New program offering incentives to house homeless youth

As seen in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror by Kaie Quigley

(Jan. 6, 2025) The town and Nantucket Community Solutions for Behavioral Health want to help homeless young adults on the island get back on their feet.

They’re partnering with the Homeless Prevention Council, a Cape Cod-based nonprofit that helps house around 2,000 people a year, to provide a new program on the island called Host Homes.

Property owners will be offered $1,000 a month to host an 18- to 24-year-old in one of their extra rooms or apartments for a short time, typically four to 12 months. Both parties would go through a vetting and matching process to make sure they are agreeable and compatible.

The program is intended as a way to temporarily relieve the stress of housing insecurity for young adults who either can’t afford to rent a room or can’t find one, Community Solutions executive director Rosemary McLaughlin said this week.

“It seems like such a natural fit here, where perhaps there are open bedrooms and extra space, and you get supports,” McLaughlin said.

While tackling the housing crisis isn’t its main mission, Community Solutions is committed to helping young people overcome their greatest stresses, McLaughlin said Monday.

For between 10 and 20 young adults on-island that she knows of, the biggest stressor is housing uncertainty.

“We’re not a housing agency. That’s not our focus. But for young people, housing insecurity is so detrimental,” McLaughlin said.

“Adverse experiences in childhood such as housing insecurity have been shown to have lasting effects of trauma on a person’s life,” she said.

“During ages 18-24 the focus should be on transitions in education, job opportunities, social identity and personal relationships. Attention on housing insecurity diverts or slows foundational development of life and coping skills which can have a lifelong impact.”

Housing insecurity has been shown to increase anxiety and depression in particular for young adults, McLaughlin said. Not having housing also often delays access to healthcare.

“Stressors such as these affect both physical and mental health,” she said.

She remembers two people in particular who came to Community Solutions last spring in desperate need of housing. One had only just turned 18.

That sparked conversations between Community Solutions, the Warming Place, Nantucket Public Schools, the Community Foundation and the Homeless Prevention Council about how to help young people off the streets.

“Let’s have a plan, as opposed to a crisis,” McLaughlin said.

Host Homes was created out of those conversations.

The program will be run by the Cape-based council and is funded by the state and federal governments.

McLaughlin emphasized that Host Homes is not a rental program like ACK•Now’s Lease for Locals program that incentivizes property owners to rent extra rooms out to year-round islanders.

“This is not a rental situation. This is a guest and a host,” she said.

During the program both the guest and the host get support from program coordinators, McLaughlin said. Hosts will check in monthly to make sure the stay is going well while the guest pursues whatever they need to get their feet back under them.

Assuming things are working well, the relationship could, at the parties discretion, evolve into a longer term landlord renter arrangement.

Generally, however, the stays are intended to be short stints where the guests don’t have to worry about rent.

“This is short-term. This is four to 12 months. And what is the guest going to work on during that time frame for their next step?” McLaughlin said.

That next step could be finding other housing, a job or pursuing further education for example, she said.

The town and Community Solutions are hoping to find suitable hosts at a pair of informational meetings about the program Thursday, Jan. 9, scheduled for 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. at the town’s human-services department office at 131 Pleasant St. and via Zoom.

“Ideally, we’d have a handful of Host Homes available,” she said.

Host Homes is the latest effort to combat the town’s affordable housing crisis.

“It’s another piece in the toolkit,” McLaughlin said.

She hopes the program will show the value in the town working with other communities and organizations to help fight the housing crisis.

“We don’t have to have every solution ourselves. Help is OK. This program is set up, let’s access that help. They have funding, they want to do it. Let’s make it happen,” she said.

For more information on the program, call (508) 257-1317.