Latest news with #RighttoShelterLaw
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mass. to shutter all hotel shelters by summer, Gov. Healey says
Pointing to dropping case loads, the state will close its remaining hotel shelters this summer, the Healey administration said Monday. The hotel shelters were among the visible manifestations of the state's budget-busting shelter crisis, which was exacerbated by a flood of migrant new arrivals. The administration did not provide an exact date for when the remaining 32 hotel shelters would close. But Healey's office did say that it reversed a previous mandate ordering the facilities closed by year's end. 'When we took office, homeless families were being placed in hotel shelters across the state,' Healey said in a statement. 'A hotel is no place to raise a family, and they are the least cost-effective. That's why we implemented reforms to lower caseloads and the cost of the shelter system,' the Democratic governor continued. 'We also promised to close all hotel shelters by the end of the year. I'm pleased that we are ahead of schedule, with more families getting jobs and moving to stable housing.' As of Monday, there were a total of 4,437 families being served by the state's emergency shelter system, according to a state dashboard. Nearly all of those families (3,382), a mix of full-time state residents and migrant new arrivals, were in a traditional shelter setting, the data show. The balance (1,055 families) were in hotels, according to state data. That tally is well down from a system that was once so swollen with people that the state had to impose a mandatory 7,500-family cap. Even with those declining numbers, the state had nonetheless spent $700 million on the system through mid-April, data showed. In its statement Monday, Healey's office pointed to reforms it had proposed and for which it had won legislative authorization as it sought to contain costs. Those included a 6-month cap on shelter stays, workforce training and job placement efforts for residents, and increased efforts to help families find stable housing, Healey's office said. The system is expected to drop below 4,000 families this summer, six months ahead of schedule, Healey's office said. 'Closing hotel shelters is essential to making sure that families are set up for success and to save our state hundreds of millions of dollars a year,' Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said. Even with those reductions, the shelter system remains a flashpoint for legislative Republicans and the GOP hopefuls who are vying for the chance to challenge Healey for reelection next year. One of those Republican candidates, former Baker administration housing czar Mike Kennealy, told MassLive last week that the state needs to amend its four-decade-old Right to Shelter Law to limit it to Massachusetts residents only. Even with the fixes that have been implemented, the system is unsustainable as it exists now, Kennealy argued. Brian Shortsleeve, who ran the MBTA during the Baker era, also is seeking the GOP nod for governor in 2026. He has vowed to cut what he described as runaway state spending, to rein in the state's shelter crisis, and '[make] Massachusetts affordable again.' Biden's cancer renews debate about prostate screenings for older men 'Holy Toledo': Here's why Trump's 'historically productive' presidency could all be undone Trump can revoke protected status of 350K migrants, Supreme Court says One thing is helping Trump's approval rating, New York Times poll indicates Meet the Mass. lawmaker marshaling the resistance to Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' Read the original article on MassLive.
USA Today
06-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
House Democrats restrict shelter eligibility, tighten security in $425M bill
Colin A. Young State House News Service AI-assisted summary The Massachusetts House is expected to pass a $425 million bill to address the state's emergency shelter crisis. The bill includes new restrictions on eligibility for shelter, including a six-month limit and a residency requirement. It also mandates stricter security measures, such as background checks for all adult applicants. The $425 million bill the House is expected to pass Thursday would give the Healey administration new, but temporary, authority to restrict eligibility for state emergency shelters and new permanent mandates aimed at tightening security at the shelters where more than 6,000 families are currently living. House Democrats released a bill Wednesday designed to fund the maxed-out emergency assistance (EA) system through the end of June while also imposing a new six-month limit on how long families can stay in shelters as well as a rigid cap on the number of families the state will serve in 2026 -- no more than 4,000 at a time, a one-third cut from the caseload as of Jan. 30 (6,012 families). The administration had previously said its goal is to reduce the system's caseload to 4,000 families by June 2026. "By creating stricter eligibility requirements, along with increased security measures, this supplemental budget is the latest iteration of the House's continued commitment to protecting vulnerable children and families in Massachusetts in a fiscally sustainable manner," House Speaker Ronald Mariano said in a statement. Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in August 2023 as an influx of migrants and thousands of families of Bay Staters sought the shelter that Massachusetts by law provides to families and pregnant women. Caseloads shot up from the typical 3,500 families to peak at 7,500 and the system swelled from about $350 million annually to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion in recent years. The Ways and Means Committee had been weighing Healey's spending plan since Jan. 9 and the governor made additional proposals to reform the 1983 Right to Shelter Law in a Jan. 15 letter to top lawmakers. The half-billion dollars in direct appropriations and one-time funds that lawmakers have already approved for the EA system in fiscal 2025 ran out Jan. 31 and the administration has said it will not be have money to pay bills that come due until more funding is approved. The House bill would draw the $425 million from the state's Transitional Escrow Fund, a reserve fund created initially as a stash for a state budget surplus that has taken on greater significance in state finance over the last few years. Healey's office has said using money from that account can shield programs in the regular state budget from the possibility of shelter-affected cuts. Nineteen members of the 31-person House Ways and Means Committee voted to advance the bill Wednesday while five voted against and one representative reserved their rights. Six members of the committee did not vote at all. Chairman Aaron Michlewitz's office said he would not be available Wednesday to discuss his recommendation to spend $425 million and make sweeping changes to a significant state program. Mariano's office said the committee bill adopts the administration's recommendation around so-called presumptive eligibility by allowing the state to verify eligibility for shelter benefits during the application process by "requiring applicants to prove Massachusetts residency and an intent to stay in Massachusetts by providing certain documentation." The administration has said that a "presumptive eligibility" mandate was added to the EA system line item in 2005 requiring the state to place families into shelter based on self-attestations of eligibility. Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz and Housing Secretary Edward Augustus said last week that roughly half of all families that apply for shelter "are determined to be ineligible for the benefit based on their initial application materials and prior to being placed in the system" and that the state's conservative estimate is that at least 6% of families are determined to be ineligible after being placed presumptively based on initial information they provided. Officials said they were confident that removing that language and reverting to the prior practice of requiring pre-placement verification of eligibility for most families would "further reduce demand" on the system. The cost of one month of "presumptive eligibility" in the EA shelter system is between $10,000 and $15,000 per family, the secretaries said. The House bill also gives the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities the authority to "require benefits to be provided only to families who are residents of Massachusetts and who are United States citizens; persons lawfully admitted for permanent residence; or otherwise permanently residing under the color of law in the U.S.," the speaker's office said, but also requires that temporary respite sites be made available to non-eligible families for up to 30 days upon arrival in Massachusetts. There are also measures to reduce the maximum length in an EA shelter from nine to six consecutive months, and to remove the availability of two 90-day extensions for certain situations. EOHLC would be allowed, under the House bill, to deem families that have income exceeding 200% of the Federal Poverty Level for three consecutive months to be no longer eligible for shelter benefits. While the governor's team told the House that its proposed reforms "should be permanent," the eligibility changes the House seeks would be temporary since they would be effectuated by amending the fiscal year 2025 budget. "Over the past several years, as the population of the emergency shelter system has grown, the House has attempted to uphold the Commonwealth's right to shelter law while also being mindful of the long-term fiscal sustainability of the program," Michlewitz said in a statement. "The reforms contained in this proposal will ensure that right to shelter is maintained by further capping the length of stay and verifying eligibility, while also enacting stricter background checks on those who enter the shelter system to better protect the families who need these services the most." One Corner Office proposal that the House did not adopt would have explicitly required that the situation or incident that made a family eligible for EA shelter benefits occurred in Massachusetts. Currently, families can be eligible based on several types of no-fault eviction or if they are in a housing situation "not meant for human habitation" -- but there is nothing imposing a geographic limit on those criteria. About one-third of families that applied for EA benefits in the last six months said on their applications that they did not live in Massachusetts at some point within the 90 days prior to their application, Gorzkowicz and Augustus wrote to lawmakers last week. The administration said making the geographic requirement explicit would be in line with the original intent of the state's 1983 Right to Shelter law, which "aimed to address homelessness occurring in Massachusetts and impacting Massachusetts residents." "[W]e have seen numerous instances in which applications for shelter were based on homelessness that occurred in one of our border states," the secretaries said, adding that 4% of families that leave the EA system transition directly to housing in another state. On the safety front, the House bill proposes to require that each individual adult applicant or beneficiary in the EA system disclose all prior criminal convictions in Massachusetts and any other jurisdiction, except for convictions that are sealed or were expunged. It also would require CORI background checks for each individual adult applicant or beneficiary prior to shelter placement. The Healey administration imposed a new background check policy on Jan. 27. The House bill also directs EOHLC to permanently require each adult applicant or beneficiary that joins a family in the EA system to provide notice, and EOHLC would be required to review all information necessary to verify the individual's eligibility. Mariano's