Jonathan Scoggins sat up halfway from his position lying in the shade to arrange a small fan, powered by his portable solar panel, at a 45° angle so that the light breeze lifted to his face. It was hot that first Monday of June; the temperature reached the mid-80s. Besides the quiet whirring of the red plastic aerator, the only other sound heard over the melodic birds chirping and omnipresent wind ruffling the trees was a Red Hot Chili Peppers song playing on Scoggins’ cell phone as he reminisced about seeing the band perform at Lollapalooza in the 90s.
This spot that Scoggins, 56, calls home is a tent in the State Forest, and he says he’s been there for around three years. He’s lived on the Island on and off for about 40 years, and estimates that he’s been homeless for about a decade.
And he’s not alone. Though Scoggins mostly keeps to himself, not a two-minute walk away in another hidden corner of the 5,300-acre Manuel F. Correllus State Forest is an encampment of four other tents.
To the day-tripper or week-long renter, Martha’s Vineyard is a vibrant summer colony chock-full of the rich and the famous, waterfront vistas, and perfectly manicured lawns set before shingle-style houses. But for some year-round Islanders and seasonal service-industry workers, the Island is becoming a nearly impossible challenge as a place to call home, or to even rest your head on a pillow, amid an unrelenting crisis in affordable housing.
On an Island with an increasing population and a finite amount of space, some vulnerable residents have fallen through the cracks, and are forced to live in places like the State Forest. A seemingly invisible problem, there is an Island population that is homeless, and Island officials say the number of unhoused individuals is increasing.
Individuals experiencing homelessness can range from seniors who can no longer afford to live on the Island they’ve inhabited for decades to service industry workers promised employee housing that didn’t materialize, to year-round Islanders previously reliant on the “Vineyard shuffle” — a twice-annual move from winter abodes to summer homes, to couch surfing or campgrounds, and back again. They now find that their rentals from previous years are sold.
It’s difficult to know exactly how many unhoused individuals there are. A federally sponsored program counted 28 individuals experiencing homelessness on the Island on a single night this past January; three were unsheltered, and the other 25 people either stayed at the Island’s only winter shelter, found a place to crash for the night, or were otherwise sheltered. The count rose to 37 when transitional housing was included.
This past winter, the shelter, run by Harbor Homes, saw a record number of guests who needed a place to stay, including 32 new individuals who came to their door. Tisbury Police officers also know of about 20 people experiencing homelessness just in Vineyard Haven.
When Harbor Homes’ shelter closes for the season, guests are provided with tents, and often with nowhere else to go, many stay in the State Forest, Island officials told The Times.
Scoggins is one Island resident who, fallen through the cracks, wound up living in the woods. During a visit by this reporter in June, his tent was situated under a tree, with branches sweeping so low he couldn’t stand up straight; he sat back on his heels.
Through conversations with Scoggins and Island officials, as well as court records, The Times pieced together his story.
He keeps his encampment in the State Forest relatively tidy, bringing trash out to the road for law enforcement to take, or he rides his bike into town to throw the bags away himself.
Some articles of clothing were swung across the tree’s branches to dry, and cans of cooking oil — to “drown the ants” — lined the perimeter of his orange and gray tent, which is covered with a brown tarp to keep the inside dry.
Scoggins suffers from a tick-borne illness that he said makes him forget things “every two minutes” and prevents him from eating red meat. In the last week of May, he pulled five ticks off himself. “Bug repellent stirs them up more right after it rains. Not much you can do,” he said.
Not that red meat is often on the menu, anyway. “Sometimes I don’t [eat],” Scoggins said. “I didn’t eat Saturday or Sunday. I just laid here and felt miserable.”
He can hardly chew, and all winter he burned plastic to stay warm. “I was breathing in plastic,” Scoggins said.
For entertainment, he’ll see a rare bird once in a while, or read something on the internet, though he doesn’t get great reception at his tent. He doesn’t physically read books, because they’ll just get wet, especially from the Island’s fog, he said.
He used to ride his bike around the Island, including into town, but he’s felt too weak as of late.
In the State Forest, Scoggins is hardly alone. Deeper in the woods and west of his abode is a small circle of three tents, where upturned plastic crates act as seats, and one that has a hole cut through the middle of the bottom appears to be a toilet.
Only one other individual was there at midday, but he didn’t want to be interviewed. Scoggins said the other tents were inhabited on a recent night, but he hadn’t seen the occupants in a few days.
