Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHyNE_13V9w
Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day all right hello Alan hey what's happening well I'm here on The Joe Rogan Experience man that's uh that's what's happening for Allen push this thing up uh get it like pretty close to your face there we go um thanks for doing this man um I'm I was very curious to meet you and i' heard so much about you from uh John Paul dorio and you know what you're doing and we've always wondered like there's always been these questions like how do you put a dent in the homeless situation like what can be done and what I see from you is probably the best example the best possible example I've ever seen and going to your place going to see this community that you've established and how you you give these people hope and and purpose it's really pretty amazing stuff well I appreciate that much yeah how did you get started on this journey and when how long have you been doing it well Joe the uh the organization's 26 years old so founded it in U 1998 it was just a simple idea to start going out on the streets and feeding people out with a catering truck what many of our friends would call a roach coach and uh I got this idea uh built on a conversation that my wife and I had with a girlfriend of ours who was telling us about a Ministry in Corpus Christie Texas where on cold winter nights multiple churches would come together and pull their resources to take out to the men and women that were on the streets in the winter in uh in Corpus and at that moment the image of this catering truck came out of my sub subconscious mind into my conscious brain um as a distribution mechanis ISM from those of us that have abundance to those that lack and uh that was pretty pretty simple and as a serial real estate entrepreneur um I thought that that idea was a brilliant idea of course every idea that you come up with is a brilliant idea when you're a Serial entrepreneur and um um it just blew up in a in a positive way but it really began a couple of years prior to that on a spiritual Retreat uh that I went to at my church uh that I was invited to and U
had I known that a bunch of guys were going to get together and hold hands and kind of do that Bromance hugging it out I I'd have never gone but I end up in this Retreat for 30 hours of uh of handholding and romance hugging it out and had a had a pretty powerful experience that really just led me uh to going God what do you want me to do I mean I wasn't asking for anything big it's just you know what are the little things that I can go out there and do and it was through that and a series of things that led to the founding and then ultimately the founding of the community so so it was essentially this one Retreat you get this vision of just wanting to do something and this is uh why why did you concentrate on homeless people like what was it about that uh um you know out of the retreat the idea was fundamentally to what can I do at church you know I can become a Lector my wife can go do the nursery uh you know we get our kids involved in the in in the thing uh the intellectual relationship that I had with Jesus because there was an intellectual side to this during that retreat just kind of dropped a floor into the depths of the cave of my heart and so there was a different relationship that I was experiencing with what do you what do you mean by that like you had an intellectual relationship and then you had a different relationship well look there there are elements of the Christian faith uh that would you know first begin with you know the um you know that the angel of the Lord came to a poor Jewish 14-year-old little girl and impregnated her with the power of the Holy Spirit that's a weird thought that you got to buy into from that uh the Son of God is going to be born a virgin birth he's going to be on this Earth for a period of time and then he's going to end up being executed uh and he's going to rise from the dead descend into hell um then Ascend into heaven uh but prior to that he hangs out for another 40 Days uh with his brothers these are incredulous things to believe right and so at some point in time you have to end up in this intellectual space where you're just kind of going okay I'm going
to believe that my faith is going to drive me there so um when my wife prior to 1996 started taking our children back to Mass on Sunday and I wasn't part of that I I began to look at that as the train was leaving the station and uh my father had left us when I was young and uh divorced my mentally ill uh mother and left me and my three brothers you know almost stuck with a mentally ill a beautiful mom uh but struggling uh mom and I began to look at uh Trisha uh who we will celebrate 40 years this year kind of gets me emotional thinking about it um as taking our children and leaving the house the train leaving the station I'm sitting back fixing to get ready to go into the office to do some work on a Sunday because you know we're both kind of Serial workaholic types and uh I decided to jump back on that train and begin to really explore my Catholic faith and through that process I I just got enamored with the church and when I talk about the church I'm talking about the whole thing uh the Roman Catholic Church the Eastern Church the Protestant Church the schisms the heresy the wars the reformations and and I got enamored with maybe one of the greatest novels ever written in mankind what a train wreck this whole deal is yet at the center of that deal remains uh this Jesus of Nazareth and uh so uh that was very intellectual uh for me and um and and I was buying into it my faith was buying into it I was believing in it I wanted to believe into it but I had no fact ual things to take me there this Retreat uh took that intellectual stuff and dropped it a floor right right into the depths of my my heart and that's where the change uh really began to occur it became more of a heart relationship with Christ as opposed to a intellectual thing so when when you talk about these specific Concepts that are hard for people to wrap their heads around like the resurrection and like the Virgin birth all all these things like how do you what do you do with that in your mind when you say you have an intellectual relationship with it when you come across something that seems impossible what how do you how do you manage that in your mind like what how
do you approach it well I you know look uh I think there are just some things in the world that you just have to be willing uh to accept the immensity of of the unknown uh basically and and you and I live in a universe of the unknown uh we would all agree and I think science would agree that there are there are things that we know but it it's it's probably extraordinarily limited obviously much more than we knew five or 600 years ago but but today um we're not even uh you know I was talking to somebody today about transistors you know and if you go back to the Apollo days and your little radio that you could dial in you could open it up and you could see the little transistors that are in there well now we're putting a million of them on the very edge of a the size of a fingernail um you know and you and I can't comprehend that but I believe it but I can't see it and and I know people do see that so you and I live in a world basically where we're having to accept things for the most part that we that we can well sort of the transistor thing like first of all we have schematics we understand how they work you can look at them with microscopes you understand the process of putting them on these chips it's like this is it's very scalable and it's also there's a a real paper trail of when they were do you know the whole the whole story of how transistors first appeared it's very fascinating it's uh one of the most uh you want to talk about mysterious things one of the more interesting things about the UFO folklore is that they believe that we have back engineered some of our advances from crashed crafts and the transistor is one of them that sort of comes out of nowhere another one is fiber optics they all sort of seem to come out sometime around 1947 after the Roswell crash yeah well you know and just for a little cooky piece of trivia yeah but I haven't ever seen a UFO so uh you know and I'm going to believe I'm GNA you know yeah maybe you know maybe that's that's the do you believe in that do you believe that like God has created other life forms in other places I believe it's completely possible and uh you know I'm I'm cut out of the doubting Thomas if you're familiar with uh the Apostle Thomas I'm cut out of that cloth
uh uh there's a great uh image uh and it's an image in our Sanctuary at the in the village of a car vagio called The incredulity of Thomas and it's got Thomas sticking his finger into the wound of Jesus with h what I believe are the Apostle Peter and Paul looking over the top yeah yeah and uh I I speak in that I have a I have a talk that I give called The Gospel concar which is the gospel with meat but that woundedness that that I mean Thomas you know when the when the boys came to him after the resurrection and said Jesus is Alive he basically said [ __ ] I'm not going to believe it until I see the nail marks in his feet and stick my finger in his side and this is the phenomenal uh depiction of that by kagio uh and Thomas if you really look at it look at his face bro look at the grimmest uh forehead his eyeballs uh you can't see it very well on this screen but his eyeballs can't even look at him putting his finger in that deal and then uh he's got the torn garments like he's a homeless and then you look at Christ and you know Christ fac is I mean I don't know how you can paint that kind of compassion and then his arm arm uh hand over the forearm of Thomas guiding that finger in in the most gentest way and the boys looking over the top of that deal and look these are all fishermen people and I have no doubt in my mind that they're looking at that and going WTF yeah for sure I mean because they were they were just guys right yeah and um but at that moment he uttered you know um uh that that he believes you know my Lord my God is what he said and um and so you know there's there's always the doubt and the you know whether there's aliens or not I I don't know but I would be an idiot to say I absolutely don't know I mean I absolutely know there's not do you approach religion with that same line of thinking I approached religion from a faith um level I I was raised uh my my mom when she went into a mental hospital when I was four years old and spent a year there subjected to the most powerful psychotropic drugs known to man electric shock therapy the whole deal my do my my dad uh files for a divorce during that period of time attempts to strip my
