CEO Corner: The Clock We’re All On

August in Boston has a particular feel. The light shifts earlier. Store windows fill with backpacks and notebooks. Families squeeze in one more weekend before everything starts again.

For the older adults our outreach team meets on the street, August feels like something else entirely. It feels like a countdown.

I want to be plain about why. Housing someone doesn’t happen the week you decide to do it. It starts with a conversation, and then another one, because trust isn’t handed to a stranger with a clipboard. It moves through documents that were lost years ago and have to be replaced. It moves through assessments, applications, waiting, and a home that has to actually become available. By the time someone turns a key, months have passed since the first hello.

Which means the work that puts someone in a home this November is the work we do right now.

That’s the part people don’t see. When you read about an older adult moving into permanent supportive housing in the winter, you’re reading the end of a story that started in the summer heat. The gift that made it possible was made in August. The outreach worker who kept showing up was showing up in August.

We are the first and only organization in Greater Boston working solely to end older adult homelessness. That focus is exactly why we know how long this takes. We’ve been at it for more than thirty years, and we know the difference between a fast answer and a real one.

From instability to stability. From invisibility to dignity. From isolation to community.

None of that happened in a week.

So here’s what I’m asking as we head into the last stretch of summer. Don’t wait for the cold to care about this. The cold is when it becomes visible. August is when it’s solvable.

Our Kindling Club members give monthly, which means their support is already at work before anyone knows it’s needed. That’s the whole idea. Steady, ahead of the crisis, quietly building the thing that catches someone in November.

If you’ve been thinking about it, this is the month.

With Gratitude,

Rhonda A. Pieroni

President and CEO, Hearth