About

Artist overcomes difficult past, becomes activist for homeless

written by Kevin Fagan, Sep.7 2023

Last year, as her father was making national news for allegedly bludgeoning then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer, Inti Gonzalez was sleeping in a drafty garage. Her mother, a prominent Bay Area nudism activist, was in prison for attempted child abduction. 

At 21, after an unorthodox and at-times turbulent upbringing, Gonzalez was between jobs with no high school diploma and limited job prospects.

But even as she confronted a daunting barrage of challenges, Gonzalez’s grit, street smarts and unwavering determination enabled her to break the chain of bad breaks handed to her growing up.

Today, Gonzalez is co-managing a $1 million project to build tiny houses for homeless youths in Richmond. She is also making money selling paintings and murals and living in a thriving artist colony in Oakland, all while studying for a real estate license.

“Inti is the strongest person on the planet,” said Sally Hindman, a longtime homeless advocate who is co-managing the Richmond Tiny House Village, Farm and Garden with Gonzalez. “While she’s been dealing with all of the things happening around her, she’s been working to create justice in the community, to make housing for young people.

“There are a lot of things you can just learn by doing, and that’s what Inti does.”

On a recent afternoon, Gonzalez sat calmly in the middle of the empty field in central Richmond where the village is expected to open by July 2024, and smiled slowly as Hindman spoke. She pointed to piles of brightly painted boards and wooden frames arrayed around a construction trailer.

“It’s going to take some work, but we’ll get it done,” Gonzalez said. She paused to look around the weed-choked field that will be transformed into 12 tiny homes and a working garden where the youth residents will grow food. 

“I was raised differently than most people,” she said. “So I’ve learned … to do what you think is smart, not just what people say you should. And for now? I’m really psyched. I’ve got an amazing place to live in; got this awesome job.

“I think I have things figured out.”

She needed plenty of the resilience that Hindman and others admire last year, when the international media came looking for her and anyone else related to David DePape, the 43-year-old Richmond man accused of breaking into Pelosi’s San Francisco home in October.  Charged with bludgeoning the then-speaker’s husband, Paul, DePape has pleaded not guilty and is in jail facing federal and state charges that include attempted murder and burglary.

In the few brief statements Gonzalez issued during the media flurry, she said DePape — a pro-nudity activist enthralled with conspiracy theories — had abused her and her two brothers as a child. Her mother, 54-year-old Gypsy Taub, a more well-known nudity activist and self-professed shaman of alternative healing, got more attention as she gave interviews about DePape in which she said she thought he was mentally ill. 

Taub did her talking from California state prison, where she was serving a three-year sentence for stalking and attempting to kidnap a 14-year-old boy in Berkeley. She has been separated from DePape for years.

At the time of the Pelosi attack, Gonzalez was a live-in caregiver for a 96-year-old woman in Richmond. But when that job ended, Gonzalez ran out of money and was homeless before being taken in by a relative who allowed her to live in a spare, chilly garage in El Sobrante. 

Then Gonzalez got the Richmond tiny homes job. She already had worked for small stipends as an artist and leader for five years with Youth Spirit Artworks, the Berkeley homeless-aid nonprofit Hindman led until recently, and when Hindman tapped her to be co-manager she snapped it up.

The new job enabled her to move into Vulcan Studios, a 200-person enclave of art studios and apartments in Oakland where jugglers, circus performers, dancers, painters and other artists live and practice their crafts. Gonzalez’s studio walls are covered with her own paintings, depicting landscapes and portraits, musical instruments, and books including “North American Birds” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

“When I was in the garage, the only thing on my mind was getting real housing — it was hard to focus on anything else,” Gonzalez said while walking through the Vulcan and greeting neighbors. “It made me realize, like never before, how important it was having a place to live.”

Growing up in Berkeley with Taub meant attending a variety of protests, eating organic food, traveling to Mexico in a bus to help street kids and getting homeschooled.

“There were definitely good times in my life — we traveled a lot, to Ecuador, France, Mexico,” Gonzalez said. “It was always an adventure. But there were definitely bad times, too.”

She spent 1½ years at Berkeley High School before returning to homeschooling. 