mother of her maternal right uh of her four boys uh my mom wins all that because she had great parents uh she gets out and at some point in time she converts to Roman Catholicism and drags me and my brothers to to church and the whole deal I I was four or five so I don't have much memory of that but I have a lot of memory of the love that my mother had for Christ and Mary and um when when when you're in love with somebody that has profound behavioral health issues like my mom had and you see that Christ and his mother Mary brought tremendous relief to my mom uh that has an impact on you so I I go into this with Faith complete faith and I'm I'm just released of trying to figure out um is it right or is it wrong and I'm I'm released of having to prove to people I you know I don't get into apologetic arguments with people this is just who I am and how I express who I am that is one of the more fascinating things about people that are very religious is that whether or not you think they're correct or not it obviously has a profound effect on them and then this relief of release like you're you're discussing is obviously hugely beneficial to people and to communities and it motivates people to do beautiful things like what you've done yeah no that's uh you know look if uh if if God is the creator he's created all this so what I tell people all the time you know that want to get into a different argument about this or that or the other I just go look man I you know God created all this he's going to have to sort all the [ __ ] out I I'm not the sorter prouder um but this is how I'm going to live uh my life to the best that I possibly can which is simple love God and love your neighbor as yourself so that's what we're going to do yeah and it's a beautiful way to live it really is and it's uh interesting that some people would dismiss it and even dismiss the beauty of it because they're opposed to the idea of it being attached to religion well if you look at what we humans have done in the name of religion or even non-religion over the
course of our entire history here on Earth uh We've screwed the pooch yeah we've also made a lot of great advances tremendous advances we have pen now H I said we have Penicillin now you know you know what I'm saying like yeah we have um ruined a lot of things but you would not want to be alive 5,000 years ago it would have been [ __ ] barbaric I think well look I just got back I mean last year I walked the Camino de Santiago I'm going back in what is that that's a um a pilgrimage today in a funny way is um and almost providential is the Feast of St James the Apostle and um it is believed that the bones of St James the Apostle are buried uh in Santiago de compostella Spain for over a thousand years there have been these pilgrimages and a half a million people will do that pilgrimage this year um walking uh along a 500 Mile Journey which I did last year and I'm going back in September to do another 300 miles uh along one of the most medieval Journeys on the planet going from one little small medieval Spanish Town uh another until you get to Santiago where the bones of the Apostle are buried uh and so it's a it's a pilgrimage it's one of the three great pilgrimage pilgrimage to Rome pilgrimage to Mecca how long does it take well if you try to do the whole 500 um six weeks it can be done faster if you're U if you're in Joe Rogan shape yeah if you're in Allen Graham shape we're gonna we're going to take a little but you really want to soter through the deal as opposed to you know power right power through it and just Tak in the experience yeah and um you know although people from all walks of life walk this deal it's a very Roman Catholic deal because all the churches in all these small towns are Roman Catholic churches and it goes back in the medieval time when the um uh um you know when the Crusades were going down and there was the B between the Christians and the saucer and you know all that it's just it's it's it's a magnificent experience and when you do these things what do you get out of that like what does it do for you well last year the purpose was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of mobile O's and fishes and um congratulations on that by way yeah
thank you man I appreciate it very very impressive um it um you know for me it's a it's a you know I'm going back in September and I have two of my kids uh going with me so it's going to be this great spiritual opportunity to journey and then along the way uh God brings into your life uh people from all walks of life and you don't know the impact of people coming into your life like I you know look I believe I'm sitting in this chair right now uh because of how uh God has architected us over a few years coming together and now we're here and and so um life is a Camino which means the way and um um you know you and I are on this journey and lots of things come into our world that just kind of come Out of You Know The Ether yeah and appear so why not create as many opportunities in our lives many people want to architect how things are going to go in their life and they got to have it precise and planned and this and uh this is a very unplanned uh I I don't know where we'll be sleeping on any given night I don't know who we're going to encounter at any given night I don't know what restaurant we're going to be in on any given uh night or where we're going to eat a meal or you know who we're going to meet and so there's just a there's a lot of Providence that's that's in this journey in in this pilgrimage it's cool it's something that would blow Joe Rogan away I'm sure it it is always interest interesting to me when those moments do have when you know someone enters your life you meet someone and you just go I I want to know more about the way you think I want to know more about what you're doing and uh the way was introduced to you we went my wife and I went to uh a fundraiser and you had this incredible demonstration of what you're doing and what your organization is all about and then maybe more importantly you came out and talked and the way you talked was with no ego and with kindness and with sincerity and immediately I thought I want to talk to that guy I want to find out what's going on with him you know there's people that you meet that are like extraordinarily peaceful and extraordinarily content and that's how
that's how you seem to me and when you were on that stage talking I was saying to my wife we got to get his information I want to get him on the podcast I want to talk to him I just want to find out what's going on with him cuz you I think you're a very unusual person cuz there's a lot of lot of people out there that profess to be Christians they profess to be whatever their denomination is whatever their religion is but they don't necessarily live it like you you abandoned your uh beautiful house and moved into one of these tiny homes in this homeless community and then when we went and toured the community and got to see how you interact with everybody it's it's beautiful it's really very extraordinary and I don't think there's very many people that would do that what you've done you live with them you you feed them they have all these activities different things to do different ways to make a living there's all these people that are extraordinary artists it's really amazing impressive art that some of these Unfortunate Souls you know they have all this creative ability but they just have nowhere to put it nothing to do and no hope and no understanding of how to get out of this and no one around is getting out of it either and they're sort of Trapped and then you come along and you find Great Value in these people you know and they find incredible value in this community that you've created and the community is constantly expanding while they we were there you were showing us about this new area that you guys are developing where you going to expand it it's really amazing stuff because it's an example of someone who's actually doing it you know you're actually living that life you're you're actually contributing in a incredibly positive way to all those different human beings the hundreds of different human beings that you encounter with this and how much you've shaped and changed their lives it's very beautiful it really is well the uh the interesting thing is that they've uh how they have shaped my life and that's uh that that that's where the miracle sits and when you drive around Austin or you drive around La uh you know where you came from and or any city in the United States and and you see this catastrophe that's unfolded on our streets of all of our Urban
cities it it appears to be hopeless it just a mess and what we want to do is be able to bring people into our village and let them see that there is hope unbelievable hope if we do this right if we get our act together as a civil society and begin to do things for people when we begin to learn you know and what how I like to describe this as I say to people you know people will you know they've got this stereotype of the men and women out there they're dope addicts they're alcoholics they're mentally ill they've chosen this they're lazy um and I said look and um imagine being a 12-year-old little boy or girl you're laying in bed at night and you're in between you're in that Twilight area between being a asleep and awake you're looking out the window at the starry starry night you're dreaming about what you're going to be when you grow up I can tell you that my dreams at 12 were three things one uh I want to be a rock star did you really sure play played guitar had a Fender Mustang was in a band um uh you know uh remember playing the song Bad by Kem I think uh you know Eric Clapton Jack Bruce deal um football I played football was a you know moderately decent football player uh at one time thought I could play in the NFL uh you've seen my DNA you realize that uh that was never possible but it was still a dream um and then I wanted to be a jet fighter pilot wow you know and U you know what's amazing is I'm I'm I'm 68 years old today and if I'm driving and I've got ACDC cranking in the car guess who is on stage playing that guitar and singing that song it's not Angus Young or B Scott or Brian Johnson it's Allan Graham doing that or if I'm watching a great football game you know and I see um somebody throw a great pass or do a great block or a hit or something like that I go back in time or if I see a F22 screaming across the sky I still dream today and I tell people one of my favorite smells on the face of the planet is burning jet fuel I love being on it airports I became a Private Pilot I don't fly now but many years ago so the Embers of that those little boy and girl dreams are still inside of us you
