Supportive housing is defined as affordable housing coupled with supportive services that allows people, most often older adults, veterans, and those experiencing long-term homelessness with a disability, to be able to live independently. Creation of supportive housing primarily takes two forms. 1) developing new units which includes acquisition, construction, and ongoing operating costs, and partnering with an experienced service provider to deliver services to the residents; 2) master leasing already existing structures or individual units by a provider who then delivers services directly to the residents. While upfront costs are less, and there are fewer siting issues related to zoning with the master leasing approach, there is no net gain of housing units to the community.
Supportive housing often requires significant levels of government assistance in the forms of capital financing to develop, deep rental subsidy assistance as 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 the services may not be attached to a specific unit, or supportive housing units in Public Housing may be double counted. In addition to the above challenges in quantifying supportive housing, accurate data on supportive housing is complicated given federal funding and reporting requirements towards homelessness are overseen at a local level by regional or municipal planning bodies called Continuums of Care (CoC). Outlined in more detail in the later 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 CoC Housing Inventory Count (HIC) data shows there are roughly 9,458 units of supportive housing targeted to people experiencing homelessness across Massachusetts. Though limited, HIC reporting is also able to provide limited detail on 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MA 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, but the most notable is that single adults do not have a statutory right to shelter like families or children. Significant focus on 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 efforts have been successful as evident by an over 50% reduction in veterans experiencing homelessness 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 in targeted efforts to address veterans’ homelessness offers a potential blueprint for effective ways to address strategies, but also considerations as outlined later in this plan, as we consider future housing need given population trends showing a steady decline in veterans.