by Silas Nahan
On August 1, 2024, in a bid to lessen the strain on the emergency shelter network, major changes were implemented in how homeless families access the state Emergency Assistance (EA) shelter system. Four overflow sites in Chelsea, Lexington, Cambridge and Norfolk, referred to as “temporary respite centers” (TRCs) by officials, with the Administration declaring that no more additional ones will be opened.
Most strikingly, the shelter stay time was reduced to five days, which will not be enough time for families to find housing or alternative temporary options.
Families who choose not to stay at the TRCs will have immediate access to applying to EA and will be placed on a Contact List, but it is likely that people will need to wait several months for placement into EA. If families take even 1 night of shelter, for up to 6 months they won’t have access to more established shelter, which will leave children and families on the streets. Notably, the Administration cannot make changes to shelter assistance availability without 90 days advance notice to the legislature, but they had only given a week of notice.
On the first day, eviction notices were planned to be handed out in early August to 57 families, but shelter workers gave the families a temporary extension in overflow shelters to stay a few more days. Healey made it clear that accommodations are intended to be temporary.
When describing the changes made to the existing shelter law, the “Emergency Assistance (EA) Family Shelter Program in Massachusetts” Fact Sheet starts by saying that “The Healey-Driscoll Administration’s goal is to ensure that shelter for families is temporary, supportive, and non-recurring”. But this sentiment fundamentally goes against the principle this shelter law was founded on.
Since 1983, per Section 30 of Part I, Title II, Chapter 23B of the Massachusetts General Laws, the state of Massachusetts has upheld the Emergency Assistance Program, also known as the “Right to Shelter” law. Governor Michael Dukakis implemented this legislation with the aim of guaranteeing shelter for every homeless shelter in the state after the number of unhoused people rose following the closing of mental hospitals and increased drug use.
In Dukakis’ 1983 inaugural address, he announced that he would hold an emergency cabinet meeting to “begin immediately to put together a statewide effort which will provide the necessities of life to those in desperate need.”
”We will establish a toll-free hotline for instant referral, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week… If needed, we will draw on surplus state hospitals, unused public schools and, as a last resort, National Guard armories to shelter the homeless and to distribute surplus food.”
–Dukakis Inauguration Speech, 1983, January 6
This law was premised on the idea that families with children and pregnant people without children should not be denied the right to shelter and basic necessities. This is what activists are referring to when they invoke the “spirit” of the right to shelter law.
But Healey has had a history with scaling back this law. In the fall of 2023 Healey announced that the program had reached a capacity of 7,500 families. In March 2024, the state Legislature had imposed a new 30 day shelter-stay limit. This required people to reapply monthly and show that they are seeking work authorization and/or new housing. In June, Healey sent a five-member delegation to the southern border to inform families about the lack of shelter space in Massachusetts as a means to discourage migration to cut back on the shelter law.
Just last month, migrant families and unhoused people were officially restricted from sleeping at Logan Airport. In response to this, shelters such as the former prison Bay State Correctional Center in Norfolk, which could accommodate 140 families, were established as temporary shelter space.
Moving out of the shelters is no easy task for these families. Language barriers, difficulty obtaining work authorization permits, with a wait time to obtain an Employment Authorization Document only after their application has been pending for 180 days.
There are additional shelters and hotels not part of the official four shelter spaces which have their own time limits imposed, but some pushes are being met with resistance, such as a proposed shelter in Cape Cod to house 79 families being challenged by planning board members, or “concerned citizens” of Norfolk protesting the recent renovation of the Bay State Correctional Center.
It is true that the fiscal and operational capacity of the shelters have indeed been stretched thin. It’s also true that for serious changes to be made, immigration ought to be addressed at the national level and the Congress. Blocked by the Republicans at every turn, reforms such as reinstating DACA, extending TPS, expanding pathways to citizenship, creating immediate work authorizations, increasing the numbers of properly trained immigration courts, etc. have been turned down.
