Highlights from our interview with Chris Baker, executive director of the Other Ones Foundation, an Austin-based non-profit serving the homeless. 

Lone Star Standard: What is the mission of the Other Ones Foundation?

Baker: The Other Ones Foundation was formed in 2017. I’ve been doing this work most of my adult life. We just really believe firmly about people having access to resources so they feel dignified and helping people find a way to live a life that’s not only fulfilled, but is independent. There’s a lot of different ways that we try to reach that goal. One of the biggest ways is using a program of ours called the Esperanza Community, which is a little piece of property out there in southeast Austin, where, right now, we have 100 cabins where people can live with some dignity. And that’s going to be bumping up to 200 cabins here in the next few months, with a big expansion planned for late next year.

Lone Star Standard: What are some lessons you learned early on that guide your work today?

Baker: One of my very dear friends and mentor is a guy named Alan Graham. He runs an organization called Mobile Loaves & Fishes and they operate a property called Community First Village. There are two things that he says that I’m going to borrow from him right now, which are: the number one cause of homelessness is the catastrophic loss of family. Also, housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will. And those are two things that when I was in my journey of starting my own organization that I really took to heart in a big way. And I think that there are family dynamics that can run all sorts of different ways, right? Like the way that family relates to one another is different for all families. But the golden thread that holds families together is a supportive environment. For some people that looks a little bit different than it does for other people. For some people it means a lot of hugging and for other people, maybe it is a little bit more strict and tough love. But the support system is there. With homeless individuals, those support systems are no longer there. And that’s what we mean by the catastrophic loss of family.

Lone Star Standard: What is unique about your approach to homelessness?

Baker: There are many people who are living on the streets who just need a little bit of help, who we can get them on a track. So, at the Esperanza Community, one of the things that we are building on the campus and we’re cutting the ribbon for the new building this November is the workforce training facility. ACC is coming in, we’ve got Workforce Solutions coming in to partner. And the idea there is that people come into the community, and if there are people who just need a little bit of help figuring out some stuff that is happening in their life, we help them. For the others, we can get them into a good trade training program. They can get a certification in welding or HVAC or carpentry or automotive or any one of the other programs that we’re going to be offering. We’d rather spend that little bit of money to give them a skill, then put somebody into a unit and pay their rent forever.

Lone Star Standard: What was the first program you had as an organization?

Baker: The idea was we would make it as low-barrier as possible. You don’t need to have an ID, you don’t need to have your birth certificate, and you don’t need to have any work history. You don’t have to have a pair of shoes. We’ll give you a pair of shoes. You don’t need to have transportation to work. We’re going to take care of all that for you. But we’re going to get you to work and we’re going to get you off of that street corner. We’re going to get you working today. So, we started that program and we first started with just one crew. We had a van go out, we get the people and we bring them to the job site. We paid them every day and that program just grew and grew and grew. And it went from us being able to take out five people a day to twenty people a day, to taking out forty people a day. And, if you think about it, we were paying people fifteen bucks an hour and somebody who is panhandling is making, maybe, five bucks an hour. So, for every $15 that somebody makes, we assume that they’re not panhandling. And for three hours, the impact was quantifiably huge. Panhandling was down in the city. The amount of time that these people were spending panhandling was down and we were putting money in people’s pockets and they’re doing a service to the city.

Lone Star Standard: What is the process of getting somebody into independent living?

Baker: It’s just a little cabin. It’s got a door that locks. It’s got an air conditioner. It’s got a heater. They don’t have bathrooms. We have, kind of, state park style bathrooms. There is one bathroom for every six residents. And, none of the cabins are congregate, which are what you tend to think of as those big, massive, cavernous rooms with a bunch of bunks in them. That’s a congregate shelter. This is non-congregate shelter. It’s a little bit more of a higher degree of housing simulation which is to say, it’s a little bit closer to what somebody’s independent life is going to look like. But, it is a stair-step process. The next project will be a little different. Those will be units that are a little more robust. They will have bathrooms inside each unit. There will be some way to cook food in each of those units. But, they are not intended for somebody to stay there forever. So, we pull somebody off the streets, they get into one of the small cabins and get in the mindset of living independently. That’s like level one of housing simulation. Then, we move up to another level of housing simulation. Once somebody is doing well, they’re maybe working on their certificate, then we bump them up into this higher level of housing simulation. The idea being at the end of that, now they are walking out of here, they’ve got their ID, they can prove who they are, they’ve got a bank account, and a job. We help with all of that.

Chris Baker is executive director of The Other One's Foundation, a homeless service provider focusing on shelter and workforce services. Since graduating from the State University of New York at Oneonta in 2007, Chris has worked many different jobs in the field of homeless services and activism, but also as a musician, writer, and even paralegal. He started The Other Ones Foundation in the summer of 2017 to bring his innovative ideas for addressing homelessness to life.

This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-35-chris-baker.