office said the security-related measures included in the House bill would be permanent changes to the EA system. The House bill drew a rebuke from the Mass. Fiscal Alliance, a group largely aligned with President Donald Trump that last week called on the state to do away with the EA system entirely. The group said the House bill was "an unserious solution to a very serious problem" and would be ineffective unless it authorized state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement authorities, an idea that the House has never embraced. "The Speaker claimed to have offered some 'reforms' which are just carry over ideas from what Governor Healey proposed in her letter to lawmakers last month, including asking applicants to self-declare any past criminal convictions," spokesman Paul Craney said. "Asking criminals, many of whom we cannot verify the identity of in the first place, to self-declare past crimes will not work and is no substitute for allowing ICE to cooperate with state resources." The House plans to gavel in at 11 a.m. Thursday and told representatives to be ready for roll call votes starting at 1 p.m. House Democrats plan to caucus at 12 p.m., and Mariano and Michlewitz usually speak to reporters after that closed-door meeting. Before the shelter system can be recapitalized, the spending bill will also have to clear the Senate, be reconciled into a final compromise version (if necessary), and be signed by the governor.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Healey deputies respond to House shelter inquiry
BOSTON (SHNS) – The Healey administration provided House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz with a trove of information and documents about the state's emergency assistance system and Gov. Maura Healey's proposed reforms, but the detailed letter did not answer some of the chairman's pressing questions, including about the amount by which her plan would 'bring down the costs' of the maxed-out shelter program. Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz and Housing Secretary Edward Augustus responded to Michlewitz's Jan. 22 request for more information Monday night with a seven-page letter and 16 pages of attachments, including a copy of a new background check policy that the administration put into effect Monday. The letter details the steps the administration has taken in recent years to respond to an influx of migrants that pushed the shelter system to its limits and addresses many of the questions Michlewitz said his committee would need answered before it could act on Healey's $425 million shelter mini-budget (H 51). 'The goal of this work has always been to return the system from a peak of 7,500 families back to sustainable and historical levels and, at present, we are trending in that direction. Our recent proposals seek to build on this progress,' Gorzkowicz and Augustus wrote. '[W]e are confident that the changes we have proposed align with the original intent of the Right to Shelter Law, protect the long-term fiscal sustainability of the shelter system, support cities and towns in addressing the needs of unhoused families, and help ensure the safety of shelter recipients and their communities.' The secretaries said the governor's proposals 'should be permanent and effective prospectively.' The Ways and Means Committee has been weighing Healey's spending plan since Jan. 9 and the governor made additional proposals to reform the 1983 Right to Shelter Law in a Jan. 15 letter to top lawmakers. The administration and Michlewitz have both acknowledged that time is of the essence — Gorzkowicz said last week that existing funding for the shelter system is due to run out on Jan. 31, give or take a week. While the letter provided the Ways and Means chairman with a greater level of detail and answers to some of what he asked, some key questions went unanswered. The administration did not provide answers to questions Michlewitz asked about the potential for financial savings from Healey's proposed reforms, the current operations of the overflow shelter system, U.S. citizens in the system who are not Massachusetts residents, or the background check procedures in place before the governor announced changes on Jan. 15. Michlewitz's office did not respond when asked whether the chairman was satisfied with the administration's response. The chairman forwarded the administration's letter to fellow House members Tuesday afternoon and told them he looked forward 'to continue working with all of you in the near future on this critical issue.' It appears the soonest the governor's shelter supplemental budget could come before the House is next week, when funding for the system is projected to be down to its final days. House Speaker Ronald Mariano's office told representatives Tuesday afternoon that Thursday's House session will be an informal one, after having told them Friday to prepare for a potential formal session — the kind where a spending bill could emerge. Among the details included in the administration's Monday letter: the EA system is currently seeing between 15 and 20 families applying for shelter each day, down from 30 to 40 families per day in the fall of 2023; December saw over 600 exits from the EA system, the highest monthly total in the last decade; and there are now fewer than 55 hotels being used for EA shelter, down from a high of more than 100. The letter details the administration's proposal to remove a 'presumptive eligibility' mandate that was added to the emergency assistance system line item in 2005. The secretaries said the mandate was not part of the shelter law before then and requires the state to place families into shelter based on self-attestations of eligibility. It does not allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to verify eligibility requirements prior to placement, including a family's identity, proof of familial relationship to children, eligible immigration status, Massachusetts residency, income and assets, and reason for