“My mom didn’t want me to go to school because she thought I’d be bullied,” Gonzalez said. “The thing is, I really did love learning. Still do.”

Gonzalez never received a diploma, though as an adult she went to Berkeley City College to study web design as she created a site showcasing  her poetry, photos and paintings.

Taub — who was paroled in April and is appealing her conviction, calling the charges false — said she raised her kids on income as a photographer for “adult websites” and taught them to be broad-minded and artistic. 

“I always took them to music festivals, made sure they had art supplies, allowed them to paint on the walls,” said Taub, who is living in a bus in Berkeley. “But even though I was at home literally all the time with my kids, I was not present emotionally as much as I wish I had been. I spent too much time in front of my computer.” She blames this in part on abuse she says she suffered as a child. 

Taub kicked DePape out of the home when Gonzalez was 13 because he was “toxic,” Gonzalez said. She said there were times he was a good father, taking her to parks and the beach, but “he definitely has mental stuff going on, and it would be good if he got treatment.”

Taub said Gonzalez’s biological father is a Peruvian man Taub met when she went to Peru to take ayahuasca, a psychedelic medicine.

“We never planned to have a lasting relationship,” she said. She came up with the name Inti because she met another man with that name who told her Inti was the sun god. 

While Taub was pregnant, she met DePape in Hawaii and he became her partner, having two children with him after Gonzalez was born. 

“With all the mistakes I’ve made as a mother, I must have done something right,” Taub said. “I love my daughter to death. She is an incredibly powerful, beautiful, ancient being — a very old soul. Incredibly loving and forgiving. I cannot take credit for it.”

Gonzalez said her mother “did the best she could, and she strives (to do) the right thing, but she can be difficult.” She does call DePape her father — “I only met the Peruvian person once, and he lives in another country,” she said — but in carving out an actual career of art and homeless advocacy with no involvement with the criminal justice system, “I am breaking the chain.”

The director of the Richmond Police Activities League, which is allowing the village to be built on its land and helping in its development, said he has been impressed that youths involved in the tiny homes project — a crowd “that can be a little standoffish about police” — have come to be comfortable working with officers, “seeing that police can be about solving problems in the community.” He credits that at least in part to Gonzalez’s open-minded attitude.

“Oh, my God, she is an amazing young lady, full of energy and dedicated to providing housing to unhoused youth,” said league Executive Director Larry Lewis. “After we got to know her, I was ready to help her out any way we can.”

Lewis’ organization leased the land from the city to install a “farm and garden” to teach kids how to grow food, and now that will be part of the overall village. The league — a nonprofit involving police officers that offers educational and recreational programs for youths —  is one of more than a half-dozen community organizations that have teamed up for the tiny homes project, including Rebuilding Together East Bay North and Hindman’s Tiny Village Spirit, an outgrowth of the project she led to create a similar tiny home village for youths in Oakland in 2021. 

More than 370 volunteers have pitched in since preliminary construction began this summer with 12 paid youth workers. The conglomerate has raised more than $300,000 so far, with a goal of $1 million by the time the village opens in July 2024. 

For some of those involved in the project, Gonzalez is simply an inspiring young woman who seems to understand social justice more than most. She doesn’t talk much outside of close friends about her somewhat notorious parents, preferring to stand on her own merits.

“I’ve always been impressed how Inti is really determined — how she wants to see change, have the world be more fair,” said Acasio Kouromenos, 22, one of several University of San Francisco architecture students who  have been helping design the village. “And she has a lot of artistic talent. She gave us some insight on the project, like on the kitchen, saying it lacked space and needed more amenities.”

Kouromenos, who graduated this year, was surprised when he learned last month who Gonzalez’s parents are, but said it made sense considering how strong she is. “She overcame a lot of stuff. I can’t imagine how I could do that. I’m kind of astonished.”

That seems to be a fairly universal sentiment for anyone familiar with the village plan.  

For Gonzalez, the project is just a first big step in what she now sees as a life plan. Her heart is most in helping the unhoused and doing her artwork, but studying real estate is a Plan A to supplement her Plan Bs.

 “I want to be an activist for housing, make music and do art — but not be a starving artist,” she said with a grin. “I’d prefer that not be a struggle, so something like real estate could help pay the bills.”