had them I don't know what they were uh at that time and then somebody came in and poured fuel on top of those little boy uh Joe Rogan dreams that now have you uh because you couldn't be laying in bed at night going hey man I'm I'm I'm dreaming of doing The Joe Rogan Experience thing that wasn't on the plate this thing was never on the plate I don't know what happened with this no that's exactly but but somebody was fueling whatever your dreams were along the way until you got to the dream that the world needed you to be in and for these men and women who lost their family completely uh and nobody there uh to pour fuel on those Embers that were burning uh that's really what we're doing so when you come into our art housee like you did and you see uh the artwork that's being prod the van goes that are being produced uh by men and women that are on the street we we as a society are missing out and yeah look we got the crack addicts and the glue sniffers and the prostitutes and the convicted felons all all that comes with the package yeah um how do you do how do you do that to make it safe for the other people there like if you do have the you know the bank robbers and all the the people that are live a dangerous life and they find themselves homeless and how do you do you screen those people out like what do you do uh we do very little uh screening we want to know who you are uh but uh it's a very low barrier entry to get into our deal we we demand civil obedience I will tell you that over the course of my life I have personally known thousands of dope addicts and alcoholics uh most of them are just good people isn't that crazy yeah I think that's the case with all people I think most people are good people but we are so uh we're so we gravitate so much to elevated threat threat levels that we we concentrate on the bad people all the time it's like the news right the news doesn't show you all the news it shows you what's scary there's a lot of beautiful things that are happening all the time that the news never highlights the news just gets you freaked out about global warming nuclear war economic
collapse is that really Biden or is that a guy in a Biden suit whatever it is it's just more crazy things that get you freaked out but the majority of your in your interactions with other people the majority of your experiences with people are pretty positive for the most part even considering all this stress that everybody's under all the time bills that can't be paid relationships that suck jobs that you got fired from all these different things hopes and dreams that are crushed flat tire bad transmission [ __ ] most people are good most people that's why you can go on the highway and everybody for the most part is doing what they're supposed to do working together man yeah when when someone doesn't it's like what is look at this [ __ ] [ __ ] driving like an [ __ ] but for the most part the vast majority of people are letting you into the lane they're all pretty much adhering close to the speed limit well here here are the numbers 400 formally chronically homeless men and women Liv in in our community average time on the streets is 9 years at any given time 15 to 20 are giving us a run for the money 380 to 85 are just fine when you say giv us a run for the money like what's the worst case scenario well um you know they're bringing um you know most everything that happens negatively out there going to be related to dope and alcohol uh so uh you may have the on-site dope dealer that we got a manage and figure out how to either tone that down or get them out of there uh that kind of thing the really aggressive meth or crack cocaine addicts are going to be stealing you somebody's bicycle or uh debit card to go buy you know something or sometimes we have the conflict uence of a profound mental health issue and drugs coming at the same time and they they'll get destructive on their property uh those kind of things it's the the reality of the whole world that we live in uh in a microcosm there at the community first fi and it's probably similar numbers well it's uh that that's right you you look we go everywhere every day all the time and we're safe mhm we we live a great life yeah for the
most part it's just these threat things that people concentrate on that you know that we engineered to try to stay alive and that's what our DNA is all about like if you want to procreate if you want to carry on your genetics you want to keep your loved ones alive you got to stay alive and so there's this fear this constant fear and it's crippling you know and because it's projected it's projected both by the mainstream media and it's projected by social media algorithms the things that you interact with the most the things that freak you out the most or anger you the most or often times the ones you see the most because you interact with those and it's designed to keep you hooked yeah and unfortunately what that's doing is it's making us anxiety ridden freaks yeah and we're losing our understanding of humanity you know it's and it's also extremely polarizing man we we had a conversation about this at your place you know this the the new today it's like so it's so polarizing it's US versus them inside our country for like the first time in my life I've when I was a kid when I was in high school my parents were very liberal and they never talk disparagingly about conservative people or Republicans they just thought they were wrong that's all it was like they had conservative friends they would sit at the dinner table and have conversations about stuff and maybe they'd argue but it was always fine was just two human beings disagreeing on things now it's like everybody's a Nazi or everybody's a communist it's like it's just one side is absolutely sure that they're right and the other side is absolutely sure that they're right and it's just accentuated by everything we see so when you can see someone like yourself in a microcosm put this together and make a real community of some of the most disparaged members of our society the people that know you look when they're trying to get money at the stoplight you look away you drive past them in their tents Jesus Christ what's that guy doing in there you don't even think about them the same type of person that might see someone with a flat tire and pull over like hey buddy you're all right can I help you cuz
you're me I'm you we're at the same sort of Stratus in society we're acceptable members of society with cars and homes and normal people with jobs you know so I'll help you but that guy over there like well this is what we have to you know when you look at the purpose of mobile O's and Fishes our vision statement the thing that drives our organization is that we Empower communities into a lifestyle of service with the homeless not two and four with the homeless this metaphorically is the same thing as pulling over and helping the guy change the flat tire there's a guy on your street corner and up underneath that bridge that you pass every day can we pull over right and help them change that flat tire that's that's what this is all about because the government we have to quit yelling at the mayor and the city council to go and fix this problem this is what we do okay we need government to come alongside of us to do this but look this is a human issue and the government is not coming into your bedroom tonight to tuck you in you know we need a human to human heart to heart connection between people who are broken and battered and come from a trauma background that you and I I mean a battlefield background that you and I can't even begin to understand yeah that's that's the main thing right people always want to use that term pull pull yourself up by your bootstraps you can't even comprehend the starting block that most of these folks have and nobody has Joe right that nobody in history has ever pulled them elves up by their bootstraps it's nonsense it's nonsense it's I mean there are things that you should do in your life you should have discipline you should have work ethic you should strive to your goals you should be a good person try to keep your body healthy you should do all those things but all this pretending that everybody's starting from the same spot and the reason why you're successful and they're not is that you work harder that's just foolish that is ego and nonsense and a complete lack of perspective yeah one of the things that I've always said is that I I find it fascinating when you see a city like Los Angeles is a great example of this because in Los Angeles no one walks
everyone's in their car and you go from your car to your home right so you're constantly isolated until you choose not to be and then when you do go out and you find these people that are in these tents that's like you they just they're not in the community they avoid them they get away from them we didn't if you go back and you study the history of tribal human beings we didn't ever live like that right we were all communal everyone lived together we had tents and then we shared fire we shared food and everybody had a role in the community and everybody had a purpose when we isolated in we developed agriculture then developed cities and then developed walls and then developed ways to block everybody out and ways to hide from every the rest of world and you're in this and then and now that we have cars you get in that box and you drive past all those people we've lost so much connection with human beings and the proportion and size of the homeless drug addicts that are on the street intense is a direct reflection of how sick the culture is and how sick the community is in Los Angeles which is one of the most morally deprived Twisted ideologically imprisoned places I've ever been to has the biggest most insane homeless population did you see where Gavin Nome issued an executive order today to clear all the camps in California what does that mean though well we don't know but it comes out of that well it's because he wants to be president right well well uh you know it's a political move for sure but it's uh related to that Supreme Court ruling the grant P passed versus Johnson ruling that the Supreme Court just did uh and uh so it's an interesting byproduct uh now of what we're uh what we're going to witness well it's a byproduct of people's absolute frustration and fury over this you know what was interesting is uh I had a woman that worked for us uh a few years ago and she was a PhD English classic you know very very smart learned person and um I asked one time where where did the word homeless come from and she went and researched it and the first time that she could find it appeared back in like the 700s uh in a in a in a limmerick from Ireland or something an Irish limmerick
