abby’s photography by christine hochkeppel by laura … · all of abby’s house guests to help...

73 WORCESTERLIVING.COM ● WINTER 2016

This past summer, on June 7, Abby’s House officially turned 40, an anniversary that has been celebrated with pride and some reflec-tion about how this “bright spot in the city” has only grown brighter over time.

Since 1976, Abby’s House has been a life force for the women it has helped as well

as for the Greater Central Massachusetts community. Named in honor of Worcester’s own Abby Kelley Foster, abolition-ist and women’s rights champion, the agency has served more than 13,000 women and received support from 20,000 friends from myriad sources.

ABBY’S HOUSE - a refuge and a resource

PEOPLE&PASSIONS

BY LAURA PORTERPHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINE HOCHKEPPEL

Agency marks 40 years of helping women and children

Abby's House founder Annette Rafferty, escorted by her niece, makes her entrance to the Thrift Shop Fashion Show March 12, a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the shelter.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 74

It has also created a unique and compelling culture, one that draws both women and men who are committed not only to the cause that Abby’s House embraces, but also to its approach.

“Abby’s House is about the people,” says Executive Direc-tor Stephanie Page, now in her second year. “It’s about what

we do together.”Current president of the

board of directors Patti McKone concurs. “Most of the volun-teers have been volunteers there for years and years and years in different capacities. There’s a saying that ‘Once at Abby’s, always at Abby’s.’ ”

This year, the staff, board members, volunteers, current and former residents and the agency’s many friends have

come together to acknowl-edge that culture and its contributions.

From a kickoff event at Maxwell-Silverman’s at the end of January and a Spring-Spec-tacular wine and food tasting in April at Holy Cross to smaller events like the Abby’s House Thrift Shop Fashion Show in March and the HipHipHerRace in October, the 40th anniver-sary events have raised both fun

and funds.In May, Abby Kelley Foster

herself took part as actor and activist Lynne McKenney Lydick, who recently stepped down from the board, was on hand for tours of Liberty Farm on Mower Street, Foster’s former home. Lydick portrays Foster in a one-woman play, “Yours for Humanity — Abby,” throughout New England.

The apogee of the


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WINTER 2016 ● WORCESTERLIVING.COM 75

celebration, the 40th Anniver-sary Gala, was held Nov. 4 at Mechanics Hall, where more than 300 guests dined and danced.

Never lost in the midst of the celebrations, however, has been the heart of Abby’s House: its

mission to help women, one at a time.

That mission runs deep and broad, going beyond “provid-ing women and children with a place to live, but acknowledg-ing where each woman is in her journey to empowerment

and by creating an individual-ized service plan that helps her achieve her goals,” notes the mission statement on the agency website.

That ethos has defined Abby’s House from the very beginning.

In 1973, Annette Rafferty was asked by the Worcester Urban Ministry Commission to head a task force intended to examine the emerging issue of homelessness of women and children.

FACING PAGE, TOP: Sister Rena Mae Gagnon chats with Louise McGee before the Abby's House Thrift Shop Fashion Show.FACING PAGE, BOTTOM: Event chairwoman Isa Bayon watches as volunteer Molly Donahue prepares fl ower arrangements donated from Trader Joe’s for the Thrift Shop Fashion Show. ABOVE: Julie Komenos shows her style as she struts along the red carpet.


When the commission rejected the task force’s ulti-mate recommendation for a shelter designed specifically for women and children, Rafferty resigned. In short order, she drew together a group, soon known as the Women’s Col-lective, who tirelessly gathered resources to open such a shelter on Crown Street.

Paula Sasso, who spoke at the Spring-Spectacular event in April, was a Holy Cross student in 1976 and one of the first volunteers. From the outset, Holy Cross faculty and staff have been deeply involved

in the cause of Abby’s House, and Holy Cross students have always taken overnight duty at the shelter several times a week.

In her remarks, Sasso reflected upon a moment at breakfast that first summer as she sat listening to a resident’s story.

“I thought, ‘This could be my mother,’ ” she recalled. “It was a ‘there but for the grace of God’ moment.”

