As the seasonal shuttering of the Island’s only overnight winter shelter approaches and with no permanent location planned, a call is being made for an Island-wide task force to address homelessness on Martha’s Vineyard.
The idea was discussed by the West Tisbury select board during a Wednesday meeting. Board member Skipper Manter said there should be a group to “butt heads and work their way through” the issues surrounding the nonprofit Harbor Homes and homelessness, like finding the location for a permanent shelter or even getting state support.
“This needs to be addressed, and these are not bad people. Some of them are working very hard,” Manter said, referring to the unhoused population on the Island.
Representatives of Harbor Homes have been approaching town officials across the Island to gather support in their effort to help the Island’s unhoused population, which has grown over the last few years. Meanwhile, recent reports have highlighted a lack of a regional effort to address homelessness on the Island and Harbor Homes has faced barriers to establishing a permanent shelter location, like wastewater capacity in Oak Bluffs and resistance from abutters.
“It’s not a Harbor Homes concern, it’s a Martha’s Vineyard concern,” Lisa Belcastro, Harbor Homes winter shelter coordinator, told the West Tisbury board on Wednesday.
Belcastro underscored that Harbor Homes needs to find a permanent location, even if it’s a spot where unhoused people can camp legally outside of Manuel F. Correllus State Forest — an area the Department of Conservation and Recreation wants to prevent camping due to fire risks. The idea would require health board approval and other necessities like portable toilets and garbage cans, and Harbor Homes is asking for help figuring it out.
In the absence of a permanent location, Harbor Homes has already transitioned to churches to use as shelters. Harbor Homes executive director Brian Morris said since the winter shelter funding is tied to a state grant from the Executive Office of Housing and Liveable Communities, this also means they can only run it for six months annually, which ends on April 19 this year. So, a permanent location may also need a different funding mechanism.
“On any given night this past winter, there were one million Americans who were unhoused. And guess what? 56 of them were right here,” Morris said. That’s just for the shelter. Based on an estimate from the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, around 150 Islanders faced homelessness in 2024.
The shelter space has essentially been cut in half at the churches compared to the previous location at a Martha’s Vineyard Community Services building in Oak Bluffs, with beds around three inches apart from each other. The limited space makes for a rocky situation with visitors who are “on edge,” Morris said.
“We’ve had a lot of incidents,” Morris said. “We were proud for years to say we’ve had no incidents. Well, we had three last week.”
He also said outside of the shelter, Harbor Homes has no control over what people do. Morris said the Steamship Authority has complained that too many unhoused people are using its terminal in Vineyard Haven as a warming center, but besides asking them to stop and handing out instructions, Harbor Homes has no way to enforce it.
Morris said that as the weather gets warmer, unhoused individuals will probably camp in the state forest again. Harbor Homes is currently working closely with state officials to avoid another situation like last year when the state cleared a campsite.
Belcastro said Harbor Homes has met multiple times with Department of Conservation and Recreation officials and are also working with them on signs to be posted in the state forest after the winter shelter closes.
“[DCR] had egg on their face. They weren’t overly happy with themselves either after that scenario,” she said.
Harbor Homes is also developing a policy on the distribution of tents, sleeping bags, and tarps.
“When we close our shelter doors and it’s still 30, 40 degrees at night, it seems rather harsh to send someone out into the cold without a tent, a sleeping bag, or a tarp to stay warm,” she said.
While there are no people coming from areas outside of Martha’s Vineyard to use the overnight winter shelter, Belcastro said the number of homeless people “easily triples or quadruples” during the summer when summer workers come to the Island. Belcastro said there have even been cases of summer J-1 visa holders calling the Harbor Homes hotline asking whether they could use the winter shelter.
“But they come here anyway, and they’re living everywhere,” Belcastro said.
Harbor Homes plans to meet with the Dukes County Commissioners next week, where they will raise the idea of an Island-wide approach to homelessness.
