Passion for humanity

There’s no question Tylor Brouillette is passionate.

Brouillette, 39, was still on leave from the Connections emergency shelter last Friday when he sat for an interview about the situation.

That shelter is part of The Alliance for Community Transformations, a nonprofit group geared toward helping the most vulnerable people in the community. It’s the same group that fired 36 employees nearly two weeks ago with only a vague explanation for the community.

The community that funds the programs through its tax dollars.

Brouillette is, and by now possibly was, a housing navigator for the shelter. That’s the person who works closely with homeless people and tries to work through myriad of issues to find them housing.

“I was relieved of my duties,” he said.

The reason, he believes, is because he refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement insisted upon by Alliance officials.

He was told he was put on leave and would be contacted for further information. As of Wednesday, Nov. 26, he had heard nothing.

The long journey

Brouillette’s story began at John C. Fremont Hospital in Mariposa, the place he was born.

But that was just the beginning.

He is an Iraq War veteran who served in the U.S. Marines. The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines to be specific.

“My time in Iraq built up my passion for humanity,” he said.

He described one incident in which he saw a child mauled and killed by a pack of dogs. He was standing watch over the Marine compound and saw what was about to unfold.

“Politics and optics,” he said is why he could not save the child’s life.

He had asked commanders for permission to shoot the dogs. It was denied. The boy died.

“I had to stand by and watch,” he said.

In another incident, he was with a team of Marines on a rooftop when they spotted a man digging a hole alongside a road. It was for an improvised explosive device, or IED.

They stopped the man and brought him in for questioning. It turned out he was an illiterate farmer who had lost his land because of the war.

He told them he was offered $2,000 in American dollars to dig the hole.

“That was life changing for him,” said Brouillette. “He was just trying to make money to feed his family.”

“It’s why I got out,” he added. “We were there so Halliburton could make money.”

He learned about humanity in the process.

“These are just people,” he said.

So what does this have to do with the recent controversy surrounding Alliance?

Everything.

The road home

For Brouillette, after the war he moved to Santa Cruz and was going to college. He also found himself homeless.

“I’ve been there,” he said.

At one point, he took more than two years to try and recover from what he had experienced in Iraq.

“I was a mess,” he said.

Still, he built his life and moved to Seattle where he was a building engineer. He then moved onto San Francisco, where he worked in the Tenderloin.

“It broke my heart,” he said of the struggles he saw on the streets of San Francisco. “How could this happen in the fourth largest economy in the world? I wanted to be a part of the change.”

That’s when he made the decision to come back to his birthplace — Mariposa.

He landed the job at Connections, where he was first the pet assistance services coordinator. That was in 2022.

Brouillette was then promoted to housing coordinator.

In that job, his duties were varied — but focused.

He said they partnered with county officials “and worked with them to break the barriers for housing” to connect people with the programs necessary.

“We were very successful, even in a housing desert,” he said. “Our numbers are great.”

But, he said, that “doesn’t mean anything” to the board of directors of the Alliance or its interim director, Gary Damon.

He said at any given time, Connections has 30 to 35 people living in the small, crate-like dwellings that were placed there a couple of years ago when the encampment in Mariposa was eliminated.

Many of the people who have been through Connections, he said, have been placed in “supportive housing” in the county.

In limbo

Now, however, Brouillette isn’t sure of his status other than he has been placed on leave.

“I voiced my concerns about the layoffs,” he said. “And the policies they are planning to implement.”

He fears those policies will lead to more issues for the people who are experiencing homelessness and many other problems.

One of the policies he thinks will be implemented is a hard 60 day rule for those who are at Connections. In other words, after 60 days, they will be kicked out of the place.

Brouillette said nationally, the average time for someone to transition from a housing program like Connections to permanent housing is two to two and one-half years.

It’s called “trauma informed care,” he said, and involves a lot of elements.

“Sometimes people aren’t ready to go there,” he said.

That can be related to addiction issues, mental health issues and so much more.

He called the Connections program “housing first” along with “harm reduction.”

Brouillette said “every single person has a story,” and that’s why the length of time it might take for someone to be able to be out on their own can vary greatly.

He said Damon and the board of directors want a “cookie cutter structure” and that just won’t work.

Another policy he’s certain they are going to implement is closing Connections every day from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. That means those people would have to go somewhere else in Mariposa, be it Heritage House, the library or other places, including on the streets.