and then it didn't reappear again until about the 15th 16th 17th century type of thing and it was uh not even hardly present but um when you get to the 1970s and 80s um the word became you ubiquitous and through a Google search you can see that this word appears in every publication on every news media staff a million times every single day it just becomes and why in this window of time basically the 70s you know on is that word so prevalent because we didn't we didn't have this when I moved from Austin Texas uh I mean from Houston Texas the Houston area in 1976 there weren't people standing on our street corners begging you you you had the you know uh the Otis is from the you know Andy of Mayberry uh downtown chronic anir it drunk downtown but it wasn't ubiquitous on every single Street Corner what what the hell happened in the past 46 s years what do you think happened since you're in it well well uh profound loss of family culture of death uh within the you know our community culture of death culture of death just uh people not caring about other human beings uh are individual rights um uh superseding the rights of the community uh those kinds of things are constitutional individual rights and I believe in our constitution this isn't an anti-constitutional things but um you know recently um you know on my Facebook which is my only social media deal uh I'm a member of my high school thing and uh one of our assistant principles recently passed away Coach YK and there were five 600 comments on Coach YK and 90% of them were from Men Who got into his office and ended up being paddled you know uh during that period of time and talking about how awesome coach shark was and I couldn't tell you how many licks I got from coach York during that period of time because I was a little turdball when I was in Middle School and and uh and that's what they used to do to kids they used to paddle you yeah used to paddle you I got paddled when I lived in Florida yeah well you can't you can't be paddled anymore there's no discipline you know right I don't know if that's a good thing though to to tell people that the way to discipline someone is to hit them I don't think that's correct I
think that's a lazy approach I think there's other ways to instill we have to learn how to discipline yeah you have to learn how to discipline the problem is they're just dealing with large numbers of people and that's the fall back is to scare them yeah and give them pain the problem is you're encouraging people to hit other people and then you encourage it as a form of punishment and it's just not the way to go yeah I'm not disagreeing with that I'm just you know saying that there was a different time and um people were disciplined out of fear but I think there's other ways to discipline people you know I think there's different programs that you could especially get rambunctious young boys involved and and it would uh temper most of that well it's like uh the outdoors you know young guys don't get to go Outdoors now they don't get to shoot guns and bows and arrows and I grew up hunting and fishing and uh you know raised my family uh outdoors hunting and uh fishing and a lot of energy got exerted uh in that process a lot of testosterone was released uh out there in the Wilds uh it's also a more natural activity than sitting in a classroom sitting in a classroom is the most confusing thing to a child they do not want to do it they don't understand why someone is telling them to sit still well I hated it so it didn't work out should it's not good for anybody I mean I'm not telling kids listening to this drop out of school but I am telling you that it's designed for one thing school is designed to get you accustomed doing things you don't want to do so that you become a part of the workforce yeah and that's what it is it's not necessarily your friend I mean you education is a wonderful thing enlightening your mind filling your mind up with new and exciting information and exploring the world is fantastic heavy emphasis on exploring experiential yes all that is fantastic but what they're doing to kids is not they're making kids sit down all day they don't want to they're making them pay attention to some [ __ ] that's boring from some unenthusiastic uninspired teacher who's underpaid and it's a mess well I'm a drop out so there there we go so yeah didn't work for me I didn't drop out but I did have nightmares after our
graduated high school that I was going to have to go back yeah I had these terrible nightmares like oh my God I like it was something [ __ ] up and I didn't get all my credits I got to go back and do high school over again yeah yeah the the the reality of the way we educate people is that it's just not well thought out and it doesn't it's not aligned with human nature it's not in aligned with the requirements that a young healthy body has for activity yeah what we used to have uh uh you know PE we don't do that right yeah it's also the things that they're learning they're not even NE neily absorbing correctly because they're not enthusiastic about it when you show someone something that's really interesting they absorb it they get into it they it resonates with them they want to they want to be involved in it which is why I'm sure you could think back like I had a great science teacher when I was in eighth grade I think about that guy all the time he was great he he put in my mind the the concept of infinity you know he put in my mind he would tell the whole class like just one night go outside and look up and realize that there's no end he because you really want to make your brain hurt try to figure out what that means like there's no end to that try to figure try to think about how far that goes back and don't let that thought go I thought about that almost every day of my life from a guy that I met when I was 13 years old yeah still do yeah yeah yeah every now and then you get a really good teacher yeah you know time time being the same a guy who uh fought in Vietnam and I think that you know he had this this perspective that he was trying to relay to us like you this is not a long you don't have a long time here like you got to figure out what you like and get after it this is not what you think it is and you're going to lose people along the way yeah there's a great uh kind of a poem out there called the prophets of a future not our own uh about how insignificant we actually are yeah we're just a puff of smoke in in this uh infinite SpaceTime particularly time space we're only here you and I are sitting on this uh uh history of human time right it's it's not even measurable we can't even see it we'd have to have a microscope in order to be able to really
look at it yeah and we are so trapped in our own life and what we're trying to achieve what we're trying to do in our social Social Circle and all the nonsense that we have going on in our life that we lose our perspective and that's really unfortunate because even our perspective just just to think about how small we are in this life and how quick this life goes by that in the universe this planet is nothing like no nothing that you can see in the night sky is anything there's just too much it's so big I think that's one of the reasons why in a similar way people who live by the ocean are very chilled out you know I think there's something about being by that ocean that makes you go oh what is this what the [ __ ] is this this is all [ __ ] look how much water there is or the same thing about mountains people that live in the mountains they have a and food and food oh because there's plenty of food there that's true too that's uh where all the food is right right but there's something about The Humbling of the environment like mountains are another example of that there's a humbling of the person by their environment and I think one of the main problems that we have in civilized society is light pollution and because of light pollution we're not humbled by the night sky like our ancestors were our our ancestors every night they got to view the most spectacular thing a human being ever gets to witness the vastness of the cosmos right above their head every night and now we don't even see it we we we sacrificed that so we could take our Toyota to 7eleven at 10 p.m. yeah yeah well we can travel and look at those we got little spots uh right yeah but not much but you only get like a little dose you're supposed to get vitamin D every day you know I think you're supposed to get vitamin space every day too yeah yeah no I think you are I think the sun gives you vitamin D and it makes you healthier and I think space makes you mentally healthy well I like vitamin space so let's vitamin space is legit adopt that yeah I went to um the The Observatory on the big island and the The kek Observatory I've I've gone a few times since there since then but one time I caught it perfect one time we me and my family we went up there and it was uh no moon at all the
moon was hidden so the sky was just everywhere you look there was just billions of stars and you could see the full Milky Way with the naked eye and it felt like we were what we actually are it felt like we were on an organic spaceship that's hurling through the vastness of the universe and the satellit screaming across I didn't see any of those you didn't see any of no I didn't see any of those I mean maybe there was less of them back then we're talking about like 2009 I guess 2008 when this probably 2008 when when this really rocked me I just remember thinking watching it like no you know what I know for a fact it's 2007 I remember thinking this is such a travesty that we don't have this view every night and I think it would change the way people think it would change the way people feel about just the mystery of life itself just to be confronted by the Stars just confronted by this inescapable greatness that's just mesmerizing and now we're living in The Truman Show yeah a little bit I think it's spiritual too I really do I think there's spiritual aspect of looking out into the universe that's undeniable and I think it imparts something into people I think it imparts this sense of humility and wonder that we're missing and I think it's another one of one of the other reasons mean you really mean it's stripping us of that Wonder because we don't get to look out and dream the way that we used to dream as we looked out there into the unknown and yeah you know on the Camino uh you you you end up in this place beyond Santiago called muhan finister that was believed to be the end of the world and it was just a coastline in Spain out overlooking the Atlantic Ocean so they thought that was it that was it and i' I've stood in this place where for centuries people stood and knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that they were at the end of the world whoow you know and the dreams that got us beyond that somebody thinking in their to themselves that no there's got to be more because they're looking up yeah and they're seeing all of that vastness had to be looking across and being able to see a similar
