About Transition House
When Transition House opened its doors in Cambridge over 40 years ago, it was the first domestic violence shelter on the East Coast of the United States and the second in the entire country. Since then, our programs have continued to evolve to serve the needs of our community. Today, Transition House offers a wide range of housing resources, support services and prevention tools. In the last few years alone we have built nationally groundbreaking partnerships that emphasize a whole-community approach to violence prevention.
Mission & History
Transition House’s mission is to end domestic violence in our community.
Sparking social change in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1976, Transition House is an innovative organization that develops prevention tools and provides holistic support and a range of housing options for individuals and families surviving domestic and intimate partner violence. We collaborate with survivors to address the systemic and widespread impact of domestic violence; educate youth and adults to break the cycle of violence in the next generation; and build deep partnerships to create a safer, healthier community.
In its first decades, Transition House created the first shelter on the East Coast, a legal services program for battered women, a foster grandparent program, and pioneered school-based teen dating violence intervention curricula and programs. In 2003 and 2004, we dramatically expanded our housing offerings creating a continuum of safe housing resources spanning from emergency shelter to medium-term and long-term housing with services centered on trauma support and skill building for lifelong resilience. In 2013, we formed the Community Support Partnership with our longstanding collaborators, the Cambridge Housing Authority and City of Cambridge. The Partnership provides a whole-community focus on domestic violence prevention to reach people of all ages and backgrounds.
Learn more about our history and commitment to survivors of domestic violence by purchasing your own copy of Ann Fleck-Henderson’s book, Transition House 1976-2017, here, where she interviewed over 60 people related to Transition House in 2013. She wrote and published: Transition House 1976-2017 in 2018. This book narrates the history of Transition House and the domestic violence movement that evolved from a feminist collective in the 1970’s.