In a different wooded area not far away, at least six tents were set up during this reporter’s first visit to homeless encampments on May 28. While no one was present, there were signs that the area was lived in, and recently. An outdoor rug lay in front of one of the tents, and two plastic crates lifted a large wooden slab a foot from the ground. The rectangular piece of wood was an advertisement for a driving school, and now functions as a bench. It’s almost welcoming.
Some of the tents are better kept than others, and a few appear abandoned, indicated by the dilapidated structure, large piles of trash inside and on top of mattresses or sleeping bags, and even a burned 2022 New York Post newspaper with a headline about Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend receiving a $2 million payout for the unlawful raid that killed her.
Others are orderly and innovative, with what seems to be a specific place for everything; a flashlight, lighter, and toothbrush are kept upright in a drink cartridge in one tent.
Their tents are somewhat off the beaten path, and because of that, most people don’t know this population exists.
“I was never aware of a homeless population growing up on the Island,” Sgt. Max Sherman of Tisbury’s Police Department told the Times reporter on a ride-along to see the Island’s homeless encampments. “I saw the Island’s façade or makeup to project a certain image.”
Now, as one of the Island’s public servants, not only has he seen through the façade, he’s become familiar with a lot of those who experience homelessness. “The population fluctuates, but there’s about 20 that I know of on our radar [in Vineyard Haven],” Sherman estimated.
Sherman says the homeless population has increased since he started on the force in 2015, and that could be because as the Island’s population grows, so too do the number of people who face housing insecurity.
Twenty people is “probably the minimum,” he said. “I can’t imagine with all the housing insecurity [that that’s] it for the whole Island.”
Sherman has been part of a solution to try to help. Police officers and officials in recovery and mental health community agencies meet biweekly in order to identify individuals that may need assistance in multiple areas — housing, food insecurity, or substance abuse — and rather than utilize the criminal justice system as the first or only response, they assemble a group that can aid the person’s multilayered needs. The program, developed in Canada, is called the HUB Table.
Even if an individual sorts out their mental health issues, they might not be able to help their homelessness, Sherman said.
Fifty-six-year-old Scoggins, originally from Baltimore, Md., arrived on the Island at 19 years old in the late ’80s. He worked in every town but Chappaquiddick, he said.
There was nothing left for him in Maryland, he said, so he followed a friend to the Island to look for a job. “‘You’ll find something,’ he said. And I did, but it was a lot easier back then. Through the years, it got worse,” Scoggins said.
Because of serious medical ailments, he can no longer work and receives monthly disability checks at his Post Office box in Vineyard Haven.
He’s stayed in shelters and motels off-Island, and even traveled to Tennessee to answer a Craigslist ad for an available room to rent.
“I was ripped off,” he said.
A slew of bad “stuff” happened, Scoggins said when asked why he’s unhoused.
He was evicted from his housing with Island Elderly Housing in 2014 for reasons “other than nonpayment of rent,” according to court records, but he said he didn’t do anything wrong.
He was fired from a few of his jobs partly, he said, because he had to attend so many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week.
“I didn’t deal with it properly. I thought things would turn out OK,” he added.
Scoggins said he started to camp in the State Forest after he followed another man, whom he said suffered from Alzheimer’s, from the Baptist Church in Vineyard Haven. That man would later die, Scoggins said.
He’s signed up on lists for several transitional and affordable housing units. In fact, that day, he waited for a call about a room at a group home off-Island, arranged through the state’s Department of Mental Health.
When reached for comment, the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation, which monitors the State Forest, issued a statement to The Times: “DCR is seeing a rise in unhoused individuals at our parks across the state, creating concerns for both them and those visiting our properties for recreation. We are working with our partner agencies and municipalities to find solutions that ensure the safety of all.”
Quantifying homelessness on the Island isn’t easy, and many who are unhoused fly under the radar.
In its count, the office of the Dukes County associate commissioner for the homeless reported 33 homeless individuals on Jan. 24, 2023, but estimated there was a total of about 120 to 130 individuals or families dealing with homelessness on the Island, according to the Island’s statistical profile by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission last year.
The actual number of unhoused individuals is more than just residents living in tents. “They’re not necessarily who you see at the bus stop or the shelter. There are people who sleep in their cars, or crash on people’s couches,” Sherman said.
Another measure, the annual Point in Time count, mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was released June 3 by the Cape and Islands Regional Network on Homelessness. Assembled by the Barnstable County Department of Human Services, the network is a multipronged effort of state, county, and local governments, and other stakeholders, to prevent and end homelessness.
