Sheronda Davis is a curious, socially engaged, and independent person. Most of all, however, she is resilient. After a truly life-altering experience, she found her way to a welcoming and supportive home on Beacon Hill, at Peter Faneuil House. 

While she has lived most of her adult life in Greater Boston, Sheronda spent her late teens and young adulthood in New York City. Coming of age in New York during the 1970s and early 1980s was a memorable experience, she says, recalling how she “hit the club scene” at storied dance hotspots like the Paradise Garage and the Crisco Disco. She had settled down a bit by the time she visited a friend in Boston around Thanksgiving of 1986, and decided to apply for a job at Filene’s Basement. If she got the job, she told her friend, she’d stay in Boston. Within a week, the retailer had hired her. 

Sheronda has lived in and around the city ever since, and while she’s moved on from Filene’s Basement, she has always chosen jobs that put her face-to-face with other people: as a hairdresser, a property manager, and in social services working with the LGBTQIA+ community.  

“I have compassion,” Sheronda explains. “I have a lot of compassion for people. And I’ve got to know why, what, how—I’m a very curious person.” 

Her mid-40s, however, brought a turning point. In late 2001 she contracted a rare and often fatal bacterial infection that required urgent hospitalization and surgery, and changed her life in a way that’s difficult to imagine. 

“I woke up at Mass General,” she recalls. “I’d been in a coma for two months. I remember them waking me up, and it didn’t register at first when they told me, ‘You lost your leg.’” 

Sheronda had beaten the odds and survived a grave illness, but at a significant cost—to stop the infection from spreading, surgeons had to remove her right leg above the knee, using extensive skin grafts to complete the procedure. She spent many weeks recovering in the hospital. Through it all, however, her curiosity never waned. Again and again, she would wheel herself down to a resource center at Massachusetts General Hospital and use information she found there to educate herself about what had happened to her. 

“I learned so much,” she shares. “I learned about science. I learned about infection. I learned about terminology. I was fascinated—because they don’t give you a handbook.” 

After many weeks of effort in rehab, learning to use a prosthetic leg, she regained enough mobility to restart her life, and spent the next few years in several apartments in Roxbury, East Boston, Charlestown, and Somerville. In 2010, working with a counselor at the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership (now Metro Housing|Boston), she discovered Rogerson Communities and an accessible, affordable unit available at Peter Faneuil House on Joy Street in Beacon Hill. She’s lived there ever since, in a comfortable, quiet two-room unit where she can accommodate family when they visit from out of town. It’s an easy place for them to get to on public transit, she points out, and close to everything she needs, whether it’s her doctor or dentist’s office, shopping, or entertainment.  

Although she chooses not to use a prosthetic anymore, opting instead for a wheelchair or motorized scooter, she still gets around and stays active in the community. Her neighbors in the building are helpful and kind, offering to run errands for her, though she prefers to remain self-reliant most of the time. Her bichon shih-tzu, Halston, is especially popular, she says. 

“Everybody likes Halston. One year they all pitched in and they got him a big bag of doggy treats. Somebody left it at my door, and I said, ‘How nice!’” 

Sheronda notes that having a community of friendly neighbors around her was a bit of a change, especially for someone so used to being self-reliant—but it’s a change she has embraced. When Rogerson hosted an LGBTQIA+ pride celebration in the building last year, bringing together residents of other Rogerson communities, she took the opportunity to join the party and expand her world. 

“I came to meet other people in the building and just mingle, but it was other people too, all Rogerson. I kind of isolate myself at times, and I told myself this year I was going to venture out, do a little something.” 

After the life-altering experience of losing her leg, followed by years of recovery and apartment-hopping, Sheronda feels like she’s finally found not just a home that she can afford and that meets her needs, but a community that makes her feel valued. 

“I like living here,” she sums up. “They’re friendly. They’re efficient, as far as taking care of the building. They address your needs. And they welcome everybody. I can’t believe I’ve been here 16 years—it went by so fast! I would love to stay here for the rest of my life.”