CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A homeless shelter in Cambridge that opened during the Covid pandemic is scheduled to close its doors in June.
The 58-bed Transition Wellness Center (TWC) on Cambridge Street has been operating since 2020 on two floors of the Spaulding Hospital.
The center currently has about 20 unhoused residents living there.
But in a memo to the City Council from City Manager Yi-An Huang, he wrote that the center was always meant to be temporary housing that opened during the Covid crisis, and now that cuts have been made to federal funding, he recommended that the city needs to plan for the future by funding new programs used in part to support the homeless population.
At a City Council meeting on Monday, supporters of the center pleaded for more time to keep it open.
But city officials made clear keeping TWC open is not an option, and their focus needs to be on how to most effectively fund needed services including for the 20 or so people who will be losing their housing at the center.
In the memo, Huang said despite TWC closing, no other municipality in the state provides more support for the homeless than Cambridge does. "In terms of scope and depth of services and programs, Cambridge is doing more than any other municipality in the commonwealth," he wrote.
WBZ NewsRadio's James Rojas (@JamesRojasMMJ) reports.