STRESSED MASSACHUSETTS FAMILY SHELTER SYSTEM
By Robin Lubbock/WBUR
The Massachusetts State House on a sunny winter morning. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR
After more than a year of enormous, costly demand on the state’s family shelter system, House Democrats began moving Tuesday to limit how long people can receive emergency services and to accelerate the work placements that help them find stable footing.
The House Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill (H 4284) Tuesday that would steer another $245 million to emergency family shelters, which lawmakers said should be enough to fund the system through the June 30 end of the fiscal year, while temporarily imposing length-of-stay limitations to cut costs amid a period of sustained financial strain for Beacon Hill.
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House Speaker Ron Mariano suggested it’s no longer sustainable for Massachusetts to continue operating its shelter system — which by law guarantees services to eligible families and pregnant women — without reforms, even after Gov. Maura Healey in the fall capped the number of families served at one time around 7,500.
“It isn’t fair for these people to stay there for as long as they want. New people coming in don’t have the opportunity to have access to some of the advantages that these people have,” Mariano told reporters. “We thought in the interest of fairness, and in order to keep this program in existence — if we don’t do something to change this and make it fairer, it’s going to sink under its own weight.”
It’s a shift for House Democrats who late last year led the push to insist that overflow shelters be part of the state’s safety net.
The House plans to take up the $260 million bill, which also includes $15 million for judgments and settlements. The new shelter funds would bring total family shelter allocations this fiscal year to $820 million.
Massachusetts is the only state in the nation that guarantees shelter services by right to some eligible families and pregnant women. Some anti-homelessness advocates contend that the “right to shelter” would be further hamstrung by a cap on the duration of shelter stays.
“The way this right has been limited in the past few months is something we have never seen, and this proposal takes that even further by putting an artificial time limit on how long families can stay in shelter without providing the housing resources and supports that are needed to help families safely exit shelter into safe, stable housing,” Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, said in an interview. “With the combination of the waiting list and these time limits, many families that need shelter the most won’t have that option in their hour of need.”
She added that the program already limits eligibility to “families that have absolutely no place else to go,” warning that time limits will disproportionately impact people with disabilities, large families and others more likely to struggle to find housing.
Turley and Andrea Park of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute said they will try to convince lawmakers not to impose a maximum time limit on family shelter stays and instead want Beacon Hill to focus on boosting investments in helping people find housing outside the shelter system.
“We’re going to be pushing for there not to be a time limit and have people artificially exited from shelter into dangerous situations,” Park said.
State House News Service’s Sam Doran contributed reporting.
This article was originally published on March 05, 2024