Mayor Michelle Wu announced Jan. 30 the acquisition of enVision Hotel, a homeless shelter that has been operated by Victory Programs Inc. since November 2021.
VPI, a Boston-based nonprofit, specializes in addiction treatment services and housing provision for the city’s homeless population.
Boston has seen a rise in homelessness over the past year, with the number of unhoused individuals increasing 10.6% from 2023 to 2024.
The enVision Hotel currently provides services to 55 residents through a combination of city and state funding, supplemented by grants, said VPI Chief Executive Officer Sarah Porter.
The hotel was initially funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Bureau of Substance Addiction Services through December 2024. The City intervened in January to continue the hotel’s operation through 2027 without disrupting the lives of the residents, according to the City.
“The City of Boston is supporting the operations of the shelter as well as contributed to our ability to purchase,” Porter said. “Our goal is to get people to stability, which we define as housing.”
VPI began operations at the hotel in 2021 to support the homeless population that exited an encampment at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, or Mass. and Cass, Porter said.
The staff provides 24-hour care and includes teams of case managers, recovery specialists, housing search specialists and a program director. VPI provides three meals a day, transportation and medical services from a team of doctors who visit residents once a week, Porter said.
“Most of the folks who are living in that program have not been engaged in services or … been in the shelter system in 10 [to] 15 years,” Porter said. “Our goal is to keep people sheltered and then to transition them as quickly as we can into permanent, supportive housing.”
Porter said there have not been any negative reactions within the community, as their team is “very good at de-escalation” and helping avoid problems. While there have been occasional police calls, such incidents have been rare.
“In reality, it is a very stable community and population that doesn’t have a good amount of incidents,” Porter said.
Beyond maintaining a stable and safe environment, VPI ensures its policies support those struggling with addiction.
The City previously enforced a policy barring residents from returning for six weeks if they left government-owned shelters overnight. This often affected those struggling with addiction, discouraging shelter use and fueling encampments like Mass. and Cass, Porter said.
VPI works with individuals struggling with addiction rather than expelling them out from the shelter.
“We welcomed people in, saying, ‘Okay, we’re not going to kick you out. We’re going to work with you on how you can remain in this environment,’” Porter said. “We have like a 99% success rate of people coming back every day.”
VPI has made significant progress in securing permanent housing for its residents, with about half of the 200 shelter participants successfully transitioning to permanent housing, Porter said.
“For a group of people who were fully disengaged from services for many, many, many years, those numbers are impressive to me,” Porter said.