But why?

He said in one incident, Damon — who is not talking publicly — came to Connections and saw people in the patio area talking. Damon, said Brouillette, asked what they were doing.

“He gets a thought in his head and, snap, that’s it,” said Brouillette.

That’s where making those people leave for several hours a day came from, claims Brouillette.

Making changes

Brouillette said his biggest goal has been trying to “make a difference” in the lives of people in need.

“I was highly effective,” he said.

One of the biggest differences, he said, is making people have “a sense of dignity.”

That can be many things, from helping them navigate housing to simply listening to them and their struggles.

But to do that, it takes a deep understanding of what it’s like to not have a home and in many cases any support.

Brouillette has been there.

He said when the encampment was closed and people were brought to Connections, some came with open arms while others left.

“There is a structure and rules at Connections,” he said.

Some didn’t want to adhere to those rules, but Brouillette said for the most part, people welcomed the new surroundings, including having a warm place to sleep and meals.

It also gave them some sense of dignity, he said, because they could feel safe and secure instead of sleeping “on dirt” at the encampment.

All of that, he said, goes back to the length of time it might take some people to find their way and better themselves.

“Homeless people are in a constant state of fight or flight,” he said. “Chronic homelessness has an impact on the brain.”

That impact is wide, he said, and can mean simple issues like where a person’s next meal is coming from or if they feel safe.

Those are the kinds of issues most people don’t even think about, he said, but they are why it is so critical for those in need to get the help necessary so they can move to a better place in life.

The human ‘Connections’

One thing many people may not realize is just how many employees at all of the Alliance programs, including Connections, have been down the dark path in their own lives.

Brouillette said his main goal has been to “give back” to those people — and who better to do it than someone who once had to steal food to eat while living in Santa Cruz?

He said many people who are doing the same work were once addicts or in violent family situations and now they have bettered themselves and were working for Alliance until the axe came down on so many of them.

Now, he said, the actions by Damon and the board mean the very people the organization is charged to help “are being disenfranchised again.”

He fears there are going to be three groups of people who come out of this.

The first, he said, are those who will “walk away. Then what happens to them?”

The second are those who are “going to try and white-knuckle it” but are going to be “set up to fail.”

The third, he said, will “try to stick it out but the amount of resources are going to be cut in half or a quarter. The struggle will be 10 times harder.”

All of that, he said, will reduce the effort by Connections to find housing for people.

“Housing is the whole point,” said Brouillette.

But why is this happening?

“The are trying to run it like a company,” he said. “But this is a nonprofit geared to helping the community.”

Brouillette said in less than a year at his job, he helped find housing for more than two dozen people.

“We wanted to be the flagship,” he said. “We were trying to do a system of care.”

What’s next?

Brouillette said during the meeting where employees were shown the door, one of the board members of Alliance “laughed” during the firings.

That did not set well with Brouillette.

“It is being systematically dismantled,” he said of Alliance.

“We were fine,” he said. “And then Gary showed up and suddenly we have no money.”

Brouillette said “if it was that glaringly bad, where the f**k is all the money? Somebody knows.”

That is a driving force behind why Brouillette is speaking publicly and often about what he thinks is mismanagement within Alliance.

“Follow the money,” he said. “Who is profiting?”

The passion

Brouillette said he is not stopping when it comes to exposing the truth.

“I am extremely passionate about this,” he said. “I swore to an oath and I meant it. This is my town.”

His main goal is to hold to account those he thinks has driven Alliance to the brink.

“I demand people are held to account,” he said. “I am pissed off.”

That’s also why he refuses to quit his job; he said they’ll have to fire him.

As of last week, officials at Alliance had not contacted him though he thinks it is a matter of time.

He believes they are hoping he’ll quit so he can’t collect unemployment benefits.

That’s not going to happen, he said.

It’s also another reason why he is speaking publicly about what is happening at Alliance.

“I’m going to blow the lid off of this thing,” he said.

He believes Damon didn’t think there would be an uprising in a small town like Mariposa, not to mention being in the media spotlight.

“F**k around and find out,” said Brouillette.

And though Brouillette admits to being rough around the edges, deep down, he is a compassionate human being who is trying to do what is best for his community.

“I want it to go back to the ethos of what this nonprofit is supposed to be,” he said. “This is mostly in defense of my community. ”

And, he added, even if it doesn’t work, “I won’t be able to say I didn’t f**king try.”