Cooperating Care: Enhancing Immigrant Homecare in Boston
Boston, Massachusetts
Mayor
Michelle Wu
Start of Project
2025
End of Project
Ongoing
Photo: Wangkun Jia/Shutterstock
Overview
Boston pledges to launch the city’s first immigrant-led homecare cooperative to serve Boston’s aging population. The cooperative will create dignified jobs and business ownership pathways for immigrant and refugee workers while addressing a critical gap in the healthcare system.
The cooperative approach addresses four key needs:
Economic Opportunity: Provides income generation and wealth-building for workers facing employment precarity.
Healthcare Workforce Development: Addresses critical caregiver shortages (currently 6 clients per caregiver) through structured pathways, comprehensive training, and reduced turnover.
Model Replication: Creates a decentralized, neighbourhood-based network of franchised cooperatives that uphold the Massachusetts Domestic Workers Law, with pathways to SEIU1199 unionization for eligible workers.
Systems Change: Advances Boston's economic justice vision by demonstrating worker-centred business models, creating economic mobility pathways, building wealth in historically excluded communities, and addressing workforce needs through community solutions.
This approach leverages Boston's diversity while addressing barriers to economic inclusion and providing essential community services. This project is supported by the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees (GCF), the Mayors Migration Council’s instrument to channel international funding directly to cities to implement inclusive projects of their own design.
Expected Impact
The project will provide a path to income and business ownership for migrant and refugee workers facing economic precarity. The co-op will launch in 2026 with a minimum of 3 members and will be designed to grow, with a goal of 12 members after 18 months. BCCO will track co-op member satisfaction, including data on earnings and the quality of working conditions, using benchmarking questions from ICA Group and DAWI research.
Through membership in Elevate Co-op, the home-care co-op will be part of an innovative strategy to scale up small cooperatives by networking them together, while retaining local democratic control. This approach addresses the common challenge of small cooperatives being limited in their growth potential while preserving the benefits of worker ownership.
Additionally, Launch.coop will make the platform available to three Boston organizations to support co-op startup initiatives in the first year following its launch. This will provide an important user testing opportunity before the platform becomes available in Massachusetts and then nationwide, creating a multiplier effect for the initial investment.
Priority Objectives
Protecting those most vulnerable
Realizing socio-economic inclusion
“This new initiative will support our older residents who are strong anchors in our communities while expanding pathways to economic mobility for our immigrant caregivers.”