vastness that didn't end which is it's amazing who had the courage to take that first first boat trip and hope they don't fall off the edge they did and some of them believed that you would hit a wall and you would go off the edge wasn't there like ancient depictions what the Earth looked like show a boat going over the edge no absolutely that's what they believed that wouldn't go out there and uh you know it's amazing because you know we vilify Christopher Columbus now you know because we've uh you know found out he wasn't such a good guy well uh he had his issues uh like you know look we are we got we all have to admit that we we are a perverted species have you ever read the accounts of the uh priest that traveled with Columbus uh some of it yeah yeah that's rough stuff no it's rough scary yeah yeah they were monsters yeah but in Spain he's a hero because he connected the European continent to the American continent right so it's a whole different during September when you're there uh uh is his uh you know holiday and feast and all that stuff they go nuts do they still have Columbus Day here or is he a colonizer no I think they have Columbus Day but I think he's he gotten so beat up that didn't they changed it to like indigenous people's day maybe they did I don't know they Jamie find that out they changed Columbus Day to indigenous people's day I think they might have which is interesting because if they knew the history of indigenous people a lot lot of bad stuff going on there too lot of bad stuff a lot of bad stuff going on right here no humans uh yes yeah yeah that's the reality there's never been one group of humans that lived in this perfect Society this utopian world where they were kind to all of each other no no no humans have always been barbarians and conquerors and yeah it's just what does it say here uh it depends where you live some places like Portland in Texas is still Columbus Day where state workers have the second Monday of October off oh but that's just when they so the other places they don't have that off so it's just holidays state holidays honoring Native Americans yeah do they still call Columbus Day on your phone it's I
couldn't get a right answer depending on what state you live what day is Columbus Day o second Monday in October let's see if it says it on my phone still if these colonizers the second Monday in October is that what you said yep uh nope yeah oh it does do both online yeah the 14th yeah Columbus Day and Indigenous people's day there we go yeah um but my point was when we started this whole journey that the the health of a community is often measured by how they treat the downtrodden and I think it's a great like again I think Los Angeles is a great example a place that's really [ __ ] up and the the evidence is these people intense everywhere you look and the fact that people could just passing by and they live there for years and it just expands I mean it was bad it was bad in certain parts of downtown LA when I was filming Fear Factor there in 2003 we were we were filming we'd film downtown because there was a lot of these warehouses that were abandoned and we use them for stunts and different things that people had to do and I took a wrong turn once and I was down skid row and I was like yo this is crazy like I I I couldn't believe the numbers of people that were just wandering around the street cracked out cardboard box houses and that was the beginning of it and that the crazy thing about that is Skid Row was essentially an engineered environment they took all the mentally ill people that they arrested from all other parts of Los Angeles and they brought him to Skid ow and they kept them there they they just put in you know food kitchens and some kind of a shelter and they like you [ __ ] stay here we're keeping you out of Beverly Hills we're keeping you out of Bair just stay right here and it just stayed like that and grew and there was a was it the Cecil Hotel was the documentary on watched a documentary on the Cecil hotel and which is in the middle of all that it was this beautiful old hotel and now that whole area is just chaos and then now it's expanded like considerably so the fact that they have never done anything about that it's it's only grown and in fact more people are hired to work on it and those people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and not putting a dent in it just shows
you how sick the culture is it's an example and I think what you're doing is an example of what can be accomplished with a healthy culture you know I know you have a lot of really important powerful people that are like that got your back and really love what you're doing and because of that you've managed to put together this enormous community and now you have more land and you're expanding and building more of it and if this can be done more like this might be the solution I mean what I saw from your place is the best example of a possible solution to this ever because you could see those people when they were walking down the streets and waving to you and talking to you people seemed happy they seemed relieved they seem like they've got some hope we're looking at it here we uh we're looking at here on the video look at that mug shot man that's you buddy yeah it uh we're a piece of the puzzle Joe yes but it's a very good I'm not a big fan of the word solution you know we're we people want to solve things and um and and I appreciate that U humanity is very difficult to solve we've been dealing with these issues uh issues of poverty and issues of Abandonment and issues of trauma since the Advent of man held the Bible basically begins with the you know the can and Abel uh you know experience so what we're witnessing today is really nothing extraordinarily new but because of the urban environment that we live in it's very congregated and we're so separated as a culture uh today um that it's it's manifesting into this chaos what we need to do is we need to open the door very wide to Innovation and I will tell you from 1975 to 1995 20 years one simple generation we eliminated in The United States of America 1 million that's one with six zeros after it single room occupancy units in the United States okay tonight there'll be about 600,000 people living on the streets in La it's 50 60 whatever whatever that number is and what were those single occupancy units just simple uh places with a with a bed and you know metaphorically a microwave inside maybe a shared bathroom down the hallway or and where were these places in in all of our cities what were they called sro's hotels and stuff like that and it was just for homeless people
or people for people that lived in poverty and then uh over that period of time since the 1970s up till now there's been this creeping affluence dictated by the government as to what housing quality standards should be for people as opposed to I'm going to help you get up off the streets here's a sustenance to get you off the streets you choose where you're going to live with that sustenance so the only reason why these single occupancy places were eliminated was because they had raised the standards uh raised the standards but these places were also uh in neighborhoods where people didn't want those people in their neighborhoods so it's kind of a Confluence of not in my backyard right uh plus this elevation of uh of these housing quality standards that makes a place like Community First Village which you have seen firsthand uh not a not approved by the United States uh government housing and uh Urban Development yeah we have to change this we have to we have to open the door to vast Innovation to get people uh out of this into places that they can afford and there was also during the reaged administration they changed the standards for uh mental health institutes and I believe they let a lot of people out on the street well let's uh we got to look at the facts and what what I would do there a great podcast that came out recently through uh NPR called Lost patients P NTS that goes through the historical background of that entire debacle and it really begins with JFK and and the effort and and the exclamation point was put on during the Reagan Administration people want to blame Ronald Reagan but it wasn't Reagan it was lots of people all of us we the people frankly um that were trying to get people out of the State Mental Hospitals that didn't need to be there and the vast majority of them didn't need to be there and re acclimate them back into the community what we're seeing out on the streets right now are the small percentage of people who probably need to be institutionalized or managed in a phenomenally different way than what how we're managing them now so they had a problem with people that were just using the mental health institutions to stay there or was it just a matter of like
they had diagnosed people with you know manageable illnesses but wanted to keep them there like how did what was the issue well um you know it's it's it's complicated so I'm going to just kind of do a superficial in 1887 there's a map of uh the City of Austin it's an oblique map that goes from the Colorado River uh North uh through North Austin it's kind of a topographical map you can buy these Maps uh today and on that map are three prominent features this is 1887 there's the capital there's the University of Texas Tower and uh and there's the insane asylum if you can zoom in on that that's the insane asylum that's the insane asylum that's a pretty big Asylum when you see how few people are there well that building is still there really right now what is it now it's at 45th in guadalu but what is it now it's the insane it's the the Austin State Hospital oh okay and so we the people of the State of Texas and the state of everywhere knew that we had to have a place for our neighbor that lived in our communities that had profound mental health issues the problem is is that we did a lot of Ex human experimentation during that period of time right uh by the time the 50s and 60s came around we had invented these unbelievable drugs hll thorine all these drugs that we could give people uh electric shock therapy which had been around for many decades prior to that labotomy the the whole deal about Kennedy had to do with his sister having a labotomy right and uh that there's got to be a better way that we can bring people back into the community as opposed to being in these institutions and so I ask you and all of our listeners here how many people do you know that are on psychot they're battling depression bipolar disorder it's all around us and um um they don't need to be institutionalized but there are a few people in this world that need a different level of care than we're currently giving them I have we have half a dozen of them that live in the village that we can't manage and we need a different level of care by the time
