Soon, EHC Life Builders and South County Housing will break
ground on the long-awaited Transitional Center in Gilroy. Finally!
A replacement for the National Guard Armory winter shelter that
will provide comprehensive support, including medical care – a
critical need for those who spend time on the streets – to South
County
’s homeless individuals.
Soon, EHC Life Builders and South County Housing will break ground on the long-awaited Transitional Center in Gilroy. Finally! A replacement for the National Guard Armory winter shelter that will provide comprehensive support, including medical care – a critical need for those who spend time on the streets – to South County’s homeless individuals.
It has taken a long time. I first started working at EHC in 1997 and started attending public meetings and hearings in 1998. It would have taken longer yet, because frankly, EHC had hit a brick wall after they had raised the first $3 million. With half still to raise for the Transitional Center, EHC had tapped every possible government capital source there was and they were caught in the kind of silly circular problems only government funding for capital projects can create.
EHC’s recent announcement of the participation of HomeAid, a consortium of home builders that provides in-kind labor and materials for the construction of affordable housing projects, which moved up the completion date because they will provide enough to fill the budget, is an extraordinary achievement for any community, but especially for Gilroy.
There are no large private foundations to tap in this region, and Barry Del Buono had already tapped the Santa Clara-based Sobrato Family Foundation for a large contribution. Florence Trimble left a bequest that will perhaps be the largest gift from a Gilroy citizen. Church drives and fundraising events to augment a capital campaign to raise the remaining $3 million appeared to stretch the completion date to 2010.
The HomeAid contribution is significant for another reason. It could very well be a model for future collaborations in not only constructing affordable housing, but also for offering supportive services. We haven’t quite figured it out yet, but working with other trades consortia in this way may be one answer to filling the kinds of service gaps we face, particularly here in South County.
The thought of the coming year-round support resource conjures images of people that flash across my memory like a slide show:
n Former Gilroy Mayor Mike Gilroy on the city council dais, complaining that if Gilroy built it, many more would come (as if Gilroy, with its dearth of supportive services, was any kind of a destination place for homeless people).
n Florence Trimble and other people who know the homeless people as PEOPLE, standing before the council, providing testimony to put a human face on the problem of homelessness.
n Barry Del Buono, head of EHC, sagely telling us that shelter and housing for homeless people could be built as long as there was political will. Poncho Guevara, now blessing South County Housing with his superlative skills, with a look of satisfaction that many would love to experience in their lifetimes, because he was able to move the county to create a new funding stream that would provide money for the proposed shelter and transitional apartments.
n Former Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer, whose generosity was often masked by an exasperating curmudgeonly contrariness, at the very first groundbreaking, offering one of the most sincere, brief but eloquent tributes to Florence Trimble I’ve heard from a politician ever.
n Florence’s son, fighting back tears as he clearly wished his mother, who had just passed away a few months before, could witness the first concrete stage of the realization of her hope for Gilroy, a structural testament to the city’s great capacity for compassion and ability to do the right thing.
The project is also a testament to the dedication of a very special group of people, the dedicated volunteers who have worked at the armory shelter year after year. With Maria Skoczylas and members of the Gilroy Ministerial Association, they make up the Gilroy Homeless Task Force. After they worked hard to get the City of Gilroy to approve the shelter siting policy, they toiled away at the armory season after season, and waited patiently for news on the progress on the shelter.
Along with EHC, they specifically should be very proud of this achievement, because they are the ones that convinced the city council to take their hands off their ears and open their eyes. It started with them. And I bet, given their dedication, it will end with them, sitting at the desk of the new Transitional Center, providing a friendly face, information, and gentle words of encouragement to their fellow neighbors, as they have always done. That image will be on the last slide in my PowerPoint memory.
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 will be published each Friday. Reach her at [email protected].