The count occurs across the country during the last 10 days of January. It took place on the night of Jan. 23 on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket by the regional network, though they relied primarily on Harbor Homes — a nonprofit that runs the winter shelter and provides solutions to homelessness on the Island — for the Island’s numbers.
There were 568 homeless individuals counted on Cape Cod and the Islands, which was an increase of 141 from the year before. Individuals who were unsheltered increased from 32 to 76, which the network attributed to warmer weather. Overflow resources for winter response shelters are triggered only when the “feels like” temperature drops below 32°, also known as a Code Blue. The temperature ranged between 35° and 40° on Jan. 23.
On the Cape, Daniel Gray, continuum of care program manager for the Barnstable Health and Human Services department, said all overflow resources for seasonal shelters, such as emergency hotels, are triggered by this temperature regulation. The same is true on the Island.
When there’s a Code Blue, Harbor Homes puts up unsheltered people in hotels overnight.
HUD’s requirements for what can be considered homeless are highly specific.
People are only included in the count if they spent the night in emergency shelters, transitional housing, motels (if paid for by an agency), or in places not meant for human habitation, such as on the street, in cars, and in abandoned buildings.
“If someone is couch-surfing on the night of the count, even if they spent 364 days in an encampment … they have to be considered housed, and not as an unsheltered homeless person,” Gray, who provided The Times with Island-specific numbers, said.
A person is not included in the count if they are in the hospital for a medical need on the night of the count either.
It’s likely an undercount across the U.S., especially in a place that is cold in the last 10 days of January, Gray said.
Only Harbor Homes’ winter shelter provides regular sanctuary to Island residents experiencing homelessness. But the shelter, temporarily located at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services campus, is only open from Nov. 1 to the end of April.
They’re forced to close the doors every spring because the nonprofit doesn’t have the resources or capacity to house guests for the summer months. Building A, where the shelter resides in the winter months, is used for administrative and storage purposes in the summer, Elizabeth Folcarelli, CEO of Community Services, said in an email to The Times.
The building is also expected to come down in early 2025. Buildings A, B, and C will be made into “one comprehensive Community Service Center … [that will] ultimately encompass all of our behavioral health, disabilities, veteran’s, and elder services, as well as administration, under one roof,” she said.
Though Community Services invited Harbor Homes back for one more season, Lisa Belcastro, director of the shelter, must now secure a new place to host the shelter in the future, and she doesn’t know exactly how long she’ll have the facility next year. “It depends on their construction. April would be great, but we don’t know,” she said.
Recently, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee, which rents the land to Community Services, granted Harbor Homes an increase in beds from 20 to 25 for the 2024–25 season.
This past year, though they could shelter only 20 people overnight, Harbor Homes saw 54 individuals throughout the winter season, 32 of whom were new to the shelter.
“Almost every single one of those 32 people couldn’t afford housing,” Belcastro said. “We saw the impact across the board of how expensive housing is compared with how much people are making.”
In the months where the shelter isn’t open, Belcastro and her team organize lunch, laundry, and showers at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown once a week, and lunch at Porto Pizza, also once a week.
This year, Harbor Homes introduced a new outreach program called the MV Cares Outreach Coalition, a coordinated effort of many Island organizations and businesses to meet the vulnerable population where they are every two weeks.
The coalition partners with organizations like MV Food Baskets and the Red House Peer Recovery Support Center to provide food, medical kits, toilet tissue, garbage bags, and tents. They take a visiting nurse with them to do checkups, and offer to wash sleeping bags.
The biggest shift Belcastro’s seen since the shelter opened in 2016 is that the many individuals experiencing homelessness do work on the Island, whether that’s year-round or seasonal, but they still can’t afford or find a place to live.
“Homelessness is a lack of affordable housing,” Belcastro, director of the winter shelter, said.
There are plenty of people who struggle with mental health issues or substance abuse and own homes, she said. “People don’t make enough money to pay rent. People can’t rent a room or condo or house, and on this Island, it’s so hard.”
This Times reporter went back to Scoggins’ tent on Tuesday to follow up and see if his off-Island housing panned out. His tent was closed and a pair of jeans hung from the surrounding tree’s branches, but he didn’t respond to calls made by the reporter, and couldn’t be located.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with homelessness, we encourage you to write to the editor and tell us your story. The email is editor@mvtimes.com, and our newsroom is at 30 Beach Road in Vineyard Haven.
