Supportive housing is defined as affordable housing coupled with supportive services that allows people to live independently, most often older adults, veterans, and those experiencing long-term homelessness with a disability. Creation of supportive housing primarily takes two forms. 1) developing new units through acquisition, construction, and ongoing operating costs, while partnering with experienced service providers to deliver resident services; 2) master leasing existing structures or individual units by providers who deliver services directly to residents. While master leasing requires lower upfront costs and fewer zoning issues, there is no net gain in community housing units.
Supportive housing often requires significant levels of government assistance across multiple areas: capital financing for development, deep rental subsidies given that most households have little-to-no income, and funding for supportive services to ensure households with complex behavioral or physical health needs are able to maintain tenancy.
It is important to note that supportive housing is difficult to quantify precisely, since services may not be attached to a specific unit and supportive housing units in Public Housing may be double counted. In addition to these challenges, obtaining accurate data on supportive housing is complicated because federal funding and reporting requirements for homelessness operate at a local level by regional or municipal planning bodies called Continuums of Care (CoC). As outlined in the subsequent section on homelessness, Massachusetts has 11 CoCs, including the Balance of State CoC overseen by EOHLC, which includes multiple municipalities across the Commonwealth.
Analysis of the compiled 2024 CoC Housing Inventory Count (HIC) data shows there are approximately 1,300 units of permanent supportive housing for families and 7,500 beds in permanent supportive housing for adults. Though limited, HIC reporting provides some details on the total supportive housings units across homeless subpopulations including transitional-age youth (18-24), families, and veterans.
| CoC | Adult-Only | Other Permanent Housing | Family | Youth | Veteran | Total Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston | 2594 | 345 | 431 | 43 | 754 | 3370 |
| Lynn | 177 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 197 |
| Cape Cod | 197 | 0 | 5 | 8 | 36 | 202 |
| Springfield-Hamden | 791 | 36 | 111 | 17 | 242 | 938 |
| New Bedford Attleboro | 148 | 41 | 84 | 0 | 69 | 273 |
| Worcester | 625 | 0 | 152 | 0 | 177 | 777 |
| Three County | 450 | 0 | 41 | 42 | 305 | 491 |
| Cambridge | 404 | 0 | 24 | 0 | 165 | 428 |
| South Shore | 830 | 0 | 156 | 9 | 351 | 986 |
| Fall River | 104 | 0 | 36 | 8 | 20 | 140 |
| MA - Balance of State | 1288 | 121 | 247 | 0 | 461 | 1656 |
| Total | 7608 | 543 | 1307 | 127 | 2580 | 9458 |
As seen in the HIC data, supportive housing development has prioritized efforts to address homelessness among individual adults. There are many contributing factors for this, most notably that single adults do not have a statutory right to shelter like families or children. The issue of veteran homelessness has aligned both state and federal resources to create supportive housing units to meet the needs of this population. These initiatives have proven successful with veteran homelessness declining by over 50% since 2011. As highlighted in the HIC data, approximately 26% of identified supportive housing is targeted for veterans, however, veterans experiencing homelessness now account for just 4% of the total population. The success of these initiatives provides a potential blueprint for addressing other populations experiencing homelessness, while also considering future housing needs overall, given declining veteran population trends.