CEO Corner: Our Support System

Two weeks ago I stood in a room at Venezia and looked out at more than two hundred people who had given us a Thursday night. I want to write down what I told them, because many of you weren’t there, and it applies to you just the same.

Here it is.

At Hearth, the day an older adult gets their keys is a beautiful day. It’s also only the beginning. What keeps someone home is everything that comes after. The furnished apartment waiting on day one. The case manager who notices something is off before a single word is said. The phone that gets answered. The person who keeps showing up long after the paperwork is done, even when the apartment isn’t one of ours.

That’s what we are for the people we serve. We’re their support system.

The room met two of those people on October 8. Carol, who lives at Anna Bissonnette House. And Anthony, who lives in his own apartment in Rockland, in a building that isn’t ours. On paper, our work with Anthony ended the day he got his keys. Life kept happening to him the way it happens to all of us, and when it did, we didn’t leave.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand in three years of doing this job. Hearth needs a support system too. Seven out of ten of the people we’ve housed have been with us more than ten years, and that isn’t luck. It’s what happens when a support system refuses to quit. A large part of that support system was in the room that night. Another large part is reading this now.

Every ordinary morning that a resident puts a key in a door that is still theirs, you’re part of the reason. Not just on gala night, when the lights are on. On the mornings nobody photographs.

So this is a thank-you. To our sponsors, to our board, to a staff that does the part of this work no one ever sees, and to everyone who gave.

It’s also an invitation, because a support system can’t take October off. The weather is turning, and there are older adults across Greater Boston tonight who don’t have a door to put a key into. They’re waiting for exactly what Anthony and Carol found, someone in their corner who isn’t going anywhere.

If you want to be that person, the simplest way is the Kindling Club, our monthly giving community. A gift every month is a support system that’s already working before anyone knows it’s needed.

We’re the first and only organization in Greater Boston working solely to end older adult homelessness. We don’t do it alone. We never have.

Thank you for being ours.

Rhonda A. Pieroni

President and CEO, Hearth