Massachusetts
In Holyoke, a radical approach to mental health care offers respite to a community under siege – The Boston Globe
Five of the seven gathered in that kitchen were, like Grady, trans; all had experienced their own mental health challenges.
Grady is among the first guests at Anemoni, a new LGBTQ-focused residential home in Holyoke offering support for people in mental health crisis from trained personnel with similar experiences. Fewer than 40 programs nationwide operate such centers, called peer respite homes, as alternatives to inpatient psychiatric care, according to the National Empowerment Center, a mental health support organization. Anemoni, which also welcomes people recovering from gender-affirming surgeries, is the only home in the country, perhaps in the world, exclusively run by and for trans and queer people, experts said.
Planning for Anemoni began almost three years ago, but it opened in late April amid an all-out assault on the transgender rights movement by the Trump administration. On his first day in office, President Trump invalidated the concept of gender identity and ordered the government to recognize only two sexes. The administration has since terminated scores of medical research grants aimed at improving the health of trans and queer populations and has sought to ban gender-affirming care in minors and adults. And, the nation’s 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline are soon expected to stop providing support specifically tailored to the LGBTQ+ community, a population that reports higher rates of anxiety, depression, trauma, and suicidality.
“It’s [expletive] terrifying in the world right now,” said Juniper Holt, Anemoni’s assistant director.
Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe
Anemoni, operated by The Wildflower Alliance, a Western Massachusetts-based national peer support and training organization, offers a haven within the somewhat protective bubble of Massachusetts. The state’s progressive politics and healthcare policies have helped draw people who identify as LGBTQ+ from across the country, increasing the state’s LGBTQ+ population to 9 percent of all adults in 2022, from about 7 percent in 2016, according to the Fenway Institute. That migration is likely to increase as the population increasingly feels besieged nationwide.
“We’re probably going to get more people asking to come here,” said Holt. “It makes us more necessary.”
In Holyoke, Anemoni is virtually indistinguishable from the other three-story residential homes on its block. Inside, the walls are painted in soothing pastels, with morning sunlight casting gentle shadows. Two bedrooms are still being furnished on the second floor, which smells like new paint. Three bedrooms downstairs are ready and available.
Reese Boucher was the first person to stay at the home. For years, the 29-year-old had listened with growing disgust as his friends used slurs for the queer community and people with disabilities. The Agawam man never felt he could tell them he is pansexual — a term that describes those who are romantically attracted to people regardless of their sex or gender. He is on the autism spectrum and has been treated for anxiety and depression, which led to periods of inpatient care.
In March, he finally cut those friends off, but feelings of isolation and depression became overwhelming. He learned of Anemoni through a contact.
“It’s a beautiful experience [to meet people] I can trust being myself around,” he said.
People stay for up to two weeks in the respite home. The Wildflower Alliance also runs a mobile peer respite support team. The services are fully covered by a $903,000, one-year contract with the state Department of Mental Health. Despite pressure from the Trump administration to kill gender-related programs, state support feels stable for now, said Sera Davidow, the Wildflower Alliance’s director.
Anemoni is “a significant addition to DMH services,” the agency’s commissioner, Brooke Doyle, said, “serving a community that often faces isolation, depression, threats, violence, and related trauma.”
Respite takes different forms for different guests; for Boucher, that means late-night walks to clear his mind.
He contrasted his welcoming stay at Anemoni with conventional psychiatric facilities, where “your freedom is immediately stripped from you.”
Anemoni staff who have had experience with inpatient care described medications and policies that can be ineffective, administered forcibly, dehumanizing, or cause terrible side effects; such treatments can be particularly difficult for transgender people who may find their identities negated, they said.
“People get misgendered, dead named [identified by a name used before they transitioned], harassed in inpatient units all the time, including by staff,” said Jordan Fairchild, director of the Wildflower Alliance’s social justice network. “We have our hormones taken away from us.”
Inpatient care also often involves severing virtually all outside ties, said Gail Hornstein, professor emeritus of psychology at Mount Holyoke College. Such isolation can cost people their jobs or housing, she said.
Practioners of peer respite believe people in crisis still have insight into what they need and can form important, therapeutic connections with others who have lived with mental illness.
Ephraim Akiva, senior director of peer respite for the Wildflower Alliance, dislikes the term mental illness for the people at the home. He sees a community suffering primarily from society’s mistreatment of trans and queer people.
“I am living with a lot of trauma in a world that is incredibly hostile to me and people like me,” he said.
Anemoni is a voluntary program. Forced medication is not allowed, restraints are never used, and the doors are not locked to prevent people from leaving. Guests are asked not to use drugs or drink on the property, but won’t be evicted if they aren’t sober.
Most decisions, from basics such as meal and bed times, to taking medications, are left up to the visitors, who are called guests, not residents or patients. If a guest wants to keep going to work, see a familiar therapist, or visit somewhere that calms them, they can.
