Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration supplied a written warning to Gov. Maura Healey a couple of surge of migrants and dwindling state shelter capability in November 2022, or months earlier than she took workplace, in line with a transition doc accredited by Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Kennealy when he was secretary of state.
The heads-up largely centered on the necessity to broaden shelter capability and supply extra funding to the emergency help program. It additionally painted a bleak image of a wrestle to construct sufficient housing as the price of residing was placing Massachusetts at a “significant disadvantage.”
The doc — which was obtained by the Herald after the Healey administration refused to launch it by way of a public data request and subsequent enchantment — stated the variety of households in emergency help shelter had been “increasing steadily” since September 2021.
“However, more recently, starting in June 2022, there was a significant surge in new asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants seeking EA shelter, many of whom have presented as in need of assistance at Boston Medical Center,” the doc stated.
In a Nov. 9, 2022 memo included within the transition doc, former Housing and Neighborhood Improvement undersecretary Jennifer Maddox stated the rise in emergency shelter demand was an “issue caused by national and international factors that are outside agency control.”
“Additional funding may be necessary to support efforts to expand emergency assistance shelter capacity,” Maddox stated within the memo.
The inclusion of the burgeoning shelter disaster within the doc, Kennealy’s declare that he personally warned Healey throughout a gathering that very same month, and a December 2022 public letter to state lawmakers on the subject present the governor had ample discover when she took workplace about a difficulty that will dominate the primary half of her four-year time period.
Apart from acknowledging that the shelter system was almost at capability on the finish of Baker’s time period, Kennealy and Maddox supplied no main suggestions to additional put together Massachusetts for a pointy spike in demand that will observe months into Healey’s first yr.
However Ed Augustus, Healey’s housing secretary, argued earlier this yr that few individuals may have predicted the “once in a lifetime surge in shelter demand” that will finally see roughly 7,600 homeless households housed in a community of emergency shelters throughout the state.
“(The administration) strongly rejects the suggestion that it should have foreseen what was, in fact, a historically unprecedented increase in demand for emergency assistance shelter services driven by international and national forces far beyond EOHLC’s control,” Augustus stated in a letter responding to Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s audit of the shelter system.
Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for Healey, stated the governor “inherited a disaster of a shelter system” from Kennealy, whose “only recommendations were to increase spending and increase the use of hotels.”
“Gov. Healey is the one who took action to implement a length of stay limit, mandate criminal background checks, require residents to prove Massachusetts residency and lawful immigration status, and get families out of hotels,” Hand stated in a press release to the Herald Monday afternoon.
Logan Trupiano, a spokesperson for Kennealy’s 2026 marketing campaign for governor, stated the Lexington native made clear throughout a transition assembly with Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll “that the right-to-shelter law needed to be addressed.”
“At the time, Democratic leaders in the Legislature informed the Baker administration that they had no interest in working on the issue, and would only engage with the incoming administration,” Trupiano stated in a press release to the Herald.
Baker unsuccessfully tried to steer Beacon Hill Democrats to approve a spending invoice with tens of millions in further funding for the state-run shelter system amid a surge of households arriving in Massachusetts from Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, and Ukraine.
Lawmakers by no means superior the invoice within the ultimate days of the 2021-2022 legislative time period. However months later, legislative leaders accredited an analogous spending invoice from Healey that included $130 million for the shelter program.
Healey acquired advance discover of a rising shelter disaster
Healey declared a state of emergency due to an absence of shelter area and inflow of migrants on Aug. 8, 2023, or roughly a yr after Maddox supplied one of many first alerts to the incoming Democratic governor and months after approving extra funds for the shelter system.
Maddox stated the emergency help household shelter system, which was created beneath a Nineteen Eighties legislation to deal with homeless households with youngsters and pregnant ladies, was already at lower than 1% emptiness as of November 2022.
“Given these recent trends, (the Department of Housing and Community Development) has had to turn to temporary hotel shelter sites over the past few weeks to ensure the state can shelter eligible families,” Maddox stated. “Efforts are underway across state agencies to bring on additional shelter capacity through the use of vacant state assets and other underutilized properties.”
The choice to make use of motels and motels as short-term shelter websites would show pricey for Massachusetts taxpayers.
Housing households in state-funded resort and motel shelters may typically run lots of of {dollars} an evening, in line with state contracts, and the Healey administration loaded tens of millions onto taxpayer-funded bank cards to shortly buy resort rooms for homeless households.
Healey introduced the tip to the state of emergency final week and that the ultimate resort shelter within the state had closed.
Over the roughly two-year interval, the governor and Beacon Hill Democrats accredited restrictive insurance policies that barred massive teams of individuals from accessing state shelters in an try and convey down prices amid excessive demand.
However her administration spent $894 million on the emergency help program in fiscal yr 2024 and one other $940 million in fiscal yr 2025, although the ultimate tab for the final fiscal yr is nonetheless anticipated to extend by tens of tