To residents and businesses of the Fort Point Neighborhood:
On behalf of the planning team for the SafetyNet Shelter at 24 Farnsworth Street, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks for your support for this project to provide temporary, emergency shelter to families in need. This four-month project is now concluded, and has been a testament to the power of creativity and partnership to meet the needs of our community and the current moment.
Around the winter holidays, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) learned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts needed short-term shelter space, since a surge in families migrating from Haiti had overwhelmed the system during the coldest months. The Unitarian Universalist Association, as the national headquarters for over 1000 liberal religious congregations across the United States, reached out to the state and offered vacant tenant space at our headquarters building in Fort Point. The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities connected us with the City of Boston, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, the YMCA of Greater Boston, and the Black Refugee and Immigrant Community Coalition. Working together, we opened a temporary SafetyNet shelter for 25 families with children on the UUA’s sixth floor.
Our first guests arrived on March 7th, and the project was completed by June 30th - all families were all placed in housing by the time of we closed the temporary shelter’s doors. Families stayed overnight at the UUA, and were driven to the YMCA and community centers during the day to receive additional support and services. Before coming to stay with us, most had been sleeping at Logan Airport. Through the shelter program and BRICC’s support, they were able to file for work permits, school placements and get help with housing applications. By any measure – and by the measure of the values that Unitarian Universalists live by and promote – this project has been a success.
The support from the Fort Point neighborhood has been critical to this project’s success. Before the shelter opened, the planning partners held a public meeting with the Fort Point Neighborhood Association and the City’s Office of Neighborhood Services, and remained engaged with regular updates. When there were logistical concerns, residents and abutters brought them to the planning team and we worked to address them.
We heard so many times the pride you felt, knowing that the Seaport could provide a supportive community to these families in their time of need. Some donated time, money and needed home goods, collected by the South Boston Neighborhood House. Local businesses made generous donations -Flour provided breakfast every Sunday, and The Children’s Museum gave 50 tickets so that families could enjoy the museum’s offerings.
Now that the shelter project is concluded, the UUA will be reopening its building to the public and returning the space to commercial use, as originally intended. We will be seeking new commercial tenants for our vacant space. We also invite you to check out our inSpirit Book and Gift shop on the first floor, now re-opened Tuesdays, Wednesday and Thursdays.
The UUA, as your ongoing neighbor, was grateful to be able to use our assets in a creative way to do our part in addressing the housing crisis and our broken asylum system. From the beginning, this was a project grounded in mission and in partnership, something we never could have done alone. We hope that other building owners across the city and state will take up this challenge to help in the ways they can, a point we made in a recent opinion piece in Commonwealth Magazine.
Thank you again for your faith and support of this critical project, and for helping the Seaport neighborhood do its part to support our community’s families in need.
Warmly,
Carey McDonald
Executive Vice President