The Healey administration will implement another series of major changes to the state’s emergency shelter system starting next week, giving priority to certain Massachusetts families and setting a five-day cap on how long people can stay in overflow sites.
In a move that anti-homelessness advocates worry will increase the number of people with nowhere to safely sleep at night, Gov. Maura Healey on Tuesday announced a dramatic overhaul that in effect moves further away from the so-called right to shelter law.
Administration officials did not explicitly say they were aiming to curtail shelter access for newly arriving migrants, but the combination of reforms is likely to put a greater emphasis on making services available for the thousands of Bay State families already here and struggling.
Starting Aug. 1, the state will prioritize placement in emergency assistance shelters for families who are homeless because of a no-fault eviction, who have at least one member who is a veteran, or who are homeless “because of sudden or unusual circumstances in Massachusetts beyond their control, such as a flood or fire,” Healey’s office said.
Families will continue to be prioritized if they have “significant medical needs, newborn children, are at risk of domestic violence, or are homeless because of fire, flood, or other disasters,” according to the governor’s team.
The administration on Aug. 1 will also cap how long families awaiting a longer-term shelter placement can stay at overflow sites, sometimes referred to as safety net sites, at five days. Families who choose to use one of those locations after Aug. 1 will then need to wait at least six months to qualify for placement into an emergency assistance shelter.
Those limits do not apply to shelters managed by the nonprofit United Way of Massachusetts Bay, and families who are staying at the state-run overflow sites before Aug. 1 will retain their prioritization for emergency assistance shelter placement.
Healey’s office said families who leave overflow sites will receive support from other diversion services. That includes “reticketing,” which the administration describes as providing families “transportation to another location where they have friends or family or another option for a safe place to stay,” and the HomeBASE program, which helps families experiencing homelessness pay some of the up-front costs that pose a barrier to new housing such as security deposits.
The administration is also making a linguistic change. For months, Healey and her deputies have referred to the overflow shelters as “safety-net sites.” When the new five-day stay limit rolls into effect, the administration will begin calling them “temporary respite centers.”
Existing state-run overflow sites in Chelsea, Lexington, Cambridge and Norfolk will adopt those new policies next week, and the state will not open any additional locations “due to operational and financial constraints,” according to the governor’s office.
In a statement, Healey said the changes are “in line with the policies of other cities facing similar challenges as Massachusetts.”
“We have been saying for months now that the rapid growth of our Emergency Assistance shelter system is not sustainable. Massachusetts is out of shelter space, and we simply cannot afford the current size of this system,” Healey said. “Our administration has taken significant action over the past year to make the system more sustainable and help families leave shelter for stable housing. But with Congress continuing to fail to act on immigration reform, we need to make more changes.”
Total costs for the system and related expenses surpassed $1 billion in fiscal 2024, and a commission overseeing the shelter program estimated at a meeting last week — before Healey rolled out the new changes — that costs would again exceed $1 billion in fiscal 2025.
Administration officials did not immediately attach a specific savings estimate to the reforms rolled out Tuesday.
The Tuesday announcement represents the latest significant shift in how Massachusetts, which for decades has been the only state in the nation that by law guarantees access to shelter, grapples with a lingering crisis.
Anti-homelessness activists said they, and some shelter providers, were blindsided by Tuesday’s announcement.
Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, likened the provision rendering families ineligible from pursuing emergency assistance shelter for six months if they stay in an overflow shelter for up to five days to “Sophie’s Choice.”
“What we’re hearing is the administration saying, ‘well, we’ll offer families a ticket someplace else if they have someplace else safe to go, or access to the HomeBASE program,’ but that would require families to have a housing unit to move,” Turley said. “Under virtually no circumstances will a family offered resources through HomeBASE be able to find an apartment and lease it within that short time period.”
For more than a year, the combination of an increase in migrant arrivals and thousands of Bay State residents experiencing homelessness has put unprecedented demand on the emergency assistance shelter system, which provides services to families and pregnant women.
About half of the families in the program entered Massachusetts as migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, while the other half already lived here more long-term, according to the most recent state data.
Administration officials said 728 families were on the waitlist for emergency assistance shelter as of July 11. On that date, the average length of stay in the program was 369 days.
The existing four overflow sites have a combined capacity of about 270 families, according to a Healey spokesperson.
Healey in the fall limited the number of families who can stay in the system to about 7,500, and facilities have been basically at capacity since then.
In April, the House and Senate approved legislation that Healey signed limiting the length of stay in shelters to nine months, with up to two 90-day extensions available in some cases.
Since May 1, families at overflow sites have needed to be recertified each month to remain eligible for their stays. The state also banned families from sleeping overnight at Logan International Airport, a common destination for many migrants and others unable to find shelter, starting July 9.
“We do anticipate that unsheltered homelessness will increase due to this policy and the lack of investment in long-term homelessness prevention and housing resources,” Turley said.
Healey’s office said efforts to connect migrants with work authorization, including a clinic the U.S. Department of Homeland Security hosted here in November, have increased the rate at which families are exiting shelters. The state has also expanded the HomeBASE rehousing program, which helps families experiencing homelessness pay up-front housing costs like security deposits.
(Copyright (c) 2024 State House News Service.