Security consultant rules Mass. shelter system ‘safe' but calls for changes, including ‘targeted' policies for migrants

Boston Globe

28-02-2025

Level 3 sex offenders are considered those with the highest risk of re-offending. Davis said officials should not place any level 2 or level 3 sex offenders in shelters, such as hotels, that also house families and children. According to his report, there are
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Davis said the state should also 'differentiate' between long-time Massachusetts residents and 'non-Massachusetts residents' who are entering the shelter system, and craft what he called 'targeted' policies for families who are 'homeless due to immigration and address their specific needs accordingly.' His report does not specify exactly what those separate set of policies should entail, but cited a policy in Denver that limits
shelter stays for recent immigrants to 72 hours.
'Establishing separate accommodations for immigrant populations [is] among the proposed measures to bolster the overall safety and efficiency of the EA Shelter System,' the report reads.
In an interview, Davis said he believes the state's emergency shelter system is 'safe.'
'It's safer now than it was 30 days ago' when he launched his review, Davis said. 'But we're dealing with human systems. You're doing the best that you can.'
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Healey tapped Davis in January to do a review of the system. The state has since signed a contract that will pay his consulting company up to $175,000, both to perform the review and help implement the findings through August.
State officials said they had already begun implementing some of Davis' recommendations, some of which matched changes tucked into the spending bill Healey signed Friday. Among those is a change eliminating so-called 'presumptive eligibility' by requiring families to prove they meet specific
criteria, including verifying their identity and residency, before they are placed in shelter.
Healey hired Davis at a time of
The Globe reported that
According to Davis' report, while the shelter system's population exploded, so did the number of serious incidents reported, which rose by 788 percent between 2022 to 2024.
Healey in January began requiring additional background checks of adults in emergency shelters using the Criminal Offender Record Information, or CORI, system, and implemented a new policy in January
for the family of someone convicted of a felony to be moved into more permanent housing. Even with additional background checks, however,
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The bill she signed Friday mandates that every adult applicant to the shelter disclose any criminal convictions or pending charges for 'serious crimes.' It also directs the state to
obtain criminal records for each applicant before placing them into emergency housing.
It calls for the Healey administration to create rules limiting or excluding from the system
those convicted of or facing charges for serious crimes.
Before Healey changed state policy on background checks, shelter providers conducted CORI checks at their own discretion, according to Davis' report; the results were not shared with or documented by state housing officials.
The state added CORI checks to its own intake teams' responsibility in mid-January. But even when the state has 'flagged' someone because they have a criminal record, state officials have not shared the details with the on-site shelter providers. Instead, they receive what the report called a 'general restrictive placement flag without details on severity' of the criminal record.
In one instance, shelter staff saw someone placed at the site wearing a court-ordered ankle bracelet, and only learned after the fact that the person was facing gun possession charges, the report said.
Davis recommended the state share more detailed information about someone's criminal history with on-site staff, among other changes.
'It's very difficult for them to do their job if they're not fully informed on where the potential threats are,' he said.
He also recommended the state create standard visitor management policies, such as 'ID scanning,' and ensure those in shelters have resident identification badges.
In a statement, Healey said her administration is 'ready to get to work' in implementing both Davis' recommendations and the changes included in the spending bill.
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The now-law will cut the amount of time
families can stay in the emergency shelter system from nine months to six months, and will cap the number of families allowed in the system by the end of the year to 4,000 — down from 7,500 now — for all of 2026.
As of Thursday, 5,628 families were staying in emergency shelters across the state, according to
Of those, the state was housing roughly 2,062 in hotels and motels, a practice Healey has
The bill Healey signed Friday limits families to six consecutive months in the system; it allows so-called hardship waivers for a range of families, including those with children under 6, veterans, or family members who have a disability.
The system is
In a statement Friday, the Massachusetts Republican Party argued the bill 'does nothing to stem the flow of migrants into the state,' nor does it help make shelters safer.
'This is yet another example of Democrats prioritizing politics over public safety and fiscal responsibility,' MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale said.
Matt Stout can be reached at