Shelter director of Harbor Homes resigns

Updated Feb. 12

Right before the nonprofit Harbor Homes plans to close on a new permanent location, after over two years of scouring the Vineyard for a place and moving between temporary spots, shelter director Lisa Belcastro resigned her post. 

The nonprofit organization, which now serves dozens of unhoused locals through their winter shelter, community outreach, meals, and other resources, was started by Reverend Vincent “Chip” Seadale and other volunteers, including Belcastro, in 2016. The group, originally called Houses of Grace and made up of clergy and dedicated locals, began meeting with the common goal of providing resources for Islanders who didn’t have stable housing. They took action following the hypothermic death of an individual who had been living outdoors in 2013. 

The shelter was shut down during the pandemic, and around that time, a nonprofit called Harbor Homes took over operations. Many volunteers and leadership, including Belcastro, continued on in this new iteration. 

In a stark echo of the incident that started the original Houses of Grace, an unhoused man, William P. Steranka, was found dead in his car late this January, just a day after a winter storm raged across the Island, with temperatures in the teens and over a foot of snow on the ground. Steranka’s cause of death is unconfirmed, but the concern from the Chilmark community members who knew him mirrors the compassion expressed by the people who began providing shelter and resources for the unhoused community many years ago. 

In 2020, Belcastro was named as the director of the winter shelter, the only one on the Island for the unhoused population. She’s been synonymous with the shelter, to those unhoused and housed, since.

For over a decade, Belcastro has worked to provide services to unhoused Islanders, and on Tuesday, after her last day at the shelter, Belcastro looked back fondly at the people she’d both worked with and served. 

“The laughter, the conversations, and the friendships made at the shelter formed the best memories, and I’ll hold them in my heart forever,” Belcastro said in a statement to The Times. “The shelter is a team effort, and I had the greatest pleasure to be a part of the amazing volunteers who became a team caring for Islanders in need.”

The interim executive director of Harbor Homes, Jeannette de Jesús, said the nonprofit is committed to providing services to the local unhoused community, and she’s working on a plan for the future. In the meantime, two longtime staff members are set to take over Belcastro’s role as co-directors of the shelter. 

De Jesús started in October, and Harbor Homes is reportedly still looking for a permanent executive director. In the past six years, they’ve had seven executive directors. The first, Karen Tewhey, served in the position from 2020 to 2022. After that, there was quick turnover. Sue Diverio was next to take the mantle, then Rebecca Jamieson, Kristin Leutz, Brian Morris, Mike Bellissimo, who resigned in August, and now, de Jesús.

The new co-directors of the winter shelter are Pat and Polly Toomey, the owners and chefs at Among the Flowers Café in Edgartown. De Jesús said that they don’t anticipate any lapse in service at the shelter or any of their other programming through the change of hands.

“We are in a leadership transition for the winter shelter. And we’re really quite thrilled that two of the people that have been long-term employees and volunteers of the shelter will be stepping into a management role for the shelter for the remainder of the winter shelter season,” de Jesús told The Times. 

Belcastro isn’t the only person who left the organization recently. At least three other volunteers have resigned from their positions in the past month. Harbor Homes has around 30 volunteers, 20 paid staff members, and 11 voting members, according to their 990 form, an IRS report that tax-exempt organizations have to complete annually, for the fiscal year 2024. This was the most recent report publicly available for the nonprofit.

Sarah Sylvia, a volunteer who was reached by The Times, said she left because her schedule was too busy to continue at Harbor Homes. Sylvia is a nurse at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. 

“Due to the demands of school and clinical rotations, I had to step back for the remainder of the shelter season,” Sylvia said. 

As for the future of the nonprofit, the group is planning to close on a permanent location for the new Harbor Homes center next week. The center will include their administrative offices and a year-round shelter for unhoused people.

Their upcoming purchase is many years in the making, with various properties falling through for a variety of reasons. A year ago, almost to the day, Harbor Homes was looking at next steps for its shelter as its temporary residence in a building at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services campus was set to be demolished as part of an ongoing renovation. The group tried to nail down a permanent space before they were left without an option for the following winter, but multiple locations fell through, largely because of zoning restrictions and concerns from possible abutters.

The organization had to undergo a rezoning process on an existing building they owned in order to open the winter shelter this year. Their approval lasts until this April, which is when the shelter doors close for the summer. That building will then revert back to a women’s shelter. 

De Jesús didn’t tell The Times the specifics of the new building, its location or size, but said the space is “terrific.”

“We’re really quite excited and gratified that people are really going together with us to make this happen, and Lisa has been a part of helping to make this happen in the past,” she said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a more detailed and accurate history of Harbor Homes as well as add clarity to the different positions at the nonprofit. It was also updated to say that there were seven executive directors in the past six years, instead of six.