Residents and former staff of three shelters operated by Bay Cove Human Services in Cambridge alleged — in a public meeting, messages to city officials, and interviews with The Crimson — that staff members berated residents and shelters persistently harbored unsanitary conditions.

The complaints came to a head at an Oct. 23, 2024, meeting of the City Council’s Human Services and Veterans Committee, when five residents shared stories of mistreatment. But some former staff say problems have stretched back years.

The allegations are documented in more than 500 pages of correspondence between residents, Bay Cove staff, and city officials over the past 10 months, acquired by The Crimson through a public records request.

At the hearing and in conversations with The Crimson, more than 10 current and former residents and staff of Bay Cove shelters said that staff yelled at residents, sanitary facilities were often inaccessible, and some grievances were not addressed promptly when residents filed them.

Records show that city staff corresponded regularly over the past year to address complaints of poor conditions in the shelters — all three of which are funded by the city.

In a partially redacted August 2024 email from The Crimson’s records request, Mayor E. Denise Simmons wrote to Bay Cove senior program director Maureen Cunningham that she had repeatedly been notified of “bad experiences” involving residents and shelter staff.

“I do not know [redacted] personally and cannot verify how accurate his relaying of these events is but I am concerned that these matters continue to be brought to my office,” she wrote.

In a statement to The Crimson, Simmons wrote that she had received “numerous complaints” from Bay Cove residents.

The complaints spanned “from reports of stolen personal belongings — including critical items like phones and medications — to inconsistent enforcement of shelter rules, unresponsive or indifferent staff, unclear and inconsistent grievance procedures, and, most troublingly, residents feeling unsafe due to bullying and physical assaults from other shelter residents,” according to Simmons.

Though she wrote that such issues were not unique to Bay Cove, Simmons described them as unacceptable.

“No matter the obstacles, every individual in these shelters deserves fairness, security, and respect,” she wrote. “At this moment, I am not convinced that Bay Cove has met that standard.”

During the October meeting, councilors committed to monitoring the allegations before adjourning.

Bay Cove chief development officer Arlene Fortunato wrote in a statement to The Crimson that staff “strive to provide a safe and welcoming shelter for all guests,” but noted that the organization does not disclose “personal information of any kind related to persons served.”

“We cannot dispute that you have been told what you report,” she wrote, but “we do dispute that what you have been told accurately reflects the general conditions and operations of the shelter.”

But residents maintained that Bay Cove staff consistently failed to live up to the shelter’s internal procedures and the conduct expectations outlined on its website.

“They should be left up to a higher standard than the way they’re acting,” said Bay Cove resident Jeramy Dalpe.

Allegations of Hostility

Bay Cove, which now manages three low-threshold shelters in Cambridge, first moved into the city in 2014. Collectively, the shelters receive millions of dollars from the city annually, and Cambridge officials meet regularly with Bay Cove staff to discuss shelter operations — including responses to resident complaints.

According to the emails released in the public records request, city officials repeatedly fielded grievances about poor conditions and verbal abuse at various Cambridge Bay Cove shelters.

Hannah Daniel — a program manager for the city’s Multi-Service Center — wrote in an April 25, 2024, email to Department of Human Services Program planning and development manager Elizabeth Mengers Magargee and other officials that “clients are reporting being woken up around 5am and verbally abused until they leave earlier than the 7am closing time.”

In response to a request for comment, Magargee acknowledged that she and Daniel had received complaints. She wrote that DHSP and MSC staff “have responded to complaints in a timely and empathetic manner” but often were not able to bring complainants’ names to Bay Cove, since many preferred to remain anonymous.

“A challenge in respecting such requests is that this anonymity can make it difficult for BayCove to investigate specific incidents without disclosing details of the persons involved,” she added.

And over the summer, a former Bay Cove resident sent the City Council and City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 an email alleging “bullying, baiting, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, and intimidation by the directors.”

“I had also been subject to severe harassment, manipulation, threats, theft, and intimidation, all by staff members,” he wrote. “While some of the staff members are nice and kind, the management has been very toxic.”

Thomas R. Brown, who formerly oversaw Bay Cove’s peer specialist program across the region, said staff were often hostile to residents — a pattern he said he noticed since the beginning of his time with the nonprofit in 2006, during which he visited shelters across southeastern Massachusetts.

“These staff people hated the residents so much that they were just furious with them at all times,” Brown said in a November interview. “These people who are supposed to be helped by this organization are having their trauma repeated again in a place that is meant to be safe for them.”

Brown worked for Bay Cove for nearly 14 years before retiring in 2019.

Another Bay Cove resident alleged that a staff member told residents if they called the police or ambulance, they would be “kicked out from the shelter and back to the street,” even if other residents experienced theft or injury. The resident, whose name was redacted in the records received by The Crimson, wrote to city staff in June 2024 to complain.

In the October hearing of the Human Services and Veterans Committee, five residents recounted similar experiences, alleging that staff members barred them from calling emergency services.

Other current and former residents, however, said they did not experience such incidents. Multiple Bay Cove staff members affirmed that the shelter maintains no such policy.

Cambridge spokesperson Jeremy C. Warnick wrote in a statement that the city was “looking into” the complaints raised at the October hearing and is “following up with Bay Cove to address the broad issues cited related to staff training and grievance procedures.”

