House of Music
Article published in Northampton Living
(June 2023)
When he’s not working as an allergist and immunologist at AIANE in Northampton, Dr. Jonathan Bayuk runs One Roof, a nonprofit that puts on musical festivals to fund homes for the unsheltered.
Northampton Living: When and where is this year’s festival, and who’s going to be there?
Jonathan Bayuk: We’ll have Gin Blossoms; Toad the Wet Sprocket; Marcy Playground; Juliana Hatfield, the lead singer from Letters to Cleo; along with a whole lot of local bands, and that will be at Look Park on June 17.
NL: And the proceeds will go toward building tiny homes?
JB: This year I’m hoping that we can get at least one or two tiny homes and use it as a pilot project, and then continue to build every year and get it bigger and bigger.
NL: What inspired you to start One Roof?
JB: When I was a little kid, my mother had taken me to get some school clothes at Filene’s Basement in Downtown Crossing. And it was the first time I really saw homelessness all over the place. I started to become very aware of that, and I really didn’t like it, so I started volunteering when I was in my early teens, even before that with my parents. So my whole life I’ve been working to do what I can to help people who are unsheltered.
NL: One Roof follows a Housing First model. Can you explain what that means?
JB: There are two models in the United States. There’s the Housing First model, and then there’s the Non-Housing First model. Most of the time it’s the [latter]. So you go to a shelter, you deal with whatever problems that may have gotten you into that situation, then you try to get employment or services through the state or the federal government. The problem with that is there’s a long period of time where a lot of things can go wrong. You can’t get a driver’s license without an address, and you can’t use a shelter as an address most of the time. So you can’t get a job, you can’t register to vote, you can’t do all kinds of things that really give you ownership of being in a community. If you get a place to live first, that can address some of those issues.
NL: This sounds like a long-term project that you’re very physically and emotionally invested in.
JB: Absolutely. We already have a plan for a Fall/Winter gala, and then we’ll do another festival in 2024 in the summer.
I’ve been in contact with one of the attorneys for Bob Kraft at Gillette Stadium, who if I can continue to show that these things work, then I can scale it up. So this is the beginning of what will hopefully be a decades-long project that eventually ends up like a Farm Aid-type thing. That’s the goal.
For more information visit www.onerooffestival.org