Gov. Maura Healey’s “cruel” emergency shelter restrictions will drive households to decide on between sleeping in unsafe environments and making themselves ineligible for future shelter, advocates mentioned exterior the State Home on Monday.
“The Healey-Driscoll administration’s decision to shorten our emergency shelter stay to five days is cruel and it’s short-sighted. It is placing the burden on desperate, hardworking families and turning them into scapegoats for the state’s inability to create safe and stable housing that’s affordable for regular people,” household medication physician Anita Mathews mentioned at a rally on Monday.
The brand new guidelines — the most recent improvement within the effort by Healey to handle the tide of homeless households searching for state-funded shelter — units up a five-day cap on how lengthy folks can keep in overflow websites. Households who select to make use of a type of short-term shelter areas after Aug. 1 will then additionally want to attend not less than six months to qualify for placement in a extra long-term emergency help shelter.
Moreover, the brand new rules prioritize households who’ve been within the state longer over newly arrived migrants fleeing political and financial crises in different nations, by inserting households greater up on the listing to qualify for shelter if they’re homeless due to a no-fault eviction, have not less than one member who’s a veteran, or are homeless “because of sudden or unusual circumstances in Massachusetts beyond their control, such as a flood or fire,” the governor’s workplace mentioned.
Healey’s tightening grip on the system has led to folks sleeping on the road or in vehicles with younger kids, emergency rooms inundated with households searching for a spot to spend the night time, and even some moms buying and selling intercourse for a spot for them and their kids to remain, advocates mentioned on Monday.
Requested by reporters in regards to the rally throughout an unrelated press convention, Healey mentioned there wouldn’t be any modifications to the coverage.
“Let me say, this budget that I just signed includes $326 million for emergency shelter. That is important. It’s important that people who are unhoused or who come on hard times, either because of an eviction or because of job loss or because of a medical issue, that we’re able to support them. Victims of domestic violence, our veteran community, children, we are going to continue to do that, and that’s funded through the budget,” she mentioned.
Healey defended the brand new restrictions, saying that the shelter system doesn’t have “unlimited capacity.”
