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How Pine Street Inn is using a $15 million gift to expand housing
Using a gift from the Yawkey Foundation, Pine Street Inn set out to create at least 400 units in five years.
When Pine Street Inn, Boston’s largest homeless services organization, received a $15 million pledge from longtime supporter the Yawkey Foundation at the end of 2021, they had their sights set on the construction of at least 400 new apartments over five years.
It’s quite the jump from the 20 to 30 units a year they were adding, which Pine Street Inn president Lyndia Downie has said is “not enough to keep pace” given the crushing housing crisis in Boston.
Now they’re 50 units away from reaching 400 units.
“We’re not quite there, but we continue to talk to our partners and look at other opportunities,” Downie said.
The gift from the Yawkey Foundation is the single largest commitment Pine Street Inn has ever received. It has helped the nonprofit, which also provides workforce services and its residents access to health care, accelerate its pace and scale for projects that were already in the works.
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That includes two projects that are in progress. One in Jamaica Plain at 3368 Washington St. will include 140 units, which Downie said should be done in late spring. Construction hasn’t yet begun on a project in Dorchester, which will convert a former Comfort Inn into 99 studio units for mostly older residents.
More projects like these are clearly needed, said Downie, who told the Boston Herald that there were thousands already on waiting lists. She also said it’s a result of a difficult housing market and low vacancy rates in Boston.
“The poorer you are, the harder it is,” she said. “There isn’t anybody not impacted by this housing market, but the folks we see in particular — that stress on the housing market results in them being left out and left with no housing at all.”
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Another expense the gift can help with is the cost of upkeep of these buildings, and it more recently went to a revamp of Pine Street Inn’s women’s shelter in the South End.
The shelter typically serves 85 women, but right now is at overflow with around 100 women staying, Downie said.
The renovation included new windows and an expanded lobby in the space. It also included a new name: the Yawkey House, named after Jean Yawkey, philanthropist and wife of Tom Yawkey. The couple is known mostly as the former longtime owners of the Boston Red Sox.
The name change and renovations were unveiled, fittingly, on the late Jean Yawkey’s 115th birthday.
“We understood the difference the capital could make there,” said Maureen Bleday, CEO of the Yawkey Foundation. “Being there the other day for lunch and seeing just how safe it is and how the women feel so appreciated… how supported people are, that is very much fitting with what the Yawkeys would have cared about and what our trustees try to continue in their name.”
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