VISALIA, Calif. — The first iteration of Adrianne Hillman's homeless services work started with a food truck in the middle of a homeless encampment. 

On Tuesday afternoon, she handed out hot meals to encampment residents. 

"We like to give you a choice, there you go — good to see you," she said, handing a man lasagna, a bag of snacks and a Powerade. 

Hillman founded Salt & Light, a nondenominational non-profit in Tulare County, California. She serves people in Tulare because it's the area she grew up in.

"We haven't really made a dent in getting people housed; we have a lot of services here but not a lot of housing," she said about the county.

Hillman says she decided to give up her former career as a life coach several years ago to create Salt & Light in 2019 after seeing homelessness grow and witnessing a model that she felt could help the crisis. 

She visited The Community First Village in Austin, Texas, a 51-acre village for formerly homeless people in the state. 

The Community First Village offers affordable housing to residents but crucially puts community, connection and work at the center of its services. 

Hillman spearheads a similar, although smaller, project outside Visalia called The Neighborhood Village.

The Neighborhood Village will be completed by April 2024 and will have 53 homes on 6.5 acres. There will also be a Unity Hall — a town hall-like space for community events, movie nights, a dog park, green spaces, a tiny library, a memorial garden, an industrial culinary training kitchen and full wraparound services.

"It takes affordable housing and adds so much more relational ligature on site. It's not, 'Hey, here is your new apartment and we will send your case manager.' The case manager is on-site, and there's relationship on-site, and there is job opportunity on site."

Hillman says that offering everything that someone transitioning out of homelessness might need within a few hundred yards sets them up for greater success. 

Everyone living in the village will pay some form of rent — adjusted to accommodate their income, and sobriety is not required to live at the Neighborhood Village. However, the village offers a range of drug and alcohol treatment options. 

The homes are manufactured in the Central Valley and meet HUD requirements for housing — they're not tiny homes. The houses vary in size. Some are one bedroom, others are two — all have bathrooms and kitchens.

"It's almost like a gated community or a little neighborhood," she said. "It will have things like a market and a farm, places for people to live and not have to leave to get much. That's exciting. We know there is community being created in [other] affordable housing projects. We know there are people across the state doing good work. But this goes beyond that."

Housing and building a community like this around housing can have successful outcomes, says Dr. Margot Kushel, a professor at the University of San Francisco who specializes in vulnerable populations and homelessness.

"Permanent housing gives people this ability, this root for which all else can flow. You see people's substance use decrease. You see people's depression decrease, you see people engage in healthy activities once they have the safety and security of home, once they're not worried about 'where am I going to go tomorrow?' or 'where am I going to go in three months?'" Kushel said.

For Hillman — the Neighborhood Village has become her focus — creating housing and a neighborhood for people in Tulare County, but she says she hopes projects like this become more common throughout the state.

"I'm watching lives change. I'm watching people be returned to themselves and be reminded that they are worth caring about and worth loving. I think we are going to see real life change here," Hillman said.