Special Edition CEO Corner: What the Tartan Army Showed Boston About Community

For two weeks in June, Boston belonged to the Tartan Army.

Tens of thousands of Scotland supporters filled our streets, our parks, and our pubs for the World Cup. They wore kilts, played the bagpipes, and brought a joy you could feel in the air. And before they left for Miami, they did something that has stayed with me.

They gave.

Members of the Tartan Army visited Horizons for Homeless Children in Roxbury, toured the center, and played bagpipes for the kids. In Providence, they gave $10,000 to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, the largest charitable gift in their history. What struck me was not the size of any one gift. It was the instinct behind it. Strangers arrived, looked around, saw a need, and decided to be part of the answer.

That instinct is the whole game.

At Hearth, we work every day on a crisis that does not draw a crowd the way a World Cup does. Older adult homelessness is one of the fastest-growing forms of housing instability in our region, and the older adults living it are too often invisible. They are our parents, our grandparents, our longtime neighbors. They built this city. No one who spent a lifetime here should spend their later years without a safe place to call home.

Ending older adult homelessness is more than a housing problem. It is a question of who we are as a city. But it does begin with housing. Once an older adult has a stable, dignified home, health, connection, and community can follow. That is the order of things, and it is why Hearth leads with housing.

We are the first and only organization in Greater Boston dedicated solely to this work. For more than thirty years, we have moved older adults from instability to stability through outreach, prevention, and permanent supportive housing, including Ruggles, the only deeply affordable assisted living in Massachusetts. Across the life of our organization, we have helped nearly 3,000 older adults find a home and be part of a community.

The Tartan Army reminded us what becomes possible when people decide to show up. We can carry that same spirit into the work ahead. From instability to stability. From invisibility to dignity. From isolation to community. That is the Boston worth building, and we can build it together.

If you would like to be part of it, please consider a gift today, or join the Kindling Club, our community of monthly supporters. Your support helps an older adult move from a shelter cot or a motel room to a place that is, at last, home.

With gratitude,

Rhonda A. Pieroni

President and CEO, Hearth