The announcement for the tribute and celebration for Barry Del Buono came early last week. Del Buono is the head of EHC LifeBuilders (formerly Emergency Housing Consortium) and is leaving to take on other challenges. I’ve always known he would move on, but now that it’s here, I wish it could be delayed a bit, and not just because his absence will make the prospect of the building of the year-round shelter almost completely impossible.
As a Catholic priest in San Jose, Del Buono founded with his future wife Loaves and Fishes Family Kitchen, a dining hall that served hungry families and homeless individuals, many with mental illness who wandered the streets of downtown. It survives to this day. With this experience, Del Buono helped Gilroyans start Our Lord’s Table at St. Mary’s.
Its homeless services often overshadowed by the many-faceted services of St. Joseph Family Center, EHC has had a long relationship with South County, having run the armory shelter for almost 20 years and in the ’90s, when very low-income families were priced out of housing, it was Del Buono’s idea to use the empty cottages during the non-growing season at the Ochoa Migrant Family Housing and establish the Winter Family Shelter.
He often affectionately introduced St. Joseph’s founder Marge Albaugh as the “godmother of homeless people in Gilroy.” There is little doubt that Del Buono himself was the “Godfather” of homeless people in the entire county. Talented, charismatic and ambitious, Del Buono moved quickly from establishing meal programs and “a hot and a cot” shelters to establishing the first comprehensive and complete continuum of care of emergency shelter, transitional housing and permanent supported housing for homeless individuals and homeless families with programs throughout the county.
Spurred by a belief that government had a duty to use some of the tax dollars it rakes in to take care of the poorest of the poor, he found a way to make it pay, and taught himself the ins and outs of the various funding streams, providing services during the day and writing grant applications at night. He uncovered in himself a talent for raising money from government sources and even helped lawmakers create new sources of funding to help homeless people. This talent was especially evident during the recent downturn. While other executive directors who came in during the boom years were losing their heads over the loss of funding, Barry had experience weathering such downturns and kept his cool.
He had an uncanny ability to recognize talent in others. One example is the best case manager the agency has ever had who is still at the family shelter in San MartÃn. With limited language skills, she was hired first as a janitor at the family shelter at the old Agnews hospital. When he spotted her giving new families the run down on how things worked and giving encouragement, he promoted her to case manager. Her successful work with South County families is legend as she helps them move to independent housing, and sometimes on to home ownership. She is among the many of the best people I ever will have the honor to know who worked there.
Some see non-profit workers as willingly doing work for little pay, should be grateful for the donations they receive and share what they have – you know, like nice humble Christians. In contrast, Del Buono is not a little overbearing, willful and extremely competitive. I found his conflicts with his peers wearying, but at other times, understandable. If you wanted a piece of the pie, he made it clear you had to earn it, and you earned it by being the best, not just by being.
His goal was to end homelessness. He said, upon seeing people living under the freeway, “every time I see that, I feel like I’ve failed.” However, the problems of homelessness and its solutions have changed and evolved since Del Buono left the priesthood to tackle it. The services he created couldn’t address all the structural inequities of our economy that contributed to his inability to solve the problem on his own. But damn if he didn’t try.
There are many things for which he’ll be remembered, but that’s what I’ll remember him for the most: the way he threw everything he had and then some at one of the most intractable problems of our society, all the while believing he could do it. That he didn’t is not just his failure, but ours.
Columnist Dina Campeau is a wife, mother of two teens and a resident of Morgan Hill. Her work for the last seven years has focused on affordable housing and homeless issues in Santa Clara County. Her column is published every Friday. Reach her at dc******@*****er.net.
