Team BMC Takes Steps Toward Housing Stability for Patients at Winter Walk 2025
January 30, 2025

BMC Development Team
On Sunday, February 11, 2024, nearly 250 Team BMC walkers participated in the Winter Walk.
This year, the team will raise funds for BMC’s Living Well at Home program, which helps patients avoid eviction, emerge from homelessness, and achieve lasting housing stability
On Sunday, February 9, Winter Walk Boston will bring thousands of people to the historic Boston Common for a two-mile trek. Together, they will build awareness of homelessness and raise funds for local organizations working to end it. Last year, the walk saw its largest crowd to date: 4,000 walkers and teams raised some $500,000.
Team BMC, a group at Boston Medical Center that participates in charity athletic events around New England, will join the Winter Walk to boost fundraising for BMC. Last year, 250 Team BMC walkers raised money for BMC’s Emergency Medicine teams. This year BMC’s proceeds are earmarked for Living Well at Home, BMC’s housing services department, which tackles patients’ housing issues from several angles: preventing eviction, securing housing for people experiencing homelessness, and providing support to ensure people remain stably housed.
David Robinson, BMC’s director of Housing Operations and Strategy, estimates that Living Well at home could gain up to $100,000 from the Boston chapter of the Winter Walk event.
“One hundred thousand dollars, roughly speaking, covers a year of services for 30 to 40 people experiencing homelessness—that’s the impact,” Robinson says. “We’re really grateful and really excited. The Boston Winter Walk is focused on ending homelessness in Boston, and that’s our mission as well.”
Housing as a social determinant of health
More than 770,000 people experience homelessness in the U.S. on a given night, according to the most recent point-in-time count from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, an 18% rise over the previous year. Locally, an estimated 2,400 people experience homelessness in Boston on any given night.
“We know that having stable housing is fundamental to being able to manage your health and engage with the healthcare system in a proactive way,” Robinson says, explaining why BMC, as a hospital and health system, is so deeply engaged in helping patients with housing stability.
“One hundred thousand dollars, roughly speaking, covers a year of services for 30 to 40 people experiencing homelessness—that’s the impact.”
David Robinson, BMC’s director of Housing Operations and Strategy
“Often, the way people experiencing homelessness interact with the healthcare system is through the emergency department and inpatient floors. Our goal, the way we aim to change the trajectory of people’s lives, is to get them a foundation under their feet—housing—and then work toward more engagement in preventative care to improve their health and wellbeing,” he explains. “That’s better for patients and also for the health system, because people are using less of these costly services. There are more beds and space for other people who need them.”
How BMC’s Living Well at Home works
Living Well at Home was created by a merging in 2022 of two of the hospital’s housing-related programs: Elders Living at Home and Housing Prescriptions. Elders Living at Home has been providing housing services since 1986, but the merger has seen the program grow significantly in the past two years. Clients range from teens to 80+, but the program retains a special focus on elders. Many clients are BMC patients referred by primary care providers, but BMC also contracts with the city of Boston and the state Executive Office of Elder Affairs to serve people referred from outside of BMC who are 55 and over who are unhoused or at risk of losing their housing.
The program focuses on guiding clients through every step of their housing journey under three pillars: pre-tenancy support, post-tenancy stabilization, and eviction prevention.
To achieve their mission of ending the cycle of homelessness, Living Well at Home includes wraparound programming in behavioral health, case management, individualized service plans, and coordination with other support services.
“Our stabilization services are very hands-on,” says Eileen O’Brien, BMC’s director of Housing Services.
Working in collaboration with social workers, the department’s case managers do weekly home visits to check in to see how their clients are doing—helping them meet their lease agreements, providing guidance with budgeting, or offering behavioral health support via BMC, including medication management, talk therapy, or treatment for substance use disorder. As part of the health system, Living Well at Home works closely with clinical teams to help patients access healthcare services, which are often necessary for their housing stability.
O’Brien has seen these services make a big difference. “The vast majority of the people that we help find housing remain housed for as long as they wish to be housed, or until health concerns arise that require a different level of care.”
Over the past year, Living Well at Home helped house or prevent eviction for 199 people, and reached 734 clients with case management services. The vast majority of clients were very low income, and roughly half were aged 60 or older.
Living Well at Home: Unique’s story
One of those clients is Unique Robinson. Unique was first introduced to Living Well at Home by a Complex Care Management nurse named Betsy at the BMC/YWCA transitional program in Central Square, Cambridge. Unique lives with a medical condition that requires extensive care, and, at the time, she was experiencing homelessness. Betsy and Unique worked together with a program case manager named Angelys.
“Angelys and I had regular meetings. When it was time to start looking for housing, she walked me through the rental process from start to finish,” Unique describes. “She took me to my rental interviews and walked me through the tedious paperwork, sitting right beside me as I filled in each blank.”
Once Unique acquired housing with the partnership and support of Angelys, the Living Well at Home relationship focused on tenancy stabilization. Unique describes shopping with Angelys for pots and pans, bedding, and furniture. Beyond that, Angelys walked Unique through the process of obtaining a bus pass and helped connect her to Meals on Wheels.
“I was fortunate enough to meet Angelys,” Unique says. “I had no bumps along the way; she made it very easy. I took her guidance, went through the process, and look at me now: I am good.”
Now with stable housing, Unique is able to better manage her medical condition. Before engaging with Living Well at Home, she frequently visited BMC’s Emergency Department; since, she has had no visits at all, instead managing her care more regularly with her care teams. Now, she has been able to tap into her love of reading. On her days off work, Unique enjoys spending time at the library—only a short walking distance from her new home.
“My experience is not really different from anyone else experiencing homelessness,” Unique says. “I was fortunate to have the right people to talk to, like Angelys, who walked me through the process. And when you do that, you feel unstoppable. I am Unique and I am unstoppable.”