Over time and as a result of consistent, widespread grass-roots support and committed staff, friends and volunteers, Abby’s House has become the city’s largest provider of

affordable housing geared toward the needs of women and children.

The original nine-bed shelter remains central to the mission. But the agency now serves 78 women and children in a total of four properties, including a 16-bed house and a family house on Crown Hill as well as a residence with 54 singles (shared bath and kitchen) at 52 High St., also the site for staff offices.

Guests in the latter three houses pay a nominal monthly rent. Over half of Abby’s guests are working, while some others receive SSI or SSDI and cannot afford to live elsewhere.

Dignity and the sense of home is paramount wherever one stays, with “a lovely bed-room like something that you grew up in,” says Rafferty.

Advocacy is a critical part of the triad, along with shelter

and affordable housing. Two advocates on staff work with all of Abby’s House guests to help them secure permanent housing as well as the variety of services and support they need to reclaim and resume their lives.

All financial support, more-over, comes entirely from private rather than public sources, including donations, fundraising by and on behalf of Abby’s House, bequests and grants. Fully 82.5 percent of all donations go directly to programming. Every year, the agency tries to raise $20,000 for the Annette Rafferty Survive to Thrive Fund, an emergency fund to help indi-vidual women.

The ability of Abby’s House to be effective is even more remarkable when one considers the enormous role that volun-teers have always and continue


CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFTBefore the fashion show, past president Karen Nunley is assisted by Sandra Lian, far left, Ellen MacDonough and Karen Walsh.Martha Miller sips from her cup of tea.Volunteers Pam Hanson and Ellen MacDonough sit “backstage” before the show.Executive director Stephanie Page and founder Annette Rafferty at Abby’s House.



to play in its day-to-day operations.

Executive Director Stephanie Page notes that, in 2015, volun-teers provided $513,365 worth of help in 18,525 hours. They staff the Thrift Shop and take overnight shifts at the shelter. The shelves of the food pantry, at 52 High St., are kept full thanks to frequent donations.

Volunteers and, occasionally, staff members, offer workshops and programs at the Women’s Center at 52 High St. The center may appear to be only a large community room, but it is a nucleus of support and resources for more than 200 women, mostly current and past housing and shelter guests.

Workshops focus on edu-cation, skill building, social interaction, literacy and financial counseling. Women can receive transportation to medical appointments, food delivery if they cannot afford

or access food and parent-ing support — especially for households headed by women. Abby’s House pays for women to access the YWCA at Salem Square.

At the moment, “the Women’s Center allows us to stay connected to the women who have come to Abby’s in the past,” says Page. “In the future, we hope we can offer support to other women as well.”

Yet everyone who works for or on behalf of Abby’s would be delighted to see the issues of homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking evaporate, and Abby’s House could close its doors forever.

The unfortunate reality is that those doors will remain open, just as long as they pos-sibly can.

According to the Mas-sachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, the number of individuals without homes has

doubled since 1990. In January/February 2015, 21,135 people were experiencing homeless-ness in Massachusetts.

At the onset of January 2016, the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance tallied more than 1,500 people experienc-ing homelessness in Worcester County.

“There was a need (when we started) and there still is; oth-erwise we would be not here,” says Rafferty. “It’s always going to be here.”

To describe the force that is Annette Rafferty as simply the founder of Abby’s House is to understate the iconic role she has played in Greater Worces-ter. For decades, she has been a determined, effective voice for women and children across the spectrum of need.

Reflecting on how homeless-ness and the vulnerability of women have evolved over the past decades, she recalls the

moment that Abby’s House made a deliberate decision to go beyond shelter work to incor-porate affordable housing.

“From my perspective, we started this at Abby’s in 1976 with the naïveté that the city, the state and the government would not tolerate having women and children, or women without children, on the streets,” she says.

During the Reagan adminis-tration, however, “that bubble burst when all the HUD funds were scuttled for affordable housing.”

In response, the Abby’s House board, then called a collective, realized that they had to choose between “closing completely or staying for the long haul.” Voting to remain, it took 10 years to develop the grass-roots financial support necessary “to see ourselves going beyond shelter to afford-able housing so that we would have places for the women to transition once they were stabilized at the shelter,” Rafferty says.

