Advocates furious over Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey’s ‘cruel’ emergency shelter restrictions – Fall River Reporter

Sam Droogsdale

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, JULY 29, 2024….Gov. Maura Healey’s “cruel” restrictions on emergency shelters will force families to choose between sleeping in unsafe environments and excluding themselves from future shelter, advocates said outside the State House Monday.

“The Healey-Driscoll government’s decision to reduce our stay in emergency shelters to five days is cruel and short-sighted. It places the burden on desperate, hard-working families and makes them scapegoats for the state’s failure to provide safe, stable housing that is affordable for ordinary people,” GP Anita Mathews told a rally on Monday.

Three days before the government’s new housing rules were set to take effect, activists held protests in Boston and Springfield.

The new rules — the latest development in Healey’s attempt to control the flood of homeless families seeking government-funded shelter — put a five-day limit on how long people can stay in overflow shelters. Families who choose to use one of those temporary shelters after Aug. 1 will then have to wait at least six months to be eligible for placement in a longer-term emergency shelter.

In addition, the new rules prioritize families who have lived in the state for a long time over newly arrived immigrants fleeing political and economic crises in other countries. Families who have been made homeless by a no-fault eviction, have at least one family member who is a veteran, or are homeless “due to sudden or unusual circumstances in Massachusetts beyond their control, such as a flood or fire,” the governor’s office said.

Healey’s tightening of the system has led to parents sleeping on the streets or in their cars with young children, emergency rooms being flooded with families looking for a place to sleep and some mothers even offering sex in exchange for a place for them and their children to sleep, advocates said Monday.

Many speakers at the protest outside the State House were angry with the administration.

“We want to remind the governor that she owes us this, and we will put this on the ballot. The working class is the one who elected you, so you need to continue to put us first,” said Nadine Medina, an advocate from western Massachusetts.

When asked about the rally by reporters at a press conference Monday, Healey said there would be no changes to policy.

“Let me just say that this budget that I just signed includes $326 million for emergency shelter. That’s important. It’s important that people who are homeless or who are falling on hard times, whether because of an eviction or because of a job loss or because of a medical issue, that we can support them. Victims of domestic violence, our veteran community, children, we’re going to continue to do that and that’s going to be funded through the budget,” she said.

Healey defended the new restrictions by saying the shelter system does not have “unlimited capacity.”

“And so one of the things that we’ve been focused on is getting people into work, getting them out of shelters, and also putting things in place so that people with case management can move out of shelters,” the governor said. “That’s what this five-day program is about, because we need to free up more spots in that shelter for temporary respite care, which is currently a five-day limit.”

House Speaker Ron and Senate President Karen Spilka have supported Healey’s new regulations. However, a number of elected officials were present at the meeting in Boston on Monday afternoon.

Senators Jamie Eldridge, Robyn Kennedy and Liz Miranda, and Representatives Marjorie Decker, Mary Keefe, Sam Montaño and Erika Uyterhoeven were all in attendance.

Montaño, who is also director of the Transgender Emergency Fund, which includes a small-scale shelter program, says she sees the impact of the housing crisis and shelter policies in the state every day.

“I had a family call me today from Missouri, transgender people with a toddler, looking for a place to go. And I said, you know what? Don’t come to Massachusetts. It’s unaffordable, there’s a waiting list for shelter, and we just created an anti-poverty policy,” Montaño said. “This policy says, ‘Don’t come to Massachusetts if you’re poor, don’t come to Massachusetts if you’re low-income, don’t come to Massachusetts if you need services, because Massachusetts right now only wants to take people who can take care of themselves.’”

The Jamaica Plain Democrat said that as a first-term representative, she could say things that lawmakers might be afraid to say later in their careers.

She continued, “We left a lot behind this year in terms of housing.”

Lawmakers are currently working on a compromise housing bill that would authorize billions of dollars in bonds — far more than the state can actually afford to put on the streets — and use a handful of tactics intended to spur more housing construction to close the 200,000-unit shortage.

She continued: “Every day I’m disappointed in myself that there’s still so much left. But you know, there’s no going back, we have to look forward.”

Key housing measures that were discussed but failed to gain traction in either sector include rent control and allowing municipalities to levy taxes on expensive real estate to build affordable housing.

Decker, a Cambridge Democrat who chairs the Public Health Committee, called the new rules “concerning.”

“We are not, frankly, living by the founding principles of this country. I go back to that famous quote: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for freedom, the wretched refuse of your overcrowded shores. Send these to me, the homeless, the storm-tossed, I will lift my lamp beside the golden door,'” Decker said, reciting the poem on the Statue of Liberty.

A large proportion of the families now seeking shelter are refugees and asylum seekers from Haiti and other countries facing political and economic crises.

“This five-day limit on overflow shelters will have a devastating impact on the health of families, especially children and infants,” Mathews said. “They will be forced onto the streets and face heat emergencies, rain, food insecurity, violence and trauma. As a physician, I don’t have a treatment that can cure the depression of a homeless new mother who has nowhere safe to feed her newborn. I don’t have a prescription for a teenager who has no hope for a future if she can’t go to school.”