The City of Boston received $16.5 million in new federal funding to tackle homelessness and housing instability, particularly near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, or Mass. and Cass, the city’s epicenter of homelessness, substance use and mental health crises.
“This is a city where we are going to truly be a safe harbor and home for everyone,” Mayor Michelle Wu said at a news conference Thursday. “Housing is the foundation for a stable life.”
In addition to more than $42 million in federal grants awarded to the city last month from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, $16.5 million will be dedicated to five nonprofit organizations providing services to individuals experiencing homelessness at Mass. and Cass over the next three years, including Eliot Community Services, the Boston Housing Authority, Pine Street Inn, the Ecumenical Social Action Committee and Family Aid Boston.
Funding will be put toward the construction of new housing units and bolster existing programs with resources including job training and mental and physical care. Eliot Community Services will receive just over $6 million to house 105 individuals from Mass. and Cass or other high-risk areas and the Boston Housing Authority will create new vouchers to provide housing opportunities for 137 individuals or family households in need of help, according to Wu.
U.S. Department of Housing and Human Services senior advisor Dr. Richard Cho, described the funds — the full amount requested by the city — as an “investment” in the ongoing work of the Wu administration. He said these funds are “additional resources that will enable you to finish the job of bringing people not only from streets and into temporary housing, but ultimately into permanent homes with the supportive services they need to rebuild their lives.”
Following a city-sanctioned sweep of some 200 entrenched encampments at Mass. and Cass in January 2022, tents have been reconstructed in the area, home to a network of resources including a methadone clinic, on-site medical services and multiple homeless shelters. Roughly 120 people living in tents near Mass. and Cass were instructed to remove their encampments on Monday, clearing the streets as part of the city’s enforcement of its no-encampment policy. As of Wednesday, 16 tents remain standing in the area, according to Sheila Dillon, the city’s Chief of Housing.
“We're going to continue emphasizing that Boston has this [tent] protocol in place,” Wu told GBH. “We will not be having a large congregation site for illegal activity, and we're going to continue working with everyone to identify shelter and housing.”
Nearly 600 people have passed through six new temporary housing sites since the January 2022 sweep, according to city data, and 110 people have been placed in permanent housing.
Funding will not be provided to continue services beyond July at the Roundhouse Hotel building, which provided medical care and housing since a previous sweep of a Mass. and Cass homeless encampment in December 2021.
“The Roundhouse was always envisioned to be a short term location,” Wu said, with the ultimate goal of transitioning resources towards housing units at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital campus, “or a partnership with the state elsewhere.”
State officials will “be an important partner as we continue to have conversations” about the future of supportive housing at the Shattuck, Wu said. She didn’t go into detail regarding future plans for the campus, where medical providers and nonprofits have proposed 400 units of transitional housing for those experiencing homelessness.
The possibility of reopening a shelter or other housing resources at Long Island — which shut down services in 2014 due to safety issues with a connecting bridge — is another topic of discussion in long-term plans between state and city officials, Wu said.
Some of the $16.5 million grant will go towards services across the city, including nearly $2 million for Family Aid Boston to place 10 families in transitional housing for 90 days, work towards rapid rehousing and permanent housing placement. Ecumenical Social Action Committee will receive roughly the same amount to house 16 households with a focus on youth, young parents and LGBTQ+ youth. Pine Street Inn will receive $1.3 million to stabilize 75 clients living in public housing and provide housing navigation and stabilization services.
Individual adult homelessness dropped 30% between 2021 and 2022, following two years of increases in the city’s homeless population during the pandemic, according to homeless census data from the city. Homelessness in families increased by 10% during that time period, with 843 families homeless in Boston as of February of last year.
In allocating the funds, the city sought guidance from members of Boston’s Advisory Council on Ending Homelessness, a group with a lived experience of homelessness.
“Consider this a challenge worth undertaking for our brothers and sisters on the street,” council member Delphia Bizzell said during Thursday’s news conference. “We believe that ending homelessness is within our reach, if the whole village works together.”
Bizzell and her husband were homeless when they arrived in Boston in 2017, and found themselves forced to live apart in separate shelters. “Upon entering the shelter, the first thing we were told was it would be five years before we could get a home,” she said. “Imagine being separated from the one you love for five years.”
Through nonprofit programs, Bizzell and her husband were able to move into a Chinatown apartment, where the couple still lives.
“Nothing can replace the feeling of having your own place,” Bizzell said. “Everyone deserves a home of their own.”
