The HomeBASE program, developed in July 2011, provides financial assistance to pay rent, utility bills, security deposits, and other expenses that allow a family to stay in their current home, move to new housing, or live with another family. HomeBASE also provides services to help families secure more income, save money, comply with their leases, get health care, child care, and other basic services.
The program has three goals:
1) Support suitable housing for families who are homeless or are in shelters or motels;
2) Use state resources more efficiently by reducing the overall costs of assistance to address homelessness; and
3) Stabilize the lives of homeless families on a short-term basis so that they can handle rental payments on their own at the end of the benefit period.
The experiences of participants suggest that the first two goals have been met—but very few, if any, families will be able to pay their rents independently at the end of the program.
Today, more than 5,000 families across Massachusetts, including 1,400 families in the city of Boston and surrounding communities, live in safe and stable housing because of HomeBASE, the Commonwealth’s housing assistance program that is an alternative to shelters and motels. However, these families’ housing situations and the state’s investments are at risk. If nothing is done, program participants will begin to lose their rental assistance in July 2013. More than one-half of families will lose their assistance by December, and all 5,000 families will have lost their assistance by June 30, 2014. Many of them will be back at the doors of homeless shelters.
This paper, Safe at Home: The Families of HomeBASE, gives a face and a voice to our neighbors who are participating in the program. Their stories, their challenges, and their successes provide a personal look at the people impacted by what might otherwise merely be discounted as “state policy.” Families and their children should be safe at home.