Craig Raspberry looked around his new one-bedroom apartment in Lynn in a state of awe. He had just arrived, and there’s no furniture yet, but he has plans.
“So this is the living room, but I’m gonna make this into the bedroom,” he said, showing off his new home.
Standing here in the quiet of his own apartment the early November day, Craig couldn’t help but compare it to the chaos he’s grown accustomed to over his last year living in homeless shelters.
“There’s always somebody yelling. There’s always a TV going. There’s always something happening,” he remembers. “I feel like I’m just going to sit and wait for it, you know?”
He’d come a long way through a difficult year thanks, in part, to a financial boost. In August, Craig was chosen to be part of a pilot program called BAY-CASH, which is providing a guaranteed income of $1,200 a month to 15 homeless young adults in the Boston area.
GBH News has been checking in with Craig over the last several months to see what impact the program has had on his life.
Craig’s story begins in rural Texas, but that wasn’t his name as a child.
“I’ve been going by Craig since I was 16 and I took my mother’s maiden name,” he explained.
He was raised as a girl in a conservative Pentecostal family and he never felt like he fit in.
“Didn’t have much friends in school. Got picked on a lot,” he said. “Went to the hospital, a lot of mental health struggles, a lot of familial struggles. I didn’t get along with my family.”
They never accepted him for who he was, he said. One day, in September 2024, he reached a breaking point.
“I was wearing cargo shorts that day. You could see my legs, I hadn’t shaved and my dad basically cornered me and threatened me with conversion therapy because I’m a trans guy.”
He secretly packed a bag, and with the help of friends he’d met online, he made it to Boston, where he’s been living for the last year.
“The most stress-inducing era of my life is this one,” he said. “It has been so awful.”
Here in Boston, he was alone, had no money and no place to live. He spent many nights at a youth shelter in the basement of a Cambridge church. That program closes for months at a time, though, so he sometimes slept on the floor of an all-ages shelter, or just stayed outside.
One night, he woke up outside at 4 a.m. to sprinklers going off.
“All of my stuff was soaked and nowhere opened up until 8 a.m. on the weekend,” he said. “So I was shivering out there for four hours. Couldn’t feel my toes or my fingers or my arms.”
Living like that makes it impossible to get a job.
“If I can’t sleep or show up clean or in clean clothes or on time all the time, I’m not going to be able to keep that job.”
This last summer, though, Craig got an opportunity he’s hoping will turn his life around.
He was selected for a pilot program called BAY-CASH. For two years, 15 homeless young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are getting $1,200 a month. And the support extends beyond money and the two-year timeline.
“For two and a half years we still have the resources, like, advisors and the people who are a part of the program to still talk to them about next steps, to make sure that how we were living before BAY-CASH is and how we stay living even after BAY-CASH,” he said.
Guaranteed income programs are being tried around the country as a strategy for addressing poverty — including recent pilot programs in Cambridge, Chelsea and Salem.
While some question the efficiency or wisdom of just giving out cash without any conditions on how it’s used, a study this year by the Boston Foundation found that if you give low-income people cash without any limits on how it’s spent, it generally goes to support their immediate needs.
Despite guaranteed income projects showing some promising results, the challenge has been how to pay for them. Those recent programs were funded by the federal pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, but there are no new programs with that money. BAY-CASH is mostly funded with private philanthropy, along with some state funding.
The program was founded by Matt Aronson, who pulled together a number of local nonprofits to support it. Aronson said he’s hoping to show state leaders that BAY-CASH works.
“We think the way to make sure that this can reach all of the young people who need it in Massachusetts so that it persists over time is through state policy, state funding and state programming,” he said.
Aronson acknowledged that it can take a while to get a homeless young person into housing.
“While they’re looking, they’re experiencing homelessness,” he said. “They need to eat, they need a place to stay, they need a place to, you know, take care of all of their different medical and other needs that they have. With cash, we can get it to you tonight.”
In addition to the $1,200 a month, BAY-CASH offers a one-time payment of $3,000. In September, when Craig first spoke with GBH News, he was using that money to secure short-term housing.
