A 445-unit apartment complex proposed at 819 Beacon St. would include 50 patient family residences owned and operated by Boston Children’s Hospital, one of several local hospitals seeking new temporary housing options.

Ever-rising hotel and apartment rates are challenging Boston hospitals to rethink how they provide temporary housing for patients and their families. 

Spaulding Rehabilitation Center has begun a $10 million fundraising campaign to lease up to 10 apartments near its Charlestown property for outpatient housing. Boston Children’s Hospital is so pressed for short-term housing that it’s selling a parking lot in the Fenway to developer Scape – with the requirement that 50 apartments in a 545-unit project be set aside for patient families. 

And Shriners Hospitals for Children is putting out a call to landlords who are willing to discuss potential housing partnerships. The 30-bed hospital specializes in care of pediatric burn patients, who require follow-up treatment on scar tissue as they mature. 

“What I didn’t realize when I came here was: we take care of these kids for their entire lives,” said Eileen Skinner, who was named administrator of Shriner’s in 2017. “We have to do procedures that go on until they’re 21 and we’re really committed to supporting these families through that entire course of care.” 

Corporate Housing Fills Need 

Boston’s medical cluster attracts a global patient population that generates demand for off-site accommodations for families, as well as patient housing during rehab and follow-up treatments following discharge. Both the city’s apartment rents and hotel rates rank among the nation’s highest: average daily room rates at Boston and Cambridge hotels topped $316 during the first 10 months of 2019, according to data from CBRE Hotels Advisory group. And a January report by Moody’s placed average apartments rents at over $2,300 per month, fourth-highest in the U.S. 

Shriner’s, the only verified pediatric burn center in New England, has treated patients from 72 countries and pays for short-term food, transportation and housing costs for families who live outside Greater Boston, Skinner said. Monthly housing costs range from $1,500 to $3,000 depending upon location, she said. 

Like other hospitals, Shriner’s taps into a mixture of apartments, hotels and small charitable housing facilities such as the 11-bed Philoxenia House in Brookline, which the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston makes available to international patients. The hospital has set up a task force to study housing options and is considering forming new agreements with apartment landlords to control costs. 

While patients at Boston-area hospitals have their own beds, their families are challenged to find accommodations in the region’s expensive hotel and housing market.

“Rents are going up unpredictably – 9 to 12 percent increases – and we’re on a fixed budget,” she said. 

Many hotels located near hospital clusters such as the Longwood Medical Area offer discounts for patient families, averaging 15 to 20 percent, hospital administrators say. 

Corporate housing providers that lease blocks of apartments and rent them on a short-term basis are another option. Most of the city’s largest hospitals refer families to operators such as Furnished Quarters, which has units in 17 Boston and Cambridge apartment buildings. The company requires a minimum stay of 30 days but has hosted patients for as long as a year, Executive Vice President Annette Clement said. 

In addition to lower rates than hotels, Furnished Quarters apartments enable families to save money on out-of-pocket costs because they’re equipped with kitchen and laundry facilities. 

“When these patients come in, it’s a really stressful time for them and it’s also an unexpected expense, so it can be really difficult,” Clement said. 

An ‘Opportunistic’ Partnership in the Fenway 

Boston Children’s Hospital’s need for more patient family housing and a British developer’s search for development sites in the Fenway converged at 819 Beacon St. The hospital obtained approval in 2013 for an office building on the parking lot but did not move forward with the project after consolidating office space at 401 Park Drive, said Lisa Hogarty, Children’s senior vice president of real estate and development. In 2019, Scape approached the hospital about acquiring the building site. 

“As with anything in real estate, it’s opportunistic,” Hogarty said. “In this case, nothing presented itself until Scape came to us to talk about this particular location.” 

After months of discussion, the two sides agreed to include 50 units of patient family housing in a podium section of the development, which will be acquired as a condominium by Children’s and operated on a nonprofit basis, Hogarty said. The project is under Boston Planning & Development Agency review. 

Steve Adams

The hospital currently offers housing in a pair of facilities in Boston and Brookline totaling 35 units, with an average length of stay of six days, Hogarty said. Those properties average 90 percent occupancy. 

Spaulding Rehab has unique requirements for off-campus patient housing because of accessibility requirements, said Robert McCall, senior vice president of network development and inpatient rehabilitation. The hospital has relied heavily on a pair of nearby hotels and limits patients’ out-of-pocket costs to $50 per night, but is shifting its strategy toward leasing its own apartments in Charlestown, McCall said. 

In early February, a spinal injury patient moved into a condo that Spaulding leased near its campus after receiving a donation. Spaulding is in the midst of a $10 million “Supportive Surroundings” fundraising campaign which would enable it to provide up to 10 apartments on a sustaining basis, McCall said. The apartments are needed for out-of-state patients along with local residents who need temporary accommodations until their homes are made handicap-accessible, he said. 

“In New England, housing and real estate are expensive, and getting someone in rehab into a three-decker apartment with small doorways and inaccessible bathrooms doesn’t line up well at all,” McCall said. “It’s an enormous problem that rehab hospitals are seeing.”