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We run Spare Keys Stay ourselves, here in Boston. Questions before you book? Daryl answers personally.
Call or text 617-799-4558 [email protected]Registered with the City of Boston · STR-629372
For families staying days, weeks or months
Whole apartments 19-25 minutes from Boston Children's Hospital and the Longwood hospitals, 20-25 from MGH: separate bedrooms, kitchen, laundry, free parking.
Times are the usual drive from our Dorchester apartments, outside rush hour. From Hyde Park the Longwood hospitals are about the same, and the others 5 to 15 minutes more.
Four of them - Brigham and Women's, Boston Children's, Dana-Farber and Beth Israel Deaconess - sit together in the Longwood Medical Area, so a stay near one is a stay near all four. Mass General and Mass Eye and Ear are side by side on the other side of the city, by the Charles River.
Before you book anything, ask your hospital's social worker or patient services team. The Ronald McDonald House and Hope Lodge take guests only by referral from them, and they can tell you which hotels give a medical rate.
| Hospital | Drive from Dorchester |
|---|---|
| Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) | 20-25 min |
| Boston Children's Hospital | 19-25 min |
| Brigham and Women's Hospital | 19-25 min |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | 19-25 min |
| Beth Israel Deaconess (BIDMC) | 19-25 min |
| Boston Medical Center (BMC) | 15-20 min |
| Tufts Medical Center | 15-20 min |
| Mass Eye and Ear | 20-25 min |
| Spaulding Rehabilitation, Charlestown | 20-30 min |
Boston Children's is in the Longwood Medical Area, a 19 to 25 minute drive from Dorchester and 20 to 25 from Hyde Park. Its own Patient Family Housing runs the Yawkey Family Inn and apartments at The Bon, for families who live 50 miles or more from the hospital - ask the housing team as soon as you know the dates. Families of children treated for cancer can also ask about The Boston House.
The Ronald McDonald House in Charlestown has 10 family apartments, free of charge, for stays of 3 to 90 nights; it fills from a waitlist, through your social worker. When those are full, or a sibling and a grandparent are coming too, a whole apartment with its own bedrooms is the next honest answer. Children's own line for hotels, inns and short-term rentals, 617-355-4626, can talk you through the options.
A long hospital stay is rarely one parent alone. Grandparents fly in, brothers and sisters need a normal evening, and the adults take turns at the bedside. Our apartments sleep 3 to 10, so the family stays together under one roof, with a living room to sit in that is not the end of a bed and a table to eat at together.
Beds at the family houses are finite, referrals take time, and some stays do not fit their rules. That is the gap a whole apartment fills. Bedrooms with doors, so one parent can sleep while the other is at the hospital. A full kitchen, for a restricted diet and for feeding brothers and sisters without eating out three times a day. A washer and dryer inside most of our apartments, because hospital days generate laundry. And free parking at the door.
The Brigham is the closest of the Longwood hospitals to us, a 19 to 25 minute drive. Mass General Brigham lists the Inn at Longwood Medical and Homewood Suites Brookline-Longwood among the hotels near it; ask for the medical rate there too.
The Brigham handles a lot of transplant workups, surgery follow-ups and long courses of infusions - the kind of stay where nobody qualifies for the free houses and a hotel room stops working in the second week.
Dana-Farber is in Longwood, the same 19 to 25 minute drive. Its Patient Lodging Program (617-632-3344) keeps a list of short-term places to stay and holds a limited number of fixed-rate rooms at Homewood Suites. The American Cancer Society's Hope Lodge, at 125 South Huntington Avenue, gives a patient in active treatment and a caregiver a free room - your treatment team makes the referral.
Hope Lodge is closer than we are and costs nothing; take it if they take you. Where we fit is the course of treatment that runs for months, or the family that came along and does not qualify.
Beth Israel Deaconess is the fourth Longwood hospital, the same 19 to 25 minute drive. BIDMC points patients to Hospitality Homes, which places patients and caregivers in volunteer host homes - and, in special circumstances, a donated apartment - whichever hospital is treating you.
Because the Longwood hospitals sit within walking distance of one another, a stay booked for BIDMC works just as well if treatment moves to the Brigham, Children's or Dana-Farber partway through.
MGH is in Boston's West End, by Beacon Hill - a 20 to 25 minute drive from Dorchester, 30 to 35 from Hyde Park. Mass General Brigham publishes a list of hotels near MGH, Mass Eye and Ear and Spaulding - the Liberty Hotel and the Wyndham Boston Beacon Hill among them, both a short walk from the hospital - and says many area hotels offer discounted rates to its visitors: ask for the best available or medical rate when you book.
For a night or two before an appointment, one of those hotels is the right answer. For a stay measured in weeks - a transplant workup, a long recovery, a family taking turns at the bedside - a whole apartment with a kitchen and a washing machine costs less to live in, and it has a living room that is not a waiting room.
Boston Medical Center in the South End is the closest major hospital to us, a 15 to 20 minute drive (20 to 30 from Hyde Park). BMC's own lodging page lists hotels as close as the Hampton Inn & Suites, 0.1 miles away, and tells patients to mention Boston Medical Center when booking for a preferred rate. For one night before an early appointment, book that.
The same list runs to hotels two and five miles out, which tells you the hospital already thinks our kind of distance is workable.
Tufts Medical Center is in Chinatown, a 15 to 20 minute drive from Dorchester outside rush hour (25 to 30 from Hyde Park) - or about 40 minutes by train: the commuter rail from Talbot Avenue, a 4-minute walk from Warner and Bernard Streets, into South Station, then on foot. Tufts' own visitor page points families to Hospitality Homes and tells them to ask hotels for the Tufts Medical Center rate.
Mass Eye and Ear is next door to Mass General, so it is the same 20 to 25 minute drive. Spaulding Rehabilitation's main hospital is in Charlestown, 20 to 30 minutes from Dorchester and 35 to 40 from Hyde Park - a rehab stay is often weeks long, which is exactly when a kitchen and a washer start to matter.
A short hospital trip is fine in a hotel room. A long one is not. Treatment plans run for weeks, one person is usually at the hospital while someone else is with the other children, and everybody is tired.
An apartment changes the practical parts. A full kitchen means you can cook to a restricted diet and feed a family without eating out three times a day. Laundry in the unit - all but three of our apartments have it - matters more than people expect on a stay measured in weeks. Separate bedrooms mean someone coming back at midnight is not waking everyone.
The hospitals handle patient parking better than most people assume: Boston Children's garage has a validated family rate of $11 for up to 24 hours, and a Family Extended Stay Parking programme for stays of three days or more. Ask your own hospital's parking office the same question.
What we add is a free off-street space at the apartment, so the car costs nothing the rest of the day and night, and nobody is circling a residential street for a spot after a long day.
Stays of any length book online, from one night to several months, so a long treatment block is one booking - and booked direct, stays of 7 nights or more are 10% off, and 28 nights or more 15% off. If treatment runs longer than planned, tell us early and we will extend you in the same apartment whenever it is free.
Every apartment is a licensed City of Boston short-term rental, so you are booking something legitimate rather than a listing that could disappear. And you can reach us directly by phone, text or WhatsApp - not a call centre - which matters when plans change at short notice, because with hospital stays they usually do.