Ronald Reagan came around we were completing uh what was really an honorable uh experiment that has gone uh partially arai right so who who else besides yourself has do you know of other places like your place that they've done it in other cities around the country where they've done something similar yeah there's replicators uh going on around the country guys say replicators we call them replicators um we have a replication operation at mobile loe's and Fishes so three times a year people fly in from all over the country uh sometimes from around the world uh to come and learn for two and 1 half days in an immersive two and a half day Symposium we're doing so teaching people how to do it other places that's correct and how many of them exist in the country right now um just going to kind of pull a number there's a couple of dozen happening around the US and more coming is there a cohesive website where people can find these no no no but we'll probably have one someday uh we argue we debate would just call it argue internally you know what is a replicator of the community first model uh there could be let's just hypothetically say that there are pillars associated with what we do you know and um so how many pillars do you have to follow in order to actually be a a real replicator it's like a McDonald's deal we you know we're not going to be a McDonald's because I can't get we're not going to be able to manage people to do exactly precisely what we do and plus how we do it in Austin Texas is not necessarily how you're going to do it in Minneapolis Minnesota but there are some characteristics of of what we do that we think are extremely important and so these people that come to you um how did they hear about you how how do they hear that you were doing this like have you had experiences with these people that explained their calling like why they were brought to you to to try to replicate this thing in their Town well there's um uh I mean there are people all over the us that are working in the homeless space that have been in this space that are dealing with these people looking for ways uh to
compassionately move the needle on this deal and witnessing that we're we're not doing a very good job in our country of moving uh the needle and then we've been all over the news that this show is going to have a giant impact we're going to get slammed uh frankly uh in a positive way by people interested in in what we're doing but we've also the Today's Show 60 Minutes uh has just been so much New York Times that we've uh that we've gotten to experience they just hear about us uh and we're pretty I mean we're pretty welln uh still controversial but welln well it's it's a beautiful thing you're doing man it really is and when you go there and you experience it you go wow I'm so happy there's someone like Allan out here doing this and so happy that all those people that work with you are also equally moved to do it because it just feels like you're doing something really good and sometimes you don't see a lot of that in life you know you don't see a lot of like real selfless sacrifice and done under the spirit of just trying to do good I think um you know through these symposiums and through the work uh there are a number of people uh out there in the US you know trying to figure things out it's um the Confluence of where I came from out of the business Community uh you know maybe kind of rare people leaving you know one thing in order to jump in to another thing but have had the experience of running operations the way that I ran those and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to really demonstrate to people that no matter what your leadership qualities are no matter how well spoken you might uh be able to articulate what's going on there's a place for you to lead to make a difference in uh in in your community because people will say I'm I'm no Allen grah well thank god number one you're not it doesn't take an allen Graham to do this uh but let me show you the pieces that it does take in order to make this happen and where you fit into that that puzzle that's what we try to do with our symposiums and what's interesting also too about the place that you have is you give these people an opportunity to learn things and to express themselves and then these people
wind up selling these things like the artwork was truly extraordinary like that the person that's making those chest pieces like those are really intricate like you look at something like that like that's very valuable and a lot of the art is really incredible and just think of like how many people get affected and get moved by these pieces of art that would never experience it if these people didn't have an opportunity to express themselves U several years ago my wife and I got really into Vincent Van go and we've traveled around the world trying to see every publicly available van go that we could possibly see the van go Museum in um in Amsterdam uh is is incredible to learn that you know he he started painting when he was 27 years old committed suicide at 37 wow during his lifetime of artwork he sold one painting he was an abject failure and um uh it's forensically believed that he was maybe schizo effective bipolar schizo effective it's also rumored that he was possibly a drug addict I forget the drug he spent two years in an ins asylum in a little town in arls France where he probably painted the most expensive art on the planet while he was in an insane asylum and um um and then it was post his death and because of his sister-in-law his brother uh who died six months after Van Go who really exposed him and he's you know considered one of the greatest artists of all alltime history that's what I believe that we potentially have out there on the streets are these van goes and you met UTA dimar u a German woman who is gifted beyond all giftedness and sold that chest set for 10,000 bucks by the way wow it's worth it yeah it was is worth it handmade One of a Kind there'll never be another one like it uh handcarved uh hand glazed absolutely stunningly uh beautiful and um and and I think it's up and that's because we poured we collectively We the People us not just mobo and Fishes decided that we're going to pour fuel on those childhood EMB
of her dreams and that's what she gets to do every single day is come in there and paint do you have classes for these people there no they're the teachers that's the there's some level of that it's a lot smaller than people uh think uh you know uh I don't know how you were when you were little but uh I was the stick figure guy and I couldn't I I could only Outside the Lines it never worked for me and so uh but then there are those people that you knew when they were growing up and they could draw all the faces and stuff like that there's a natural talent that something in the brain man that they're able to get this creativity out onto a canvas that is beyond our our comprehension I don't know how they do it my art is the village that's my canvas is that Village it's a different kind of art U but I'd love to be able to draw and paint something I've tried it looks like [ __ ] so it just takes more time when I was a kid I wanted to be a comic book illustrator so I drew a lot yeah so you may have that gift and yeah well I think it's just an interest and then with focus and time and dedication you get better at it if you're truly engaged in it enthusiastic about it obsessed with it you'll get better better at it I don't think I mean I think there's certain people that definitely have a very unique perspective and that whatever that is that gift allows their art to be completely unique and different just something it it just it Sparks it has a different feeling when you look at it but I think that really comes from whatever that person is think the skill of learning how to do it is that's a learned skill that you could learn now did you when your kids were younger would you draw caricatures or yes one of my daughters is an incredible artist she's incredible she's really really talented like more talented than I was when I was her age she's she's incredible um I think maybe some of that comes from genetics I don't know I don't know how that works I'm not sure you know there's there's some people that are children of great singers and they have incredible voices and you wonder like is that the genetic makeup is that just like you have this capacity for sound that I don't have like you can you can make
beautiful songs that I can't do or is it is it a learned thing in your genes from some person you know your your parent one of your parents that has this thing inside of them and it somehow or another gets into you and you're like oh I know how to do that I know how to do that that's in me that's in me I think there's a little of that too well the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour thing uh right is uh is pretty legit it's 100% legit yeah time spent learning something is at 100% legit the more Focus the more dedication the more you're like all in on something the better you're going to get at that and that's the difference between someone who's truly great at something and someone who's just kind of mediocre it's how much time you spent on it how much time you how much Focus how much energy do you have to apply to it yeah and this thing about your village is that there's a lot of these people that do have this energy and do have these they just didn't have a path for it and it just was banging around inside of their head well think about what we've uh how old are you now 56 56 so I'm I'm 68 uh and I grew up in the the Houston area I born in Houston moved out of there in Middle School to to Alvin Texas when I moved uh from Alvin to Austin in 1976 there were no panhandlers on our street corners anywhere in any City you might have had the chronic anbri at downtown LA or Houston you know or Austin but you had men and women selling bottles of water newspapers flowers cow skull ckins and I'm sure your favorite velvet Elvis art everybody's favorite yeah everybody's favorite we need Jamie velv Elvis art on screen somehow um and uh We've outlawed all that that entrepreneurial Spirit of PE people that quest of people to go out and be purposeful and instead the only remaining Bastion of entrepreneurialism remaining in the United States for poor people is the first amendment Free Speech right to stand on a street corner and beg and you can't go to any country in the world Joe and and not be accosted by somebody that is selling you something right um you could be sitting in the middle of Rome come on there it is Elvis crying that's serious Elvis that's fat Elvis