“I was able to get an extended stay at a hostel and I have a shower facility, a bed to sleep in, I’ve got storage,” he said. “And I’ve been able to be more productive recently because I have somewhere to sleep and take my medicine and know that I can sleep safely throughout the night.”
He’d also been busy trying to find a job. Craig pulled out his phone and scrolled through a job search app. He had applied to 113 jobs up to that point. He felt sure one of them will come through eventually.
And once he has real housing, he says he plans to apply to Bunker Hill Community College.
“And then work my way up to, like, another four-year college to hopefully get my degree in social work,” he said.
“I’ve been able to be more productive recently because I have somewhere to sleep and take my medicine and know that I can sleep safely throughout the night.”Craig Raspberry, recipient of the BAY-CASH program
In October, about a month later, Craig hadn’t secured a long-term apartment yet, and between hostels and other bills, he’d run through all his money, including that $3,000 payment.
“Whenever you have to pay for a place to sleep every single night it adds up really, really fast,” he said.
Hostels are cheaper than hotels, but can still cost about $100 a night.
“There was no other alternative,” he said. “I really wish that there was.”
At that point, the youth shelter in Cambridge still hadn’t opened for the season, so he put in a request to sleep on the floor of an adult shelter.
“They said they’re gonna give me a call back at 8 o’clock to see if I got a bed.”
If that didn’t work out, his plan was to stay outdoors on a cold night.
“There’s a couple of stoops to buildings that are usually left alone — where if it rains, you’ll be covered,” he said. “There’s not as much wind, so it’s not as cold.”
Despite things looking pretty bleak that day, Craig had some hope. He’d had a few recent job interviews recently, and had a second one coming up at an optician’s office. The help he got from BAY-CASH made that possible, he said.
“The only reason I think that I secured those interviews is because I had a place to sleep and I had a place to go back to, and there was a place where my things were where I could hold them and I wouldn’t have to bring them all with me to the interview,” he said.
With help from the nonprofit Home For Little Wanderers, he’d also recently managed to get a housing voucher, and it sounded like an apartment could be available in Lynn.
“I’m going to view this apartment tomorrow bright and early,” he said, hoping it worked out in time for November. But that was still three weeks away.
Craig managed to get through those weeks by couch surfing. Then, on Halloween, he sent a text.
“I’m having a pretty bad day,” Craig wrote.
Somehow the landlord hadn’t gotten the voucher check, and it looked like he wasn’t going to be able to move in after all. Also, he didn’t get that job at the optician’s office. And he didn’t want to talk about it.
But for Craig, the last year has been a roller-coaster, and even roller-coasters have their ups.
Just three days later, he showed off that apartment in Lynn as his very own. Somehow, the voucher confusion got worked out, and for the first time in over a year, Craig had an actual home.
The voucher means once he does get a job, he’ll pay 30% of his income towards the rent. The $1,200 a month from the BAY-CASH program counts as a gift, so he doesn’t have to use it towards his voucher. The security of a place to stay and some money in his pocket would be enough to provide a little peace of mind after a very difficult year.
“I’m just gonna have to grow out of feeling like every building that I’m in is — it isn’t mine,” he said. “I guess I have to have a new relationship with where I’m staying.”
Craig said he knows how easy it is to fall back into homelessness. And there was something else he’d been struggling with — a thought he shared back in October. What if he gets a home, a job, some security and still isn’t happy?
“The reason I’m so fine with being miserable right now is because it’s kind of called for, but what happens when I’m still miserable and everything’s worked out for me?” he said on that chilly afternoon. “I still have to feel the way that I feel. I still don’t have any parents. I still really don’t have that many friends. I’ll be proud of myself, sure, but then I have to exist with myself for the rest of time.”
Earlier this week, Craig said he’s feeling better about that. In January, he’s starting a culinary training program that he’s confident will lead to a job — though he still plans to go to school for social work.
Right now, the basic daily needs of life don’t feel like as much of a struggle. And Craig said happiness might just follow from that.