It was at that point that the agency purchased and reno-vated a second home to serve as its initial long-term residence.

Rafferty recalls, “We were inspired by Kip Tiernan (founder of Rosie’s Place in Boston), who said if we just stayed with sheltering people, we would be institutionaliz-ing homelessness and become known as the guardians of the institution of homelessness.”

In this model, Abby’s House expanded into advocating with women “to find finances that they could tap into, jobs that they could get, and it worked.”

Critical to the process are the two advocates who work most closely with the women, with and without children, who come to Abby’s in search of help.

Parlee Jones, who has been at Abby’s for 10 years, is the

Shelter advocate Parlee Jones talks with a 52-year-old disabled resident who was homeless before fi nding a room at Abby’s House.



shelter advocate, and Katrina McNa-mara, a 14-year veteran, is the housing advocate. Their first task is to facilitate admissions to Abby’s shelter and hous-ing options, but they continue to mentor individual women as they adjust to communal living and navigate the steps necessary to find employment, counsel-ing or more permanent housing.

In addition, if Abby’s House has no room or is not the right answer for a particular woman, Jones and McNa-mara search for alternative solutions elsewhere by connecting her with and making referrals to the city’s numerous social service agencies.

The current stay at the Abby’s House shelter is from 60 to 90 days, but Jones notes that “it’s a very light cap. If we can still see light at the end of the tunnel, even though the women can’t see it sometimes, if we can see it, we can extend the conversation if they’re doing what they need to do to move forward.”

Every woman who comes through the door, whether for the shelter or for housing, must fill out an application with community housing resources.

However, with the current wait-ing list with the Worcester Housing Authority between five and 10 years — and some areas no longer accepting applications at all — the transition can be interminable.

It’s far more difficult today than it was 30 years ago, says Rafferty. “Movement out of shelter, out of an organization like ours into indepen-dence, has slowed down because no one is making affordable housing a priority. That scuttling of the HUD fund back in the 1980s set a trend that has never been reversed.”

Every day, Jones and McNamara encounter the demoralizing, often dan-gerous issues that can turn a woman’s life upside down, often suddenly and without warning: domestic violence, sexual assault, substance abuse, death of a partner or breadwinner. They have been priced out of the housing market, evicted.

In the mid-1970s, Abby’s House emerged as mental health facilities were being reduced and eliminated. Deinstitutionalization left many former patients without services and unprepared to live on their own.



Homelessness became a pervasive problem across the country.

Rafferty remembers that, in the wake of the deinstitutionalization of Worces-ter State Hospital, “women were turned out into the streets with little prepara-tion in how to handle money, where to go, how not to be prey to someone who’s waiting out there to just get your money. They were so vulnerable.”

Today, however, “we’re seeing more women with drug addictions, mental health problems and also, too, women who have lost their jobs in that 50-plus age group where it’s very hard for them to get jobs where they will earn decent money and have health insurance, too,” says McNamara. “We’re seeing people who are getting part-time jobs, but even if they’re working so hard, they still cannot make it on their own.”

Abby’s House does not take women who are actively drugging or drinking, but it can be a safe place for them as they work on recovery.

In addition, human trafficking is on the rise. McNamara describes a woman who, when she came to Abby’s House for help, had a gap of several years in her account of her life.

She was eventually able to admit that she had escaped from a human traffick-ing ring. With gentle support, Abby’s House helped her to get past some of her deep-seated fears and to reconnect with her family, who had presumed that she was dead.

In recent years, Abby’s House has also been involved in helping women reunify with children who have been in foster care by offering a place for visita-tion or an overnight. Women in that situation cannot live in family shelters because their children are not with them, and it is difficult to take children into a regular shelter situation.

This year, the agency has embarked on a capital campaign intended to update and upgrade 52 High St. Major systems will be overhauled and, among other changes, kitchens will be added to each floor for greater convenience for the residents.

Rafferty retired from Abby’s House in July, but she is also heading the campaign.

McKone says, “This renovation will really move things forward and change the feel in a good, positive way. It’s an exciting time for Abby’s.”

abby’s photography by christine hochkeppel by laura … · all of abby’s house guests to help...

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