Two decades ago, Brad Lancaster and his neighbors broke curbs, guerrilla-planted the verge, and did other crimes to harvest storm runoff. Their once-barren neighborhood became healthy and beautiful, so they put on their lobbying hats; today, the city of Tucson gives incentives to do what the scofflaws had done illegally.

Our vision is also ambitious: use the huge, extremely destructive weed called buffelgrass — planted deliberately in the 1930s by the USDA and Big Cattle for feed — to make beautiful adobe housing for the unhoused, while paying them to help build it.

Just as Brad and his neighbors inspired a city to harvest water, one city can also inspire others: many movements, like women's suffrage and marriage equality, spread city to city and state to state before becoming national policy.

For details of our work, visit our website. For an introduction to what we’re doing, see “Making change from the dirt up!”