BY ANDY BARTON

At our recent Gala event, we asked the audience to write questions for Andy, and he addressed several of them during the evening program, which we called a “Fireside Chat”.  Since there was a number that he did not get to that night, we decided to answer three more in the Helping Hands Newsletter this Spring.  

Is Catholic Charities going to do another project like Hunt Housing? 

I am not sure we will ever do another project exactly like Helen Hunt Family Housing, given how unique the building and location were. Still, we are certainly looking at developing more housing.  Our goal over the next decade is to develop or preserve at least 500 affordable housing units across our 10-county service area.  

Our approach is deliberately layered. In the near term, we are building internal expertise in financing, staff capacity, and partnerships that are essential components of housing development.  

We are also paying close attention to the rural counties we serve, like Teller, Lincoln, Chaffee, and others, where the need for affordable housing persists without the visibility that exists in urban centers along the Front Range. 

We have learned firsthand from the Helen Hunt project that while housing development is hard, slow work, it makes a profound difference for our poor and vulnerable.  Safe, stable housing is the foundation upon which everything else gets built. We intend to play our part in bringing more of it to those we serve. 

What keeps you up at night? 

From a literal perspective, it depends on the nighttime temperature.  I worry about the individuals and families whom we know who live in tents or cars on bitterly cold nights.  This past winter, our staff managed a cold-weather shelter program for families utilizing a couple of local motels.  We ended up serving 55 children through that program, and it helps knowing that all those kids were inside when the low temperature dipped below freezing.  

On a more philosophical level, I am profoundly saddened and worried by the tenor of society’s conversations about our poor. Federal budget debates treat housing assistance, food programs, and healthcare for vulnerable families as line items to cut rather than commitments to keep. At the same time, it seems to me that the national mood has grown impatient with complexity.  There is a quickness to assign blame and slowness to extend mercy. 

People do not choose poverty. They chose survival, often under conditions most of us will never know. A mother navigating homelessness with two children is not a statistic: she is a child of God with a name, a history, and a future worth protecting. 

What gets me out of bed in the morning is the belief that the Church is still good at being a field hospital, as Pope Francis has said.  Knowing that the staff, volunteers, and donors – those of you reading this – still show up day after day and stand in solidarity with our poor and vulnerable.  That still gives me great hope.  

What are the biggest issues you are seeing for the people that Catholic Charities serves? 

Access to affordable childcare. In Colorado, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) has been a lifeline for low-income families, subsidizing care so that parents can work, stay employed, and build toward stability. But right now, CCAP enrollment is frozen, meaning families who desperately need help are being turned away or stuck on waiting lists while their circumstances deteriorate.  It puts poor parents in an excruciating sequence that perpetuates like a whirlpool: if they cannot get childcare, they cannot get jobs. If they cannot get jobs, they lose housing. With the opening of Helen Hunt Family Housing, we are seeing this issue firsthand as we work to get the families who are living with us back to a stable place.   

What I keep returning to is this: the people we serve are not failing the system. The system is failing them. Our job is to stand in that gap seeking both charity and justice, until it closes. 

Andy Barton is the CEO of Catholic Charities. This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of the Helping Hands Newsletter.