In 1983, an Austin news crew turned its cameras on an overcrowded Salvation Army shelter. Two years later, a reporter spent weeks living on the streets and in the shelters of our city to show viewers what life there was like.

When people think of homelessness, they often imagine tents under highways or people sleeping on park benches. But the reality is that homelessness often hides in plain sight. It looks like a child in your neighborhood classroom who doesn’t know where they’ll sleep tonight. It looks like a mother working two jobs and still spending nights in her car. It looks like a family living week to week in a motel, trying to hold on until they can find a home they can afford.

Homelessness has become part of our shared landscape—an invisible crisis that we’re almost trained to overlook. According to Sam Tsemberis, the originator of the Housing First model in the US, humans have to essentially shut down our own humanity to be able to walk by another human being experiencing homelessness. For many of us, it probably feels like a problem too big to tackle alone. But among the many dedicated organizations addressing homelessness in Austin, Texas, Mobile Loaves & Fishes did not walk by. They saw the need and responded by creating Community First! Village, a place of community and transformation for those who have been experiencing chronic homelessness.