Harbor Homes of Martha’s Vineyard, the Island’s homelessness prevention nonprofit, has ended its agreement to purchase 112 Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs for an overnight winter shelter.

Currently undeveloped beyond a basement, the lot is next door to the new home of the Island Food Pantry. Harbor Homes announced the purchase agreement last summer, but its plan for a shelter next door to the food pantry went no further than the Oak Bluffs wastewater commission.

“Unfortunately, the town of Oak Bluffs denied our wastewater application,” Harbor Homes executive director Brian Morris told the Gazette this week by email. 

According to meeting minutes from August, some commissioners worried that a shelter would be taxing on the town's wastewater infrastructure. 

As a result, Mr. Morris wrote, the nonprofit was forced to terminate its agreement to buy the Dukes County avenue property.

“We are currently exploring several options for alternative locations,” he added.

This is the second time Harbor Homes has scuttled plans for a new shelter. In October 2023, the nonprofit withdrew plans for a winter shelter on Hudson avenue in Oak Bluffs, following neighbor pushback. 

The search for a permanent shelter location is taking on more urgency because the current location, which opens next month at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, is in a building scheduled for demolition early next year as part of campus modernization at the longstanding social services agency.

Harbor Homes subleases the space from MVCS with permission from the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee. 

Last winter was the busiest in shelter history, Harbor Homes reported earlier this year: A total of 54 individual Islanders used the shelter for at least one night between Nov. 1 and April 20, up from fewer than 40 individual guests during the 2022–2023 shelter season. 

More than half of last winter’s guests were working Islanders who did not earn enough to afford a place to live, shelter manager Lisa Belcastro told the Gazette closing day in April.

In addition to the winter shelter, Harbor Homes also owns and runs two congregate homes for people moving out of homelessness: a residence for men in Vineyard Haven and one for women in Oak Bluffs.