Proposal to move Cape Cod homeless shelter near elementary school stirs controversy

BOSTON — A Cape Cod housing agency is looking to move a homeless shelter a block away from an elementary school to expand its services, but the plan doesn’t add any new beds and has faced sharp backlash across the region.

The Barnstable School Committee has voted to send a letter to the project’s leaders, Housing Assistance Corp., and Catholic Charities, outlining its concerns about the proposed relocation of St. Joseph’s House, which has served Cape Cod since the 1980s.

Leaders argue that moving the 50-bed overnight shelter to 460 West Main St., about 300 yards from Hyannis West Elementary School, would expand its service offerings, including education and on-site behavioral health and medical care.

The proximity to the K-grade 3 school with over 300 students, though, is causing concern for the Barnstable School Committee, including safety during student arrival and dismissal and security around the building’s property.

Attorney Marc Terry informed the committee that it does not have jurisdiction over whether the proposal proceeds, but that it could share its concerns with the community.

“A central responsibility of the School Committee is the health and safety of the students in the town of Barnstable,” committee member Andre King said at a meeting last Wednesday. “That’s the lens in which we’re looking at this.”

Committee member Mike Judge, who said he is “well-versed with homeless shelters” as a retired firefighter-paramedic, is concerned about the potential of having to hire more staff to supervise recess.

“I can see a lot of huge financial problems with this,” Judge said at last week’s meeting.

Per a shelter-relocation information page on its website, Housing Assistance Corp. CEO Alisa Magnotta met with Barnstable school superintendent Sara Ahern in February and March to discuss arrival and dismissal times and “how shelter operations can accommodate that.”

Project leaders have said the current shelter at 77 Winter St. is located near early elementary schools and “directly across the street” from an elementary school bus stop.

“In all the years we have operated at the current site, we are not aware of any incidents involving students or school operations,” Housing Assistance Corp. states on its website. “As with any location, safety remains our highest priority.”

Though the shelter would remain in Hyannis, a village of Barnstable, each Cape Cod town is being asked to help Housing Assistance Corp. fund renovations at the new 9,000-square-foot facility.

Cape Codders are deciding at their local Town Meeting whether to allocate upwards of $100,000 in community preservation funds for work that project leaders say would “create the modern, dignified shelter that our region needs.”

The estimated relocation cost is pegged between $4.8 million and $6 million. Housing Assistance Corp. has already received $3 million in federal pandemic relief funding to gain site control of the new property and a $354,000 state grant for various capital projects.

Residents in Chatham are set to vote on funding the project at a Town Meeting on Monday, and Truro is slated to follow on Saturday. Bourne residents approved allocating tax dollars to the effort last week.

Discussion at Town Meeting on the funds is lively.

Bourne Planning Board Chairman John Duggan said that from 2025 to 2026, 402 town residents received assistance from the Housing Assistance Corp., including “emergency overnight beds, rental assistance, financial workshops and funding to prevent homelessness.”

“The need for emergency housing and assistance for the homeless is great,” Duggan said. “It is fiscally impossible for each town to provide the services that are needed. This regional approach makes the most sense.”

Bourne Finance Committee member Wayne Sampson, though, doesn’t see it that way. He said the project is “much more complicated than it has been presented.” At two previous public meetings, he said, it was disclosed that the number of residents being serviced through Housing Assistance Corp. was 58 over four years.

“We have been given false, wrong and misleading information,” Sampson said, “over the past two months regarding how this program is developed and how it’s supposed to work.”

The zoning process behind the proposed relocation has also generated concerns.

Barnstable Building Commissioner Brian Florence determined in January that the project is protected by the so-called Dover Amendment, a state statute that exempts agricultural, religious, and educational uses from certain zoning restrictions.

In March, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office agreed with Florence’s conclusion and that the “proposal fits easily within that scope.” The office signaled that it’s in favor of the project because the “support of homeless individuals is a value of utmost importance to the Commonwealth.”

A group of Barnstable residents has filed an appeal to Housing Assistance Corp.’s building permit, which the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals is set to take up on June 10.

The group, Neighbors Advocating for Neighbors in Need, says on its website that the program “allows shelter access to anyone, but must leave drugs, alcohol, weapons, and paraphernalia outside, in the neighborhood.”

According to Housing Assistance Corp., 48% of shelter guests in 2025 were employed, and 84% were Cape Cod residents. It did not disclose the number of guests served.

The agency has touted the mission of Catholic Charities, which would operate the shelter, as embodying the “acts of mercy from the Gospel of Matthew – feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the sick.”

“The relocation of the St. Joseph House shelter and its partnership with other agencies,” Housing Assistance Corp. said, “will strengthen the demonstration of this mission.”

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