In this series
In this series
One reason some Americans are edgy about homelessness: Maybe it could happen to me? Many have a foreboding sense of living on the edge and risking ending up on the streets.
A January 2026 US News and World Report survey showed that about a third of us don’t have enough savings to cover one month of living expenses should a job suddenly end. Two of 5 are without enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency expense. Three of 10 have more credit card debt than savings. Even closer to the edge: A May Federal Reserve reported that nearly 1 in 5 adults say just $100 is the largest emergency expense they could handle right now using only savings.
Yet living on the edge is not new in America. Many people used to be one drought away from disaster. As I’ve gone through US Department of Housing and Urban Development reports of “Worst Case Housing Needs” in decades past—including those of 1989, 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2023—what impresses me more than Americans’ frequent desperation is our resiliency. People overwhelmingly and surprisingly find ways to cope.
I thought about that early this summer while staying for three days at Community First! Village (CFV), a neighborhood of tiny homes for the formerly homeless just east of Austin. There I listened at length to those who had fallen off the edge. Money was one reason for their struggles, but so was a lack of relationships with friends or family members who could have helped.
I tried to see the same people several days in a row, because first-day and third-day stories often differed. Here, I’ll tell you about five men who had been in CFV for two years on average. I listened to them once and suspect I’m missing angles—but see if you detect one important thing their stories have in common about falling off the edge. (By agreement with CFV, and because this is a vulnerable population, I’ll use first names only.)
John is a 64-year-old illustrator and technical drawer. A few years ago, he was earning just enough to pay $150 in weekly rent at an extended-stay motel. Then he got laid off when COVID-19 hit, and he didn’t have savings. He did have two cousins in Austin but hadn’t seen them for a long time, so he got a sleeping bag and learned where to crash and where to get free food.
He survived for a year and a half that way until he turned 62, then moved into CFV, taking early Social Security to cover his $390-per-month rent, which includes utilities. Maybe because John was on the streets for less time than most, he does not appear to have the physical or mental ravages of many other CFV residents. He is well-organized, with neatly combed gray hair and six clay pots planted with moringa seeds neatly lined up on the porch of his tiny home.
John’s 200-or-so square feet lack a toilet and cooking space, but he’s right next to a communal bathroom and kitchen. A cat tower out front welcomes neighborhood strays that he feeds.
When he noticed carrots and yams left behind after the monthly distribution of produce from a local food bank that comes to CFV residents, John bought a dehydrator and vacuum sealer to preserve them. John hates to see food go to waste. And moringa isn’t native to Austin, but he’ll experiment by planting the seedlings in his yard, digging through black plastic under the gravel.
Then there’s Tommy. He and I talked for a while near CFV’s Memorial Garden, where two columbaria hold the ashes of 53 residents. Tommy is only 40 but said he’s been a stoner since age 11. He feels he’s lived for centuries but is “isolated” in the present.
He said he has composed 300 songs (but his guitar is stolen) and is adept at flinging paint onto canvas and selling each of his creations for $100 or more (but his paints were stolen). He’ll create rocket cars, he told me, just as soon as he puts together a team of engineers and designers and finds “an advocate” to help with finances and publicity.
Jeffrey, 67, also lived on the edge until he fell off. He’s descended from a Mormon pioneer, he said, and when he was younger he followed around the Grateful Dead. On a Sunday morning at 8 a.m., holding a Budweiser tallboy in one hand and a nearly empty bottle of Kentucky Deluxe whiskey in the other, he described how he once earned a lot as a “union plumber” and had a nice apartment, but two marriages and “bad luck” impoverished him.
In Jeffrey’s telling, he’s “a natural Cessna pilot” and “a natural sailor” who had to “head to the woods because I got involved with a couple of gang girls, and the Mexican mafia was after me.” He decided he’d share with me “a dark secret: My mom always said she was from San Angelo, but as she was dying she confessed to being born in Waco.” His mom was also a psychic, he added, and he’s “an unofficial priest.” He’s psychic too, he said—but he couldn’t think of another person with whom he’d want such close contact.
Another CFV resident, William, played football in college and then briefly in Canada and with the UFL. He was at CFV, he said, because his “momma died.”
And Kenneth, shooting the breeze with me at the CFV bus stop, said he was there because his family’s house didn’t have room for him: “Maybe I wore out my welcome.”
Yes, family and friends are a real bulwark against homelessness, and one reason we don’t have more homelessness is that many people do have someone to call. A working definition of homelessness, then, is not only being without your own home but being without any home whose residents will take you in. Lack of relationships is as important as lack of money.