too velvet Elvis that's that's Vegas Elvis yeah and um uh you'd be in the in the plaza in Rome somewhere drinking your you know $10 cappuccino and a rainstorm like today comes on and there's a hundred people out there with umbrellas and ponchos selling them Y and you're buying them the rainstorm goes away and the bottles of water and the artwork and the whirly gig things come back out what what happened to that piece of who we are one of my great friends a guy he's dead now John Bramble used to sell uh you know uh stuff like the skulls and the Longhorns and uh U stuffed animals and stuff and rugs and cow skins and cow skulls from a from a van on a street corner and built a multi-million dollar a year business um you know that was here in Austin where you could go buy all kinds of stuff like that because he could do it on a street corner you know when did they make that illegal it's it's either illegal or the occupational licensing requirements to do it have become so onerous and expensive that people that live in extreme po poverty can't navigate uh that deal that's that's the problem like I think that if you're going to sell a prepackaged food item like a bottle of water or bag of chips or a Milky Way or something like that you ought to be able to go buy a box of those from Sam's Club and go standing on a street corner and sell those things or walk up and down Congress Avenue and uh you know milky weighs two bucks you know bottles of water you know how much a bottle of water is when you buy by the the case about 20 cents right you know and how much do you pay for a bottle of water during South by Southwest well five bucks right you'll pay $2 all day for a bottle of water you would buy a bottle of water faster from a guy that's trying to sell it that bought it for 20 cent that you would just to give him the 20 cents without earning it and they would rather earn the money so I wrote a PO a a a little blog post many years ago called the panhandler the greatest yet most ineffective entrepreneur I've ever met they're great they're willing to stand out there on a street corner in absolutely abysal shitty conditions uh being rejected over and over and over
and over again spit on reviled all for uh or nickel and dimes and and dollars 40 50 100 bucks a day crazy yeah we should we should Empower that but our Nanny state will have them uh oh we can't have them on the street corners they're going to get hit by a car someday I think the fear is that you would encourage them to do that and then you'd also it getting everybody else's way well that's uh that's the fear but um I'd rather walk down Sixth Street and see a guy with a guitar on the corner playing with a hat out front and throw money uh in that deal thanking them for that deal or selling me a whirly gig while I'm walking with my family to the restaurant that my kids's looking at and going hey Daddy I I want one of those get me please yeah and you pull out a $5 bill it's dignity man and then we never know where that might uh lead somebody there's that big homeless shelter that's uh off of Seventh Street yeah seventh in Nature's yeah uhhuh what how do they do it there cuz that seems like a crazy place to put a homeless shelter right next door to everybody partying cuz you go one block over you're on Sixth Street and it's Madness it's chaos drunks wandering down the streets yeah it's fun well uh that place came about in the 1990s uh when downtown Austin was just kind of a [ __ ] hole uh nothing going on we were barely at the beginning of the revitalization downtown Austin so the obvious place to have put that shelter was there on the Eastern Fringe of downtown and then there was an explosion of people wanting to revitalize move downtown and then suddenly this thing became kind of the source and Summit of the center of the Town reviled by everybody uh uh moving down there so uh it kind of came about uh naturally it actually happened during my buddy's uh Kirk Watson's first term as uh a mayor and he regrets it he looks at that as a uh a mistake but what do you do now right you know do they even have the money to move it and where would they move it and why would they move it well uh what you have to say is that U you know what neighborhood are you going to move it into right uh and that that becomes the issue and I think we'd be better off uh you know building more options like the Community First uh and
pumping more money into that yeah no question no question um what would it take how many people are being taken care of at that place on Seventh Street uh I'm going to guess uh 100 100 150 people not many it's not the the there's a new organization uh oh I can't remember the name right now forgive me for that but uh that took it over about a year year and a half ago or so and they've done a marvelous job if you drive by it today you can't even tell it's a shelter so um it's actually being run extraordinarily well today you said that's about a year and a half ago yeah that makes sense Urban Alchemy Urban Alchemy is a organization out of California somewhere that uh came in and took that over that makes sense because I have noticed a difference because when we used to do the Vulcan which is down on Sixth Street it was uh like caddy corner to that place and it was just Madness over there yeah well you still that was a couple of years ago yeah but if I walk down s Street today it's still full of uh people hang out down there because it's uh there's a large crowd there's all the things great panhandling opportunities and uh so until they really Revitalize uh that area of six Street uh that will probably not change right well there's some work being done doing that so we'll see yeah but are you a fan of that revitalization uh well I own a place down there I know you do so so I'm definitely a fan yeah I mean I want it to be safer yeah and but it's also I like the wildness of it I like the fun yeah like that that Street's fun it's got a lot of energy to it you're hearing live music from all over the place there's people walking back and forth and great food trucks right there it's fun yeah yeah it's got a well that's what attracts and and so how do we make that a part of the character of the deal without uh the extreme negative side effects that people experience sometimes the extreme negative side effects of having the shelter there you mean well homelessness in general uh they've made it better whatever they've done over the last year and a half it has had a positive impact you see less less of it less real problems you're definitely
going to see unfortunately some people that are still like under the throws of drug addiction there's a corner over by where Buffalo Billiards used to be you know that that's kind of red riverishere it's such a heartbreak it's someone's kid you know that that's what it is when you have children of your own too you look at people like that and you go hey that was someone's baby boy yeah and now here they are like half naked scabs all over their body slumped over rocking back and forth in the breeze yeah yeah devastating and no one's doing anything yeah just they're on their own you know and I it's my feeling that in a healthy Society those people would be treated and cared for they' try to fix figure out a way to try to help those folks better for everybody when they get out of that misery and come into a place like Community First Village uh our statistical data that we've done over the past seven or eight years shows an 80% drop in drug use from the streets to the village and about a 40 to 50% drop in alcohol use that's amazing it it is amazing it's a it's a harm reduction uh model and U uh because how how are you going to live in the misery of being on the streets other than anesthetizing yourself right uh to the back so it's hard to blame people I mean we're antiz all of us right I mean they're so I mean one of the greatest drug dealing places is all of our pharmacies where you know we're all going to buy our Pharmaceuticals and u you know you know and there's look there's some interesting things going on in the world that that I want to see explored especially around addiction and that's like the use of psychedelics in mitigating um and as a treatment mechanism uh for people and I just look would like for the world to to come around and you know make things easier to bring relief to people because when we bring bring relief to individuals we're going to bring relief to the community as a as a whole and we ought to explore a number of different things and you know I take the legalization of marijuana as an example you know look I live in the middle of a village where it's all there everything is there from fentanyl to crack cocaine to meth uh marijuana and I will tell you our potheads are happy
hungry and sleepy uh and the folks that are uh you know smoking or shooting you know meth and crack uh uh many of them have pretty profound uh problems as a result of that and i' I'd love to see uh some studies going on around the Psychedelic nature to see if we can further help people yeah uh through their addiction issues so yeah I'd like to see that as well there's some powerful tools out there that we're not utilizing yeah yeah we're just afraid of them so how does a person get involved in your how do they get accepted like what if someone is on the street and they find out about your village how what is the process well first of all they have to be chronically homeless so there's a definition that we use that basically comes out of Hud it's a it's an unaccompanied male or female with a disabling condition having lived on the streets at least a continuous year for us they have to be in the Austin area because we're not going to take you from Dallas or Houston or Minneapolis or episodically homeless adding up to a year Over a four-year period of time why did you choose that particular time period I I don't uh that's kind of a definition that comes out of the federal government and um we have a homeless management information system that's managed here in town that allows us to go in I can go in and you know hypothetically look up Joe Rogan I could see how many touch points you've had into the homeless service deal and over what uh period of time um but a year has got to be a minimum knowing that the average number of years in our community today is under 10 years a little over nine years of homelessness home homelessness so is it just that there's so many people that are chronically homeless that you should concentrate on them first well um fundamentally that's my that was my gospel call I wanted the uh the the roughest toughest hardest most despised Outcast lost and forgotten population I I wanted uh the ones that nobody believed uh had value so that that that fundamental was spiritual decision of of mine as the founder of uh of mobile o and fishes and then [Music] um you know it's easier to go after the women and children and the little
