. - They're not too bad. We'll move 'em through 'em quickly. - Yeah. I've only had one
question ever asked of me that stumped me in my- - And what was it?
- Kindergarten class? St. Gabriel's Catholic school. So I give a little talk to the kids, I open it up for question. This little girl raises her
hands and goes, "Mr. Graham, what was it like serving
the homeless on horseback?" (John laughs) I go, "Do I look that
old to you little girl?" Anyway, so... - Alright. When you competed against
your dad, did he let you win or did you have to earn it? - You know, my dad wasn't
there for the competition to really ensue. But I did not let my kids win
and they won when they won. - It's an important one to me. I'm very curious how you think about this. What does masculinity mean
to you and what is it? - That Jordan Peterson, that
question was kind of asked of him and it was that
we need to be in a place where we are capable of violence. - Hmm. - Yet we have the moral capability to withhold ourselves from that. This is how we protect people around us because we as men are the protectors. - Carry a sword, but
keep it in the sheath. - [Alan] Yeah. - Unless it really needs to come out. - Yeah, yeah. - Alright. What challenges your patience the most and how do you overcome it? - I can't stand for people to be late. I don't know if it comes from my roughly one third German deal. If there's an 8:30
meeting, the meeting starts Apple watch time at 8:30. - Alright. What's the most dangerous
thing you ever did as a child? Now and maybe it's
stealing a bunch of cars and wrecking 'em. Is there something else besides what we've already talked about? - You know, we had BB gun wars. - Like shooting each other. - Yeah, no doubt about it. Yeah, crazy stuff. You know, drinking and driving
would be an idiotic thing. I mean, I told my children
when they grew up, I go, you know, the death
penalty is only applied to one thing that you can do. And that is, if I ever catch you drinking and driving, you're dead meat. I will inflict Armageddon on you. And you know, I'm not sure
but the fear was enough that we didn't encounter that. - Yeah, my dad, my dad had
his life turned upside down by being hit by a drunk. So that one resonates me with me a lot. Good fear.
- Yeah. - What's the most dangerous thing you've ever let your kids do? I don't take you as the
helicopter parent type. - No, we weren't helicopter parents. We were hunters and gatherer people and Second Amendment people. My kids grew up with guns. - All of it. (John laughs) - You know, all of that
could be seen by somebody, but, you know, we're not
jumping out of airplanes and things like that. Although I would consider that. - So your kids have pretty
free reign, that's good. - [Alan] Yeah.
- Free range kids. - [Alan] Yeah. - What's the most valuable thing you've learned from your children? - Probably patience,
particularly from my oldest son. I completely lack patience. I don't remember how old he was, but we all went into a Circle K, 7-Eleven and everybody get a
candy bar and you know, you walk up to the plethora of candy that's up there and just go pick one. But my oldest is analyzing every candy bar that's in those racks up there, And I'm losing my patients. And at one point in
time I have to tell him- - [John] Just pick a snickers. - Well you got, you got five seconds, five four, three. And he's like... you know,
this is freaking him out. You know, he grabs one
and the little turd ball will save the candy bar. And the rest of us, by the
time we get to the car, have already consumed it. And so I had to learn a level
of patience that I didn't have because of my oldest. - Yeah, that's a good...
patience is a lesson I think we all get forced to learn
if you've got kids for sure. What do you want written
on your gravestone? - I don't know. - Are you gonna have one? Are you gonna do cremation? What do you think? - No, I'm gonna be cremated
and our goal is to be put in the column bear in
there in the village. There's not much room, it's
not like a real headstone. You get your name and your
birth and maybe one little line, so there's not gonna be
some scripture sentence or something like that. So I think it'll be
extraordinarily simple. And I'll be there with the crack heads, the glue sniffers and the prostitutes, which is where I wanna be. - Well, as a Christian,
that's where he put himself, so that makes a lot of sense. - Yeah. - Now again, I know your
dad was not very present, but to the extent he
did, what did your dad teach you about God? Anything? I know your mom did. - Yeah, my mom did. I say my mom was the driving force. You know, I think my dad lobbed
on to Christ toward the end. I know before he died,
he made a $25,000 gift to the Methodist church there in Alvin. I don't know if he was trying to- - Little indulge by a little indulgence. He should have picked the Catholic church. We have a whole like,
business unit for that stuff. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (John laughs) Probably not as much as you would think. My dad and I got reasonably
close in the latter stages of his life. But he struggled, you know,
mightily and it was difficult for him to have a relationship
with all four of us. - Alan, that's all I have for this. I have one final question. We're called "Dad Saves America." And so I ask every guest,
how do you see your role in the American story, as an American. - You know, 80, 90% of
the people in the village in extraordinarily diverse
people from all walks of life, color, backgrounds, you know,
trauma, call my wife mama. And I would say 40 to 50% call me Papa. And I think we represent
the essence of a mother and father that they never had. That was the mother and father
that were disciplinarians, but also extraordinary nurturers. Like we have our grandson and
we'd love this little tyke and you know, he is only
one, but he prefers Tricia. I mean he's got me. But in moments where he
needs something more, there's that deal to her. And I think we want
people to see the paternal and the maternal nature of who we are. That's I think would be great. - Thank you for being on "Dad
Saves America" Alan Graham, I have learned a lot in this conversation. And God bless everything
that you and your wife and your community are doing. - I appreciate it. Come on out and check us out, man. - I will.
- Yeah. - Thank you very much.
- Beautiful. Thank you. (logo whooshing)
