A new $7 million shelter in Lowell will give 50 women a stable place to stay, two meals a day and help finding permanent housing, as Massachusetts sees more older women without homes. Lowell-based nonprofit Community Teamwork Inc. (CTI) held a ribbon cutting on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, and the shelter is expected to take its first residents in the coming weeks, GBH News reported on Oct. 26.
What the new Lowell women’s shelter offers
The facility will serve adult women 18 and older who need a safe place to stay but don’t qualify for family shelters or don’t feel safe in co-ed settings. Unlike overnight shelters, where people often have to line up each day for a bed, residents will be able to stay during the day while they work with case managers, apply for housing and handle medical and benefits paperwork.
“It’s really hard to do a job interview if you’re hungry, it’s hard to fall asleep when you’re hungry,” Sean Wilson, CTI’s vice president of homeless services, told GBH.
“A lot of shelters, you have to line up every day and there’s uncertainty if you’re going to get a bed that night,” said Katelynn Travers, CTI’s director of individual homeless services.
How the shelter was funded
The City of Lowell put in about $1 million in initial funding from its federal American Rescue Plan Act money, which allowed the purchase of the building. CTI renovated it. Another $3 million came from corporate and private donors, and CTI says a revolving loan covers the rest, according to GBH.
Mayor Erik Gitschier said at the event that the city needs temporary housing with “wraparound services” for women. He told GBH that Lowell draws people from surrounding communities because of the services it offers. “We’ve had people giving people train vouchers to come to Lowell. We’ve had people giving people police rides down to our transitional shelter because we have those services and their communities don’t have it,” Gitschier said.
U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, whose district includes Lowell, attended the ribbon cutting along with CTI staff and state and local officials.
Who will live there
Many of the first residents are moving from a state-funded hotel shelter in Chelmsford that is closing as Massachusetts winds down its use of hotels and motels as emergency housing, GBH reported. One of them, a 58-year-old woman identified only as Kim, told GBH she became homeless after her partner of more than three decades died and she could no longer afford rent. She uses a walker and receives disability benefits. “It’s a horrible feeling to be displaced,” she said.
Rising homelessness among older women
Advocates quoted by GBH said older women are one of the fastest-growing groups of people without housing. Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, said a divorce or the death of a partner can push women who spent years caring for children or parents into homelessness, and that public benefits are often not enough to rent or share an apartment.
Women experienced homelessness in larger numbers than men in Massachusetts in 2023 and 2024, according to an analysis by the National Alliance to End Homelessness cited by GBH. The same analysis found that emergency shelters in Lowell and nearby communities have room for only 43% of the people experiencing homelessness there.
Federal data on the issue may get harder to track. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Point-in-Time count began reporting gender breakdowns in recent years, but in 2025 the department removed the gender category, GBH reported. A HUD spokesperson told GBH the agency replaced it with “sex,” and it is not yet clear whether the next count will report women separately. Judith Gonyea, a Boston University School of Social Work professor who studies homelessness among women, told GBH: “If we don’t track things, then how do we know there’s a problem?”
Getting help
People in the Lowell area looking for shelter or housing help can contact Community Teamwork or the state’s emergency assistance programs. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities lists shelter and housing resources statewide.
For more coverage from the Merrimack Valley, see our Lowell local news and city guide and the Local Towns hub. For Boston-area housing news, see our report on the Chelsea Market Basket housing plan.
Sources
- GBH News, “Older women face rising homelessness. A new Lowell shelter offers a fresh start,” Oct. 26, 2026
- Community Teamwork Inc.
- National Alliance to End Homelessness
Additional sources
- Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities
- HUD Exchange, Point-in-Time count and Housing Inventory Count
- City of Lowell
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