News
Caritas Cares
November 4, 2010
| For 25 years, Caritas Communities has been acquiring, improving, and preserving single-room occupancy housing for homeless veterans, the working poor, and people on fixed incomes. On Thursday, 500 of its supporters kicked up their heels at the Westin Boston Waterfront for its annual fundraiser gala. |
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| We snapped Caritas board chair Frank Capezzera, the Mullins Co.?s Joe Mullins, Helen Corcoran, and Caritas executive director Mark Winkeller. Helen?s late husband P. Leo Corcoran who founded the group passed away in April, so the evening was also a tribute to him. Caritas now houses 714 individuals in places like Boston, Brookline, Melrose and Quincy. Despite the unsteady economy, this year it raised $300k. |
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| The Yawkey Foundation's Maureen Bleday, here with Mark, is an attorney who started out as a Caritas donor, became chair of the board, and has stayed in touch since. She told us that regardless of economic conditions, there's always a need for the housing. In this economy, she says, some of the people who live in Caritas housing are working in the hotel where the event was held. In all of its houses, Caritas will keep rents affordable for at least 50 years, and provide professional property management and a live-in house manager. |
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| During the cocktail reception, we snapped Mark with Barkan Management's Janice Meaney and Bill DiSchino and Joe Mullins. This year, we learned, Caritas opened four new houses: one in Roxbury with 17-rooms, each with private bath; a 19-room house in New Bedford; a 16-room facility on Marlborough Street in the Back Bay; and a 48-unit house also in Boston that they plan to acquire before the end of the year. The P. Leo Corcoran tribute noted that he was a child of immigrants from County Roscommon. He worked as a firefighter then got into real estate to become a major developer of apartments on the East Coast. |
