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More than 1,000 people are homeless in Cambridge, many of whom have not been able to secure a bed in a shelter. But staff at shelters in Cambridge and Boston said that the limiting factor isn’t space — it’s funding.
In interviews, several staff members at local shelters said they are experiencing budget crunches, meaning that they cannot operate at their full capacity even as the homeless population far exceeds available shelter beds.
Green Street Center — a private shelter in Central Square that shelters individuals — has the physical capacity to house 66 people. Their current budget caps their capacity at 50.
“That’s an additional 16 people I can take out of the elements,” said Claire Okalany, the chief operating officer of ACEDONE, a non-profit organization which oversees Green Street’s operations.
“But I cannot increase that number without increasing my operational budget,” she added.
The state funds 80 percent of Green Street’s operational budget, but the remaining 20 percent has to come from donations and partnerships.
It costs a bare minimum of roughly $174 per person per night to keep the Green Street Center running, but factoring in inflation and rising costs of providing services, the shelter has been operating at a deficit.
St. Francis House, a nonprofit shelter in Boston, has been struggling to accommodate the rising demand for their day shelter services — which include meals, showers, and an extensive list of employment and housing services.
The shelter has an annual budget of $20 million, with 60 percent coming from the state and 40 percent from private donors. The state’s budget has been “stretched pretty thin,” according to St. Francis House Vice President Andrew Russell, who attributed an increase in demand to an influx of migrants in the state.
From July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 the shelter saw a 25 percent increase in the number of people that access the shelter’s services.
“We are seeing a pretty big increase in the number of people that we're serving – that's putting a strain on resources,” Russell said.
St. Francis House hasn’t experienced too much variation in private donor funding from year to year due to their “long standing and loyal donors.” However, Russell acknowledged that other nonprofits in the state may not be as fortunate.
“There’s always instability to philanthropy,” he said.
On Sept. 24, St. Francis House announced the construction of a 19-story residential tower on 41 LaGrange St. that will create 106 new units of affordable housing. The development is privately funded.
Still, many shelters rely more heavily on fixed state and city funding than private donations — leaving them to scale their resources to help as many as possible under budgetary constraints.
“It doesn’t mean that we're scrimping on our scope of services or what we're supposed to be doing with clients,” Okalany said, “But it does mean that you just scale a little bit lower. There are fundamentals and then there are things that you can scale.”
Shelters like Green Street have stretched the state’s budget to its limit — but point to wealthy institutions like universities and biotech companies as entities that could be supporting struggling service providers.
“We need institutions like Harvard,” she said, “Nobody is kind of looking at us and saying, ‘Well, there’s 16 beds that are empty right now, and they could use that money.’”
As budgets tighten and resources dwindle, Okalany underscored both the financial and mental toll that current conditions have on providers.
“We are doing the best that we can with the tools and the resources that we have,” Okalany said, “It is not enough, and I'm seeing a lot of people burn out.”
—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart or on Threads @laurel.shugart.
—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.
