New Shelter Director Leads with Her Heart

For the past decade, the Harbor Homes overnight winter shelter has been a place for homeless Islanders to go on cold winter nights. This year’s shelter opened on Sunday in the basement of the St. Andrew’s Church parish house in Edgartown, with a new director at the helm: former Harbor Homes volunteer Mary Alley.

Last year’s shelter operated at Harbor Homes’ women’s group home in Oak Bluffs, and the year before that it moved from the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services campus to a series of churches, including St. Andrew’s. This is the last time the shelter will be in a temporary location before a new permanent facility opens next year.

Ms. Alley was preparing for her fourth night on the job when the Gazette met her at the shelter Wednesday. She had a load of laundry in the washer for a guest and was anticipating the nightly dinner rush.

“First night we had five [guests]. Second night we had six. Last night we had seven,” she said. “So I’m hoping tonight we’re going to have eight.”

Ms. Alley grew up on the Vineyard and worked for 20 years in administration at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. She got involved with Harbor Homes after the organization tried to purchase a property in her neighborhood a few years ago, sparking outrage among her neighbors. She reached out to Lisa Belcastro, the shelter director at the time, to ask how she could help.

“[Ms. Belcastro] said, ‘Well, we always need volunteers,’” Ms. Alley recalled.

Ms. Alley started helping at the shelter a few nights a week. She worked the dinner shift, kept the place clean, and made sure guests had hot cups of coffee and tea. Later, Harbor Homes brought her on as a staff member to assist executive director Jeanette De Jesús.

Since starting as shelter director, she’s talked with guests who remember her from her days as a volunteer. One guest told her he was glad she took the top job.

“That makes you feel good, that someone says, ‘Wow, it’s you,’” she said.

The shelter opens every night at 6 p.m. and closes at 8 a.m. through April 18, 2027. It will remain open all day when the weather is particularly cold, as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Men and women sleep in separate rooms, where cots are set up and guests can leave their belongings during the day. At the foot of each bed is a quilt, colorful and neatly folded. They’re made and donated by an Island group called the Silver Quilters, and guests can take them when they leave at the end of the shelter season.

The shelter is equipped with a kitchen, a bathroom with a shower and a laundry room, where volunteers wash guests’ clothes. Meals are provided by St. Andrew’s, the Hebrew Center, the Federated Church of Martha’s Vineyard, Grace Church, the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, the United Methodist Church and Good Shepherd Parish. Dinner takes place each night at a long, banquet-style table, currently adorned with pumpkins and mums for fall.

While it’s warm enough that many people still elect to tent in the woods or live in their car, Ms. Alley expects the shelter will get busier when the temperature drops. If the need arises, she said Harbor Homes can ask the church to put air mattresses in the upstairs level of the parish house.

Some guests choose to stay at the shelter every night, while others come and go. Some don’t stay the night at all, but come by for a meal or to pick up fresh socks and underwear.

Guests’ trust is important to Ms. Alley.

“We’re not here to be punitive….We’re here to make sure people are healthy and happy and safe as well as we can, and show them that there are people in the world that care about [them],” she said.

She said it’s important to respect that not every person experiencing homelessness will have the same needs, or be interested in the services the shelter provides.

“We try to get the word out, but we can’t make anybody come to us,” she said.

The shelter currently has about 12 volunteers, plus paid staff members who stay at the shelter overnight. One challenge is finding enough staff and volunteers to support the program, but Ms. Alley is heartened that many new people have joined the team this year.

The shelter also relies on donations of items such as bedding, clothing and toiletries. One volunteer donated several sets of AirPods so that guests can listen quietly to the music they like.

“[With] the amount of people that just reach out and say, you know what, we can help, we’ll do this and that, it’s a comfort to be here,” she said.

In March, Harbor Homes teamed up with the Island Housing Trust to buy a building at 515 Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road in Tisbury for a permanent overnight winter shelter, expected to open in fall 2027. The new space will include computers, space for social programming, and several bathrooms, showers and washing machines. It will also include congregate housing, a long-term collaborative living opportunity for Islanders who are housing insecure.

Ms. Alley looks forward to the new facility. She said the Harbor Homes team designed it thoughtfully, relying on input from shelter guests who would be using the space themselves.

“I think that’s so important, because, you know, sometimes people will build something and they don’t talk to the people who are in the space,” she said.

One of Ms. Alley’s main goals as shelter director is to help shelter guests find stable housing. She’s seen many former shelter guests go on to find steady housing and employment, though the Island’s lack of affordable housing has forced some of these guests to leave the Vineyard behind.

Despite the challenges of Island living, Ms. Alley is grateful for the Vineyarders who band together to keep their neighbors from falling through the cracks.

“It takes a village, as they say,” she said. “I think that we’re lucky we live in this village.”