families that are living in the van in the Walmart parking lot or the veterans or the this that or the other uh but I I wanted the lowest on the U on on our radar or totem poles uh to go after and then so one once they're chronically homeless for a year how do you find them do you seek them do they seek you how does what what is the process in um the early days of mobile O's and Fishes we had these catering trucks still do there's a dozen of them in Austin that go out every night serve about 1,200 meals uh every night and so we're deeply connected into that uh environment in 2003 uh I started something called a street retreat in May of 03 I took 15 people uh from my church out for a 72-hour sleepover basically a retreat uh one-on-one Retreat between you and God uh and the retreat center were the primarily the Wallace streets of downtown Austin uh we've done dozens of those I've personally done 50 I've probably spent uh 250 nights on the streets uh myself uh and you begin to build relationships with people through that uh process so many of the early people uh that came into the village were coming through uh that Network today we're engaged uh we have an organization in town called Echo there are they are our Continuum of Care lead in Austin Texas and a number of agencies are engaged with Echo um who refer people through Echo and the hmis system into uh the village and they have a u they have a coordinated assessment they call it something else I think now but uh there's a coordinated assessment tool that people can take uh that attempts to assess individuals vulnerability so the goal for from the continu of care folks is to get the highest vulnerable people up off the streets because allegedly they cost uh us the taxpayer the most money although there's some questions around that uh now legitimate questions we try to get a balance because we can't become a fullblown assisted living type of a deal we need people that can live independently so there there's a structure that brings people in it takes a while or we have a waiting list of about 150 people wow and so you have these 3D printed houses too yeah and how
did that come about and did you design those specifically for your needs were these prefabbed is it something that was already made no uh I mean we had this the the second ever in the history of the world 3D printed house uh you know on the property uh where's the first the second one where's the first uh in East Austin in the backyard of a piece of property that the icon guys uh own oh and it was the one that they built uh that they launched out South by six seven eight years ago I can't remember the the exact years uh they're great little places they're phenomenal that's one of the things that I was thinking when I got in there like when I was a young man when I was single I was like oh I could live here yeah this is a sweet little spot you got a nice little kitchen area you got a little bedroom area you got a table you put television there well not bad at all they're they're great entrepreneurs I know them well it's an Austin based company uh we're we're considered a pretty awesome entrepreneurial nonprofit uh Austin base Austin founded Austin homegrown and um uh as they were uh starting to come up on the radar screen uh we ended up coming together and it just made sense that they could come out there and experiment and beta test uh their printers uh and build for us and then they these guys also have a a phenomenal heart because normally new technology is reserved for people that can afford that new technology but here here's a powerful new technology that's actually uh benefiting people who could never afford that technology because that technology today is not not cheap right they're beating it down but uh it's uh it's not cheap so we've built 17 of them on the two phases that we have right now we're under construction right now on 50 more across the street on that new phase and there'll be another 50 over on Burleson Road by the airport where we're under construction there and so you live in one Community yes what are you going to have people like you that are living in these other communities or you just going like how will you manage them well there is um uh there's a population of people that live in our community it's about 10% of our
population that we call missional just like a a missionary would leave the United States and go overseas somewhere to be a missionary there are people that have chosen and called by the gospel uh to live in community at Community First Village so there's about uh 50 60 people that include 40 adults plus about uh 15 children that live and more are coming our way so that's one of the secret sauces of uh of our community is is mixing people in there throughout the community uh that have never experienced homelessness but are are called to serve alongside and with the formerly chronically homeless and I think another thing to bring up is that you you had some resistance from the outside Community the people that were neighboring it they were worried that you were going to affect property values and things weren't it's going to be dangerous but in fact the opposite happened and then yeah and so you haven't had any problems and on top of that the communities near you are now worth more money than ever yeah um it's pretty funny because we the initially what we tried to do was partner with the city of Austin so we're we're actually just outside the city of Austin we share a property line with the city of Austin but for several years from 2006 roughly 2005 roughly to 2010 I tried to collaborate with the city of Austin provide us with attractive land anywhere and we'll raise the money to build the um um in 2008 April of' 08 the city uh unanimously city council granted us a long-term ground lease on 17 acres of land in in East Austin in July of 08 we went on a uh to a neighborhood meeting myself the sponsoring council member some of our team members assistant city manager uh my wife Trisha uh that just turned into to Armageddon police had to be called to escort us out of there and um uh what happened oh we were assaulted and spit on and uh it was a and the news media was there and it was a it was a unbelievably horrible uh experience um the next morning the city council member the sponsoring city council member by the way who is still a friend of mine a hugging friend of mine uh called a press conf conference to suspend uh finalizing that lease for 12
months which put a bullet in the head of of that deal we uh we regrouped and um we began to look at other property and um uh one of the other properties that was going to be granted to us was the trative land that the soccer stadium now sits on on maalla lanee and then we got the not my back yard deal uh from a large group of people uh in that neighborhood and um and finally uh in 2010 after complete frustration I went to the then mayor of Austin lead leing well good friend great guy and I said look I'm thinking about going outside the city of Austin where there's no zoning getting attractive land there uh but I need the City uh to help us with transportation and U and utilities and uh he looked at me and said Allan you may be the smartest person I've ever met in my life which was a funny thing to say just a Dropout and you know I mean I'm not that dumb but I'm not uh stepen Hawking either so uh and um and that's what we did we went and bought that site uh where I live today and then bought the site next door to it and then the one across the street with some great support U you know some of our big donors and um and uh and really stripped the adjoining neighborhood because there's no zoning you can't we had the legal right to develop that property there was no zoning and nobody that could approve prove what we would build on that property and so the big fear is crime and lower property values well uh when I contracted for that property in 2010 I could buy any house next door for call it plus or minus 150,000 bucks today it's plus or minus 450 okay the other argument is crime there hasn't been one reported crime that I'm aware of uh by anybody from from our neighborhood in the neighborhood next door and there have been 13 Crimes by that neighborhood into our community mostly juveniles stealing our golf carts our Polarises shoplifting out of our Market uh stealing bicycles you know the random juvenile the link the kind of stuff that I would have been doing if I was 14 or 15 years old yeah and I love those guys and we we look we work with them uh you know to help them but if you're going to put a barbwire fence it needs to be on their side of the deal not our side now look we got plenty of
[ __ ] inside of our neighborhood this is not Nirvana I don't want anybody walking away we have plenty of stuff going on but it's not the gunfight at the okay Corral right well Allan thank you very much for being here and uh thank you for doing what you you've done what you've accomplished is it's very inspirational I think as I said at the beginning like you're you're a guy who really lives that life and uh I think it's a beautiful thing to witness and I think your story is going to move a lot of people and um so tell people if they're interested how they can get involved what they can when they where they can find out more well you could go to our website at uh mlf.org like mobile loes and Fishes Mike lmaf frank.org uh you could um you know our hashtag is uh p mobile loaves um I published a book we published a book Harper Collins uh back in 2017 called Welcome homeless you could go and get that book it's a a series of stories about encounters that I've had with about 11 or 12 different people over the course of my uh uh time working on the streets I think it's a fun book that people would really enjoy kind of an emotional uh uh deal so go uh check that out uh if you really want to know more uh get it on an airplane fly to Austin Texas and uh come see what we're doing we'd love to share uh this with you if you're interested in uh coming to one of our symposiums we'd uh we'd love to have you there so all right we're very grateful for this opportunity Joe thank you I'm grateful for you to be here thank you I really appreciate you thank you very much for everything yeah thank you all right all right bye everybody [Music] [Applause] [Music]