“All of those things are possible in a peer respite because no one is not only restraining, but controlling or dictating what it is that’s going to be helpful to that person,” Hornstein said.
Bevin Croft, a researcher for the Human Services Research Institute, a Cambridge nonprofit that analyzes health and social service programs, studied a peer respite home in California from 2010 to 2015, and found that people in crisis who had one stay at a peer respite home were 70 percent less likely than those who did not to need subsequent inpatient or emergency services.
“People are just kind of given space and they can kind of do their own thing and that looks different for everybody,” she said.
As of March, DMH reported 718 people occupying beds in the state’s inpatient psychiatric facilities, 16 more than the facilities are supposed to house. But one strength of the peer respite model — a small, intimate setting — also makes it difficult to scale up. The Massachusetts legislature is considering bills to establish peer respite facilities in every county, along with another home solely for the LGBTQ community and two for nonwhite people.
For Grady, one of the most damaging consequences of her recent trauma was the deepening sense of loneliness.
“I’d like some semblance of not being so alone in the big, great, wide,” said Grady, who is from Northhampton.
At Anemoni, she found empathy.
A week at Anemoni didn’t heal Grady or take away the pain, but it did give relief.
“It makes me feel less weak, less alone, less afraid,” she said.
Jason Laughlin can be reached at jason.laughlin@globe.com. Follow him @jasmlaughlin.
No single person in Massachusetts bears more responsibility for denying voters the right to cast a ballot than inept Attorney General Andrea Campbell.
No rent control? Blame Campbell.
No state income tax cut? Blame Campbell.
No audit of the state Legislature? Blame Campbell.
Again and again Campbell has screwed up or worse, been complicit, leaving Bay State voters without the ability to exercise their right to decide important issues.
No amount of fawning pieces in the Boston Globe or publicity-seeking lawsuits against President Trump can cover up that fact.
She is a disaster. Unfortunately we have to suffer through another four years of her bonehead decision-making because Republicans in Massachusetts are just as inept at fielding viable candidates.
Massachusetts voters had the best chance in two decades this fall to establish rent control with a referendum question capping rent increases at 5%. Polls showed the ballot question with a solid advantage.
But Campbell, a liberal Democrat, allowed language on the question giving exemptions from the rent limits to religious institutions, which in Massachusetts violates the Constitution. The Supreme Judicial Court voted unanimously to kick the referendum question off the ballot.
This was not a case of political decision-making on Campbell’s part, since Democrats favored the rent control question. It was purely a rookie botch job, and a huge one at that, which will have major ramifications for renters, who will now be denied a much needed break from astronomical increases.
A simple reading of the Constitution should have caused Campbell to flag the question, and get the rent control advocates to strike the religious exemption. She admitted after she “got it wrong” — which is of no help to the renters in this state.
Apparently following the law, as Martin Short’s synchronized swimmer character would say, is not the Attorney General’s strong suit.
A similar error — or possibly an insidious political move — on Campbell’s part also blocked voters from getting a chance at lowering the state income tax from 5% to 4%.
The referendum question clearly had majority support, but was strongly opposed by Democrats like Campbell who argued it would have led to unconscionable cuts in social service programs to make up for the lost tax revenue.
Campbell okayed fatally flawed language in the ballot question which again caused the SJC to punt it off the ballot. This one may not have been just a simple mistake, but a possible deliberate act by Campbell to poison the question.
Politics again played a role in Campbell’s moves around a 72% voter-approved legislative audit by Auditor Diana DiZoglio. By not enforcing the new law, Campbell is flagrantly keeping DiZoglio from auditing the books of the despised, free-spending Legislature.
Campbell — rather than do her job — will not represent DiZoglio in her efforts to secure the audit, but authorized her to seek outside counsel, which will cost millions.
So on one hand saying she’ll enforce the law, she’s done everything she can to block it.
So what does Campbell do exactly? She has sued the Trump administration 50 times already, on a pace to exceed even Gov. Maura Healey’s lawsuits against Trump back when she was AG.
And she rarely ventures outside her Dartmouth, Mass. manse. Far from being the people’s lawyer, she stands against the people’s will.
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Massachusetts
Could ‘Golden Girls’-style homesharing solve the state’s housing woes? – The Boston Globe
Take the 1980s sitcom, “The Golden Girls.” The four older women sharing a home in that series formed close friendships. But homesharing — the practice of renting out a bedroom in one’s home — can also be a practical way to save money and take full advantage of a property.
Advocates seeking to promote homesharing estimate that leasing just 10 percent of the state’s 500,000 unoccupied spare bedrooms would be the equivalent of building $25 billion in new housing. And proponents, including community development financing organization BlueHub Capital, the Environmental League of Massachusetts, and Associated Industries of Massachusetts, are pushing for new laws that aim to turn homesharing from a niche practice into a genuine solution.
