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After 30 years without a house, Jesse Brown found home in a community outside East Austin. The Community First! Village is a 51-acre development of micro-homes and RVs that offers affordable, permanent shelter to individuals who have lacked housing for extended periods. Before moving in, Jesse lived in a tent behind a sign shop. In 2015, the owner showed Jesse a brochure for the village, but he "wasn’t ready to move yet," says Jesse. After his camp was raided by police in 2018, Jesse toured the village with the shop owner and became a resident three months later. Last year, Jesse applied to take on a leadership role as one of the project’s Seed Neighbors, which involves welcoming new residents and giving feedback for the plan’s second phase that will add 310 new homes to the village—including this modest blue pitched-roof cabin specifically made for Jesse. Austin-based firm Jobe Corral Architects worked directly with Jesse on the design. "We do a lot of residential work," says cofounder Camille Jobe. "We always think about what parts of the house tell the story about who is living in it." At the entrance, an orange door leads into the living space, where a reclining chair is positioned so Jesse can look through the screened porch and interact with his neighbors—something he insisted on when developing the brief with the architects. "All of my life, I’ve never been part of things," Jesse says. "Here, I’m part of a community. If something happens to me, I know that somebody’s going to care."