secretaries said that roughly half of all families that apply for shelter 'are determined to be ineligible for the benefit based on their initial application materials and prior to being placed in the system' and that the state's conservative estimate is that at least 6% of families are determined to be ineligible after being placed presumptively based on initial information they provided. The cost of one month of 'presumptive eligibility' in the EA shelter system is between $10,000 and $15,000 per family, they said.'We propose to return to the original intent of the Right to Shelter Law by removing the 'presumptive eligibility' mandate from the line item and reverting to the prior practice of requiring pre-placement verification of eligibility for most families. We recommend empowering EOHLC to waive pre-placement verification on a case-by-case basis where a family reasonably lacks the necessary documentation at the time of application, such as in cases involving homelessness due to natural disaster or domestic violence,' Gorzkowicz and Augustus wrote to Michlewitz. 'EOHLC is confident that this change to 'presumptive eligibility' will further reduce demand on the EA system by allowing EOHLC to make necessary ineligibility determinations prior to the provision of benefits.'The secretaries' letter to Michlewitz also touched on the thinking behind Healey's proposal to change some of the core eligibility criteria for the EA system. Right now, families can be eligible for shelter based on several types of no-fault eviction or if they are in a housing situation 'not meant for human habitation' — but there is nothing imposing a geographic limit on those criteria, which means people who lost a home in another state could come to Massachusetts to get state one-third of families that applied for EA benefits in the last six months said on their applications that they did not live in Massachusetts at some point within the 90 days prior to their application, Gorzkowicz and Augustus wrote, and 'we have seen numerous instances in which applications for shelter were based on homelessness that occurred in one of our border states.' The secretaries said 4% of families that leave the EA system transition directly to housing in another state.'Once again, we believe that the existing language in the line item diverges from the original intent of the law, which aimed to address homelessness occurring in Massachusetts and impacting Massachusetts residents,' they wrote. 'We therefore propose, consistent with the original intent of the law, to amend these two eligibility criteria to require that an eligible no-fault eviction or unsafe housing situation occur in Massachusetts.'Augustus and Gorzkowicz said that eligibility for EA shelter benefits has 'consistently required individuals in shelter to demonstrate Massachusetts residence' but they said the state has been 'constrained in its ability to enforce the residency requirement' by the presumptive eligibility mandate. The governor's proposal is to add a 'bona fide residence' requirement in the EA line item, consistent with language that was in place until 2022 and language that remains in state regulations.'This approach aligns with the law's original intent by restoring the statutory requirement of residency and reverting to the historical practice of verifying residency prior to placement. If our proposed change becomes law, individuals would be able to prove residency through the types of documentation on Attachment C or by showing physical presence in Massachusetts for a period of three months, tracked from the first day of documentable presence in the state.' Mostly Republican lawmakers last year made unsuccessful efforts to impose a six-month Massachusetts residency requirement for shelter applicants and some have indicated they will seek similar requirements this session. Democrat Sen. Michael Rodrigues said this month that he thought a proposed residency requirement 'raises constitutional issues,' but did not foreclose considering secretaries said the law distinguishes between 'bona fide residence' and 'durational residence' requirements, with 'bona fide residence' requirements generally conditioning eligibility for a benefit on simple proof of state residency while 'durational residence' requirements unconditionally predicate eligibility on proof of a certain period of continuous physical presence in the state. The latter, they said, 'often trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny and, in some cases, have been struck down as unconstitutional.' All family members looking to stay in a state shelter would also have to prove their lawful U.S. residency under the governor's proposal, unless a child in the family already has lawful residence. Currently, only one member of the family unit must show citizenship or lawful presence.'For purposes of this proposal, a 'family' would be defined in accordance with 760 CMR 67.02, which treats a 'family' as a household with parents, stepparents or caretaker relatives and a child younger than 21 years of age, or a household with a pregnant woman without any children. Under our proposal, the entirety of a family with a child with lawful status would be eligible for benefits,' the secretaries wrote. 'In all other cases, a person's lack of lawful status would make only that particular person ineligible for shelter benefits.' The administration also wrote in its letter to Michlewitz that it does 'not anticipate that any of our proposed changes would result in a meaningful displacement of children currently enrolled in school districts this school year' and said it intends to continue funding school aid at the $104-per-student rate in the fiscal 2025 budget, including for districts taking on children in the EA system. The impact of President Donald Trump's recent immigration-focused executive orders on the EA system are still being assessed along with the attorney general's office, the administration said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
