Where to Stay When You Come to Boston for Treatment
The free options first, then what to do when they are full
A straight answer for patients and families travelling to Boston for medical treatment: the charities that house people at no cost, what to ask the hospital itself, and what a whole apartment offers when those are full. Kitchen, laundry in the unit, free parking.
Start with the places that cost nothing
If you are coming to Boston for treatment, ask about these before you book anything. They are real, they are free or close to it, and most people arriving from out of state have never heard of them.
Hospitality Homes (hosp.org) matches patients and their caregivers with host homes and donated apartments across Boston during treatment. It is not limited to one illness or one hospital. In 2025 it provided 13,759 nights of housing to 1,110 families.
The AstraZeneca Hope Lodge Center in Jamaica Plain, run by the American Cancer Society, gives cancer patients and a caregiver a free place to stay during treatment. There is no charge to either of you.
Christopher's Haven provides apartments for families whose child is being treated for cancer at a Boston medical center, with siblings welcome. Ronald McDonald House Boston Harbor, at 700 Brookline Avenue, offers low-cost rooms to families of paediatric patients who live at least 40 miles away. The Boston House does the same for children with cancer and their families.
And ask your own hospital first. Mass General, Dana-Farber, Boston Children's and Brigham and Women's all have patient services or social work teams who keep housing lists and negotiated hotel rates that are not advertised publicly. That phone call is free and it is the single most useful thing on this page.
When those do not work out
We would rather say this plainly than have you find out after a week of phone calls. Most of the programmes above are built around cancer care and children's treatment, and most carry conditions: a referral from your care team, a minimum distance from home, a waiting list, or all three. Beds are finite and demand is not.
So a parent bringing a child to Boston Children's has a real chance. An adult coming in for a transplant workup, a course of infusions, a joint replacement or a surgical follow-up usually does not qualify anywhere, and neither do the two or three relatives who came with them.
That is the gap we exist in. If one of the programmes above takes you, take it - it is free and it is closer to the hospital than we are.
Why a hotel room stops working in the second week
A two-night trip is fine in a hotel. A three-week course of treatment is a different problem, and the costs that break it are not the room rate.
Treatment changes what someone can eat, often at short notice and often on days when nothing sounds bearable. A kitchen answers that. Three restaurant meals a day for a family, for weeks, does not - and by the second week nobody wants another restaurant meal anyway.
Hospital days generate laundry, and a hotel basement machine or a per-item bag service is a poor answer to it. So is a family of four sharing one room when the patient needs to sleep at odd hours and someone else needs to be awake. And in Boston, hotel parking is charged nightly on top of the room, which people rarely budget for until the bill arrives.
What we offer, plainly
A whole apartment, not a room in one. A full kitchen. A washer and dryer inside the apartment rather than in a shared basement. Free parking on site, included in the price, so a car is not a running cost. Stays from a single night up to 27 nights, and the nightly rate falls as the stay gets longer.
Our apartments are in Dorchester and Hyde Park, between roughly 1.5 and 4.7 miles from the main hospitals, which is close enough to go back for an evening visit and far enough to sleep. We have written up the distances hospital by hospital in apartments near Boston's hospitals, and if Boston Medical Center is your hospital, that trip has its own page.
We are not a medical facility and we are not affiliated with any hospital. We are nineteen apartments owned by the people who look after them.
Questions worth asking wherever you end up staying
Is parking included, and is it at the building? A nightly parking charge or a garage four streets away changes the arithmetic of a long stay.
Is the laundry inside the unit, or shared? Can you actually cook a meal, or is it a microwave and a kettle? Is there a second room, so one person can sleep while another is awake?
And ask what happens if treatment runs long. Plans change on the hospital's schedule, not yours, and the answer to "can we extend" is worth knowing before you need it rather than after.
What is free tonight
Checking live availability…
Apartments that suit this trip
9 Warner Street, Apt 9W2View apartment →
7 Bernard Street, Apt 7B2View apartment →
9 Bernard Street, Apt 9B1View apartment →
143 Erie Street, Apt 1View apartment →
143 Erie Street, Apt 1cView apartment →
Common questions
- Is there free housing for patients in Boston?
- Yes, and it is worth pursuing before you book anything. Hospitality Homes places patients and caregivers in donated homes and apartments across the city. The American Cancer Society's Hope Lodge in Jamaica Plain is free for cancer patients and a caregiver. Christopher's Haven, Ronald McDonald House Boston Harbor and The Boston House all house families of children in treatment. Most require a referral from your care team and many have waiting lists, so ask your hospital's patient services or social work office as early as you can.
- We do not qualify for any of those. What are the options?
- A hotel, an extended-stay hotel, or a whole apartment. Past about a week, the things that decide it are a kitchen, laundry inside the unit, somewhere separate to sleep and whether parking is included. Our apartments have all four and take stays of up to 27 nights.
- How long can we stay, and can we extend if treatment runs long?
- From one night up to 27 nights, and the nightly rate drops as the stay gets longer. Extending depends on whether the apartment is free for those dates, so tell us early if the plan is changing and we will hold what we can.
- Is parking really free, and where is it?
- Yes, and it is at the apartment, included in the price with nothing to add at checkout. Parking at the hospital itself is a separate cost that we do not control, so check your hospital's own rates and ask whether they offer a discounted rate for patients in treatment - several do.
Or call or text Daryl directly: (617) 799-4558
Coming to Boston for something else?
- All 19 apartmentsEvery whole apartment we let, across Dorchester and Hyde Park
- Red Sox & Fenway ParkWhole apartments, free parking, and 81 home games a year to use them on
- Gillette Stadium eventsPatriots, Revolution and concert nights - with room for the whole group
- Boston hospital staysFor families staying near Longwood, Children's or Mass General
- Graduation weekendRoom for everyone, at a fraction of a May hotel rate
- Concerts & arena showsLate finish, no last-train panic, car parked free
- Salem in OctoberOctober in Witch City, from a whole apartment with parking
- Where to stay in BostonFor a first visit, with the whole family
- Near Boston Medical CenterFor families with treatment at Boston Medical Center in the South End
- Harvard & MIT visitsTours, interviews, move-in weekend and parents' weekend
- Wedding weekendsSeveral apartments at one address, instead of scattered hotel rooms
- Conventions & trade showsFor BCEC and Hynes weeks, when downtown rooms are at their worst
- Marathon weekendPatriots' Day in April, when the city has nowhere left to put anyone
- Visiting familyClose enough to see them every day, far enough to sleep properly