“We work closely with the agency’s leadership to respond to complaints and strive to continuously improve operations and outcomes for people in crisis,” Warnick wrote.

Residents also complained about poor physical conditions at Bay Cove. Emails show staff members corresponding about lice outbreaks across the Cambridge shelters, as well as inaccessible showers and laundry machines.

City staff repeatedly flagged lice as a concern at Bay Cove’s Winter Warming Center in April, which Daniel, the Multi-Service Center program manager, attributing the pests to “the lack of showers and not washing the blankets,” according to public records obtained by The Crimson. The shelter was later fumigated as a result.

John C. Mulhern, a current resident of Bay Cove’s 240 Albany St. said that Bay Cove never addressed the broken showers and laundry machines, and reports of lice throughout the women’s floor of the Emergency Services Center at 240 Albany St. persisted from at least April 2024 through January 2025.

“The reason why they had a bug issue was because there’s candy and coffee and everything brought into the dorm,” Mulhern said. “And the staff goes in and does a half-hour daily check every time, and they don’t notice that.”

“Beyond obtuse, it’s oblivious,” he added.

‘You Get So Frustrated’

Bay Cove’s shelters offer residents a grievance form to share their concerns with staff. But residents say the process is not as easy as it seems.

The complaint form is given to residents upon entry into Bay Cove-operated shelters. Under the organization’s official grievance procedures, grievances are sent to Bay Cove’s human rights or compliance teams, who schedule a meeting with the complainant within five days of the filing and issue “corrective action” in the 10 business days following the meeting.

Some residents said the process could be a dead end.

In emails with city staff, two residents alleged that grievance forms were often thrown in the trash instead of addressed by staff. Dorothy Borkiewicz, who worked for Bay Cove in multiple roles between 2005 and 2018, said that when residents did file grievances, they were often “sweeped under the rug.”

Bay Cove’s grievance policy points residents to external human rights managers if they are not satisfied with the handling of their grievance. But Mulhern, the 240 Albany St. resident, said his attempts to contact offsite staff were met with silence.

“I called over 50 times over the course of several weeks with no response at all. I left several, several voicemails. I even went down there in person and was told that there’s no one available to speak with you,” Mulhern said.

“After a while you get so frustrated you don’t want to try anymore,” he added.

In an email to The Crimson, Bay Cove’s Chief Development Official Arlene Fortunado wrote that the non-profit had a “clear grievance process in place, and respond quickly to address actionable complaints.”

“We take all grievances seriously and are committed to quick and satisfactory resolutions. When we receive actionable grievances, ones that include enough information to allow us to act, we take action,” Fortunado wrote.

Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern — who chairs the City Council’s Human Services and Veterans Committee — said that “the system is not set up in a way that leads to more success” in a November interview with The Crimson.

“You have a really hard time finding people who will want to work in these programs or these facilities. It’s often hard to find people who have more extensive experience,” McGovern said.

Despite what he described as Bay Cove’s structural issues, McGovern said he saw a motivation to “improve and to better serve their clients” in conversations between the organization and the city.

“I think it’s very easy to be on the outside — whether you’re a politician or an advocate or a reporter — just sit on the outside and say, ‘Oh, I’m hearing all these things, and I’m going to form a judgment,’” McGovern said. “Unless you’re in those shoes and you’ve actually experienced it for yourself, you don't know for sure what's going on.”

“It’s very easy to sit on the outside and looking in,” he added.

‘A Good Provider, Not Perfect’

Bay Cove has worked with the city of Cambridge since 2014, when the organization — which has operated throughout the region for more than 50 years — helped bring existing shelter services in Cambridge back from the brink.

The Cambridge And Somerville Programs for Addiction Recovery, which operated in the city since 1970, was at risk of closing in 2014 due to repeated cuts in its state funding. Bay Cove then merged with CASPAR, preserving its original operations and expanding further through Cambridge.

Over the past 10 years, Bay Cove has expanded to three shelters across Cambridge — all of which have received funding from the city since 2017. Bay Cove has operated the Winter Warming Center since 2018 and opened a Temporary Wellness Center in 2020 to relieve overcrowding at 240 Albany St.

“These shelters provide support to guests with complex needs, including guests who many other shelters are unable to serve or who are actively in crisis,” wrote Warnick, the Cambridge spokesperson, in a Nov. 19 statement to The Crimson.

The city is the primary funder for the Winter Warming Center and Transitional Wellness Center — which received more than $480,000 and $2 million this fiscal year, respectively.

Though 240 Albany St. is primarily funded through the state, the city provides supplementary funding to support operational costs. Cambridge allocated $60,000 in federal funds to the site this fiscal year.

Beyond regular meetings between city and Bay Cove staff, some elected officials take it upon themself to support the shelters. McGovern, the vice mayor, meets with employees at 240 Albany St. weekly to address various issues regarding the shelter that have been brought to the city staff’s attention.

“The city doesn’t want to hire an organization to serve the city — and to be contracting with the city — that they don’t believe is going to do a good job,” McGovern said.

“I think overall, Bay Cove is a good provider, not perfect,” he added.

—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart or on Threads @laurel.shugart.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.