However, the idea that Healey herself holds no responsibility would be an inaccurate characterization. She has put forward deliberate efforts to tell migrants that Massachusetts is not a fruitful venture for them, such as by sending five state officials to Texas to tell border security officials and NGOs that Massachusetts’ emergency shelter system is overburdened. Healey, as a member of Biden’s national campaign advisory board, was also among Democratic politicians who stood by Biden’s severe curtailment of asylum claims at the southern border.
Even if this policy was made on just grounds regarding funding, downstream consequences that bolster right-wing agendas are already visible. A few weeks ago, Saugus Public Schools adopted a students admissions policy that illegally blocks newly arrived children from enrolling in the district in violation of state and federal law, attorneys for the families allege.
Lawyers for Civil Rights and Massachusetts Advocates for Children sent a warning letter to members of the Saugus School Committee Thursday demanding they immediately revise the policy, which states Saugus students must all be “legal residents,” and bars families who have not completed the town census from registering their children. The policy adopted also requires families to produce specific identification documents that attorneys note many immigrants lack, such as a U.S. passport or Massachusetts driver’s license. The policy threatens anyone caught violating these rules with “all applicable criminal and civil penalties.”
Regardless of their immigration status all children have a constitutional right to free public education according to the 1982 Supreme Court Ruling of Plyler v. Doe, in which by a 5-4 vote, the Court found that any resources which might be saved from excluding undocumented children from public schools were far outweighed by the harms imposed on society at large from denying them an education. Challenges to this ruling has occurred in other states, in 2011, Alabama enacted a law requiring school admins to determine immigration status of newly enrolling students, which resulted in markedly higher rates of absenteeism of Latino school children.
When talking about this issue from a purely statewide perspective, a lack of housing affordability is a main culprit. The state has argued that providing funding using “rainy day funds” for more shelter spaces will lead to more economic issues, despite Massachusetts being the second richest state in the wealthiest country on the planet. That’s not even to speak of the massive state and local tax revenue that has been generated from immigrants. A study found in 2022 that MA gained $650 million in state and local tax revenue from immigrants without status alone, with an estimated $850 million if those immigrants were granted work authorizations. If anything, it’s been a nonstop rainy day for every family after being kicked out from shelter, indicating that Healey and the Administration’s priorities are at odds with reality.
The image that Massachusetts is a state of promise via the right-to-shelter policy, particularly among Haitians, is a noteworthy factor in their tenacity to remain in Massachusetts despite the rolling back of the policy. In the last federal fiscal year, Haitians made up nearly three quarters of migrant arrivals, more than double than the previous year. Many have been fleeing violence and political persecution. The expiration of Title 42, a policy making it easy to expel people crossing the border in 2023, was another significant factor. Massachusetts has also had the third largest Haitian community in any state as of 2021.
Millions of Haitians have become hungry and desperate, living in a country engulfed in extraordinary political turmoil. Most are arriving by plane through the Biden Administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, which allows 30,000 migrants per month for a two-year period after passing a background check and securing a sponsor.
It is important to consider how at the time of me writing this, if you search “Massachusetts migrants news”, you will be bombarded with a recent story of a Haitian migrant accused of raping a girl in a shelter. With an ongoing crisis that is centered around housing statewide and immigration nationwide media outlets are taking every opportunity to simultaneously ignore systemic problems while providing ammo for comment sections of white supremacist NIMBYs. This is another reason why even if Healey has good intentions, the ramifications of ceasing shelter availability further sows racist ideology in a worsening political climate.
There are individual efforts to help these families going on now. Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) has put together a list of resources and suggestions for individual people to help respond to this crisis.
At the end of the day, this crisis is ongoing, and regardless of the choice Healey and the Administration make, the lives and wellbeing of many families are currently under threat. In terms of what the state can do, this is fundamentally a product of the ongoing housing crisis. But that does not make addressing the shelter crisis no longer urgent. If Massachusetts wants to continue to be viewed as a socially accepting blue state, the time for declaring it to be a “rainy day” is now.