And amid burgeoning interest in homesharing, several companies have created platforms to facilitate it, like HomeShare Online, Nesterly, and SpareRoom. Some of these companies provide a website for potential roommates to find each other while others also offer background checks, personalized matching, help crafting legal agreements, and assistance navigating disputes.
Usually, homesharing involves sharing common areas in addition to having a private bedroom. Sometimes, a guest will exchange domestic tasks for reduced rent. A typical host might be an older adult who lives alone and wants help or extra income. A guest might be a student or single adult seeking inexpensive rent.
But sharing space with strangers can be tricky.
Honey Donegan, 77, who works part-time as a nanny, lives in a 2,500-square-foot home in Quechee, Vermont, and has turned to homesharing for companionship.
Her first guest didn’t work out — she was an older woman who ultimately decided to live with a family member. But then Donegan matched with Kayla Mazza, 31, through the nonprofit HomeShare Vermont. Mazza is a data and systems manager at a social services nonprofit who had trouble finding inexpensive housing near her job. They’ve lived together for two years. “It’s wonderful,” Donegan says. “It’s like having a daughter you’re not angry with.”
Most evenings, Donegan and Mazza watch “Jeopardy” together. They share a kitchen and occasionally a meal. Donegan loves hearing the younger woman’s perspective on work and politics. “We have separate lives, but we enjoy one another,” Donegan says.
Homeshare Vermont spokesperson Ric Cengeri said the organization conducts background checks, matches people by hand, negotiates contracts, and provides case management. At the moment, the program has matched around 300 people living in homesharing agreements, with the average match lasting 21 months.
One reason the Vermont program may have succeeded is that it is relatively small and has a human touch, with staff working closely with the host and guest to craft contracts and resolve disagreements. It’s also heavily subsidized with money from a state legislative appropriation through the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, federal government matching funds, and foundation grants, so the fees are affordable: A one-time fee of between $60 and $500 when a match is made is applied on a sliding scale, based on income.
The Vermont program, modest as it is, suggests that homesharing could have a future. But the struggles of other pilots point to some of the model‘s limitations.
Although homesharing appeals to some, others worry about living with strangers. An older adult’s health needs can get in the way, if a host expects or needs more help than a guest is prepared to give. Sometimes, there are personality clashes.
Martha’s Vineyard might seem like a perfect place for homesharing. Cindy Trish, executive director of Healthy Aging Martha’s Vineyard, said the island is filled with older adults with large homes, while younger professionals can’t find housing. And in June 2022, Healthy Aging launched a homesharing pilot program.
The surprising conclusion: It wasn’t viable. Program staff interviewed 13 hosts and 30 guests and identified just four potential matches, who were referred to a mediation agency to negotiate agreements. Only one pair signed a contract.
Trish said hosts often had more home health care needs than guests could meet, and the accommodations frequently didn’t meet guests’ expectations.
Elsewhere, the state of Maine partnered with Nesterly on a two-year pilot program, which ended in early 2026. Erik Jorgensen, senior director of government relations at Maine State Housing Authority, said because the program was statewide and lacked sufficient marketing, it had trouble attracting a critical mass of guests and hosts in any one location. Jorgensen said more than 500 potential hosts and guests created profiles, but only 11 homeshares were actually booked.
Nesterly CEO Noelle Marcus said the organization continued making matches after the pilot ended and has made about three dozen matches altogether. She’s seeking funding from local organizations to continue the program.
Nesterly also ran a pilot program in Boston in 2017 under Mayor Marty Walsh, which was paused during COVID-19 and not renewed by Mayor Michelle Wu.
There is talk of some legal changes that might make homesharing more attractive — making it easier for landlords to evict lodgers, for instance. Financial incentives — either to incentivize homeowners to rent rooms or to cover administrative costs for homesharing organizations — could help, too.
Portland, Ore. just launched a 12-month pilot program giving grants to homeowners who rent out spare rooms. HomeShare Vermont relies, in part, on $318,000 in state grants to cover its overhead expenses.
But ultimately, it may be a different kind of homesharing that takes hold — one that caters to the instinct for privacy.
Massachusetts has had early success with new laws encouraging construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), small living units located on the same property as a single-family home. In 2025, around 1,200 new units were permitted, according to state data. For renters seeking private living units or seniors concerned about sharing common space, renting an ADU could provide privacy for both parties while still letting a guest swap some household tasks for a discount.
Homesharing, or really any attempt to squeeze more out of our existing properties — allowing for ADUs, rezoning single-family lots to allow two-family homes — will not completely solve Massachusetts’ housing crisis. Ultimately, we need to build more housing.
But done right, homesharing can contribute in a small way. And we could use any contribution we can get.
Shira Schoenberg can be reached at shira.schoenberg@globe.com. Follow her @shiraschoenberg.
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