A Radical Approach to Fighting Homelessness: Love
In Texas, a village of tiny homes boasts a huge sense of community.
Every house, however tiny, has a front porch for socializing.
Photograph: Frank Barry
On the outskirts of Austin, I pull the Winnebago into the parking lot of a busy shopping mall. I had been here once before, 19 years ago, when it was a dirt parking lot for The Backyard, a live music venue with nothing around but some Hill Country trees, a stage, a bar and the high lonesome sound of Willie Nelson. Now my wife Laurel and I are here to visit a clinic and have our brains poked with swabs to test for a plague that has killed 2 million people. Whiskey River take my mind.
We’re in and out in less than 10 minutes, relieved to be negative and off to meet close friends who live down the road, John and Jennifer, who generously take us in for a few days. The first order of business is heading downtown to replace the tattered cowboy hat I’d bought 19 years ago. We take their new Tesla, which — after 9,000 miles in a Winnebago — feels more like a SpaceX rocket than a car. Elon Musk had recently announced that Tesla will be moving to Austin from California, a common migration for the usual reasons: lower taxes, lower costs and fewer regulations. More than 85,000 residents exited California for Texas in 2018, a level that 2020 may far surpass, thanks to the mobility that comes with remote work. A Google tower is going up downtown. Apple is building a 133-acre campus on an old ranch for 5,000 employees. Tesla bought 2,100 acres for a $1.1 billion factory, and potentially much more.