Twenty years ago, homeless prevention advocates came forward with a plan to end homelessness on the Cape. CAI documented their effort in a series called Two Cape Cods: Hidden Poverty on the Cape and Islands. It was a bold and optimistic plan. But when revisiting the plan in a new reporting series 20 years later, we found that advocates were not anticipating a global pandemic.
Tammie Docekal fell in love with Cape Cod when she was young. Compared to her hometown on the North Shore, there was a relaxed feel to the Cape that suited her.
“I never thought once that I would leave,” Docekal said, who is now in her mid 60s. “It’s my home and it’s absolutely the only place I’ve ever felt peaceful.”
Docekal would move to Mashpee where she lived with her husband for two decades.
But in recent years, her world flipped upside down.
Just before the pandemic, her mother got sick, so she traveled to Texas to help her, while continuing her work remotely.
While she was away, her husband called and told her that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. He died a week later.
Docekal also didn’t know at the time that her husband had stopped paying the mortgage on their home.
“I couldn’t catch up,” Docekal told CAI in a recent interview. “Between him passing away and the mortgage being behind, I became homeless. And at that time, COVID had just hit so resources were very few and far. Very few. So I ended up living in my car.”
Since the pandemic, Docekal’s experience has become increasingly more common. The housing market boomed after the pandemic, which fueled higher rents and housing costs; rentals became harder to find as homeowners sold their properties while looking to cash in on the high property values.
Hard data on the homeless population is imperfect, but before the pandemic, Housing Assistance — the major provider for assistance in the region — had about 175 clients they considered homeless across the Cape. This past year, that jumped to nearly 700.
Combined with unexpected life events, like a sudden illness or death in a family, more and more people are falling into homelessness.
Not just in Hyannis but across the Cape, residents are living in tents in the small strips of forest bordering major commercial areas, in the backyards and driveways of an acquaintance, or inside cars and vans in parking lots scattered around the region.
Statistics show that since the pandemic, the number of Cape residents experiencing homelessness has more than doubled.
“There’s a trend here that this isn’t just a couple of people across the Cape, but it turned into almost a tidal wave,” said Cassi Danzl, COO of the Cape nonprofit, Housing Assistance. “And it really hasn’t stopped.”
Hard data on the homeless population is imperfect, but before the pandemic, Housing Assistance — the major provider for assistance in the region — had about 175 clients they considered homeless across the Cape.
This past year, that jumped to nearly 700.
Housing Assistance — which uses a combination of federal, state, and private funding to provide aid — is hardly alone in reporting a rise in homelessness.
From Barnstable County officials to nonprofits across the region — like Belonging to Each Other in Falmouth — all have reported a rise in housing insecurity.
The county Human Services Department leads an annual winter count that provides an estimate of people unsheltered on the Cape and the Islands. It’s a federal program called the Point in Time Count, and the county has data going back to 2012, that shows on average in the years prior to the pandemic, about 360 people experienced homelessness on the Cape and Islands. It was mostly level for the nearly 20 years prior.
But that jumped to 397 in 2022, then 427 in 2023, and then 568 individuals in 2024 — the highest number ever recorded in the Cape and Island’s count.
Officials say there are flaws to this count — it’s one night of the year when volunteers and others walk the streets of the region looking for individuals. Not everyone — like someone living in a relative’s backyard or maybe in the woods — is necessarily counted because they might not be found. Nor do they report someone who may be homeless for 364 days of the year, but who happened to find housing the night of the actual count.
But still, advocates say the Point in Time provides good context and can show trends.
What happened?
Officials point to a lack of available housing, not just the cost, for the climb in homelessness.
The rental vacancy rate, which is used as a way of judging the health of a housing market, has dropped locally since the pandemic. The Cape Cod Commission reports that pre-pandemic, the vacancy rate was about 6.5%. In 2024, the latest data available, it dropped to about 4.5%. For contrast, the national vacancy rate was around 7% in 2026, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
At the same time, more residents escaped to the Cape during the pandemic. According to the Commission, about 40% of the Cape’s housing units were considered seasonal prior to the pandemic; the latest stats from 2024 show that dropped to about 33 percent.
Rising costs are also prohibitive. Advocates interviewed for this story say that many Cape residents prior to the pandemic had been living in rentals for many years, where they paid lower rates with gradual increases. With COVID, they suddenly found themselves forced to compete in a more expensive housing market as landlords took advantage of rising prices and sold their properties.
Danzl said it was not uncommon for clients whose annual rent went up by only $50 or $100 to suddenly be asked to pay $800 more during the pandemic housing boom.
That’s what happened to Stephen P., a resident of Falmouth since the 1980s. He requested CAI not use his last name for privacy. Stephen said he worked for the Steamship Authority for 8 years, as well as the town of Falmouth and other odd jobs, before working as an unlicensed home-health aid taking care of elderly residents.
Stephen said that he was living in an apartment off Main Street in Falmouth when the pandemic hit. His landlord sold the property. He initially fought his eviction, but he remembers looking for housing at the time but with no luck.
“Back in the day, you could look in the newspaper and you could pick out a room,” he said. That wasn’t the case during the pandemic. There were no options, especially one that would be affordable with his $900 a month in Social Security.
“It's extremely rare I meet someone from off of Cape or even out of state. Ninety-nine percent of clients are from here."
Stephen said that he and several of his roommates were eventually forced out.
At 65 and with nowhere else to go, he started living out of his car. At first he stayed in parking lots in Falmouth, but says he was asked to leave by local authorities, so he drove over the bridge daily to the park-and-ride at the Sagamore Bridge.
He also lost his job as an aid because of COVID.
“So here I was, at 65, living in my car with winter approaching,” Stephen said. “It was the saddest moment of my life.” He would return to Falmouth to take showers at a local gym, where he had a membership.
Reaching those in need
For workers in the field, Stephen’s story is not uncommon among people looking for housing.
"Folks are elders, they are vastly white people, and they are local,” said Stephane Ruault, an outreach specialist with Housing Assistance. “It's extremely rare I meet someone from off of Cape or even out of state. Ninety-nine percent of clients are from here." He also said that many are working individuals.
Housing Assistance has a team of outreach specialists covering the whole Cape. Ruault covers the Upper Cape area and says he has about 60 clients, all who are homeless, and the vast majority from Falmouth – whether living in the woods, a parking lot or on a friend or relative’s couch, backyard, or driveway.
I sat down with Ruault on a Tuesday in June inside a cafeteria at St. Barnabas Church in Falmouth — with an expansive view of Nantucket Sound. On that day, the cafeteria was set up for a bi-weekly soup kitchen. It was filled with people of all ages, there for the free sloppy joes, clam chowder, and music.
Ruault had already met three new clients at the lunch, including a young couple living in a camper who just found out the wife was pregnant. While they lived in Bourne, the husband was working for a delivery company out of Middleborough. Ruault went through some basic information before adding the couple to his list of clients looking for stable housing.
The lunch was just one stop on his schedule.
“So today,” Ruault said, “I brought camping items to a couple who live in a tent, so I brought them a tarp, tick repellent, sleeping bags…”
And while Ruault has had success finding individuals shelter, he said that there simply isn’t enough housing.
“As soon as you house somebody, and that can take two years, three other people come and they are looking for the same thing. So it’s a marathon.”
A new trend
With the growing homeless population, advocates and other officials said they are also seeing a trend of older residents becoming homeless.
Of the roughly 700 Housing Assistance total clients last year, 45% were over the age of 55. That’s an increase from their clientele from before the pandemic when 38% were over 55.
Dan Gray, with the Barnstable County human services who helps coordinate services for the region, is part of a new task force made up of providers, municipalities and other agencies. The task force formed last year with the goal of addressing senior homelessness. It originated after staff at local councils on aging started reporting a newer request from their senior clients, that they didn’t know how to address.
“We just have more people coming into our councils on aging saying, ‘I have to make a decision between heat and food. I don’t know how I’m going to pay taxes. I have been living in my car’” Gray said.
The task force is expected to bring forward a Cape-wide plan in the coming months. Aside from finding new revenue sources to help the senior homeless population, and getting a deeper understanding of how big the issue is on the Cape, they are also looking at new programs aimed at creating new housing.
For Gray, a big piece of that will likely mean making use of existing but vacant space on the Cape, such as an empty apartment or room because developable and available land on Cape is scarce.
“How can we find innovative solutions to be able to match those potentially empty bedrooms with people that may need a bed to stay in,” Gray said.
Gray said the hope is also to encourage those that need help to get help, which can be difficult with the taboo surrounding homelessness.
The county program manager said they will be leaning on past successes as they bring a plan forward. Prior to the pandemic, Gray said that there was a rise in youth homelessness, partially from LGBTQ plus youth that may have been kicked out of their homes. He said they developed a program that matches youth with homeowners on the Cape that have an empty room. The homeowner receives a monthly payment, and, if they’re looking for it, some company. Gray envisions something similar could work to house seniors.
“It is an amazing moment, when you have no hope at all, no help at all, and then they suddenly appear like angels.”
A life changed
While the housing shortages and rising costs paint a dire picture, there are successes. Both Stephen P and Tammi Docekal in Falmouth were able to find housing through the local nonprofit, Belonging to Each. The group provides temporary shelter while residents look for more permanent housing.
For Stephen, he lived for six months in his car before he found the nonprofit. He eventually found a permanent apartment in a complex called Falmouth Apartments, where at 70, he pays a portion of his Social Security benefits for housing.
Docekal also found an apartment in the same complex last year, after spending nearly two years of her life living out of her car. She also met an outreach worker with Belonging to Each Other and spent four months in housing provided by the nonprofit.
She said those four months were exactly what she needed to ground herself after being homeless.
Her studio apartment now is surrounded by other residents her age, and she is grateful. She still works multiple jobs, including readying homes for summer rentals.
She chokes up when she talks about getting the keys to her own apartment after the lowest point in her life.
“It is an amazing moment, when you have no hope at all, no help at all, and then they suddenly appear like angels,” she said of the outreach worker she met. “It’s overwhelming. I have a picture of it because it changed my life.”
For Docekal, she hopes that by telling her story, she’ll inspire less judgement and more kindness. She learned that from her own experience and says that she still brings food and other needs to those she met that are continuing to live in their cars while they struggle with housing insecurity.
“I hope this opens up people’s eyes to worlds they aren’t familiar with,” she said. “And to be understanding and to be kind, because they never know what anyone’s story is. Just be kind to people because it makes a big difference.”
For housing advocates and service providers, Docekal’s story is one of success. But they continue to push for more successes and more affordable housing.
