San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Haven for Hope’s ‘voice of advocacy’
From Winter Storm Uri to COVID-19, shelter official reaches out to San Antonio’s homeless
With Winter Storm Uri bearing down on San Antonio in February 2021, Alberto Rodriguez decided he’d spend a night or two on the Haven for Hope campus. The weather likely would make it difficult for staff to reach the shelter and service provider, which already was caring for around 1,200 clients. So Rodriguez wanted to be there to help.
Rodriguez, at the time Haven’s senior director of transformation operations, stopped by his house to pick up a blanket and a pillow with plans to sleep in his office. That didn’t happen.
Over the next few days, nearly 400 more people came to Haven’s sprawling campus on the near West Side seeking shelter and warmth. Haven didn’t lose power, but Rodriguez had to figure out how to take care of more than 1,500 people with only one functioning faucet on all of Haven’s 22 acres.
For more than a week, Rodriguez lived at the shelter. He turned his office over to other staffers and grabbed brief moments of sleep in a temporary storeroom. Once roads cleared, he occasionally slipped out to go home and shower.
When a group of about 40 women whose nearby homes had lost power — they were freezing in their apartments — showed up at intake, Rodriguez advocated offering shelter to housed community members. He became the women’s friend and caretaker, something Haven staffers still joke about today. But David Huete, Haven’s vice president for transformational services, said opening the shelter’s doors to the community at large shows how seriously Rodriguez takes his role.
“I know to him there was no choice at all,” Huete said. “We have to provide shelter to these individuals, and I think that just goes to speak to his heart.”
Today, as Haven’s vice president of transformational operation, Rodriguez, 35, oversees a staff of 174, about one-third of the center’s workforce.
“He has a big chunk of Haven,” said Terri Behling, Haven’s
director of communication. “He makes it look so easy. His team has a great respect for him. He’s easy to approach, easy to get along with. He’s decisive but is such a great collaborator at the same time. We’re constantly evolving here at Haven, because as our client’s needs change, we’re evolving to meet those needs.”
Rodriguez began his career at the ground floor, first as a case manager and then as an intake specialist, where he would meet with prospective clients to assess their needs and explain to them the services Haven offers. In the nine years since, Rodriguez has worked at positions across the campus and quickly climbed the ranks.
“It’s so important to have that cross-training in the different departments and have that experience,” Huete said. “Because as a vice president, you really need to have a wide view of the agency and how policies and practices are going to impact not just your department, but other departments. So he can have that wide range view. But it’s also important to connect with employees, because he’s walked in their shoes before and he knows what those jobs feel like.”
Having worked directly with clients, and spent years
building relationships with the people who seek help at Haven, means Rodriguez knows what his staffers are going through. Some of the staff who work for him today were once clients he helped.
“Anytime I’ve been asked about a promotion or (overseeing) an additional team, I know that takes me away from the direct, boots-on-theground type of work,” he said. “But my thought process has always been, if I’m being entrusted with this new role, then my role there is to ensure I’m still the voice of advocacy for our clients, and it is easier to effect change when you’re that voice in a higher position.”
A native of Eagle Pass, Rodriguez
moved to San Antonio after completing his master’s in education at Sul Ross State University. He said watching his hardworking parents struggle to make ends meet contributed to his decision to study counseling and pursue a career in which he could help give a leg up to people who need it.
When he started at Haven, and particularly when he started working in the intake department, Rodriguez said he found an especially rewarding way to help people.
“Our homeless population … they’ve had some difficulties, they’ve had some traumas,” Rodriguez said. “For me what was interesting was being able to be a resource, being able to be a guide for those families who didn’t know where to go.
“Part of homelessness is, our clients tend to lose their voice or not have their voice heard,” he added. “I felt like I could do that at a bigger scale or maybe have more impact over at intake, where if someone wasn’t necessarily homeless, I could give them resources to prevent homelessness, where I could be that reassuring voice. We’re a place of new beginnings and transformation.”
When asked about his time at Haven, Rodriguez often speaks about the organization’s accomplishments or his staff ’s accomplishments.
“He’s more concerned about getting the job done than taking credit for the work,” Huete said.
As Rodriguez reached Haven’s upper ranks, he was almost immediately confronted with some of the biggest challenges the organization has faced. In 2020, he was deeply involved in the shelter’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a constantly changing landscape, he had to develop mask, testing, social distancing and quarantine protocols that wouldn’t unsettle Haven’s vulnerable population.
Something as routine as railroad maintenance can upend life at Haven. In recent weeks, construction on the rail line that runs in front of the campus’ main entrance, near a major bus stop, made it difficult for clients to access the shelter and services. Clients with mobility issues would have had to trek blocks to another entrance. The dangerously high temperatures made things worse.
It fell to Rodriguez to organize shuttle service to ferry clients from the main entrance. But driving people around campus meant pulling staff away from their duties. So, Huete said, Rodriguez often jumped behind the wheel of a van and ferried clients around.
“At Haven, it’s city management,” Huete said. “We have 1,600 people living here, 300 employees, another 100 partner employees. (Rodriguez) goes above and beyond to make sure the town is safe, to make sure it’s secure, to make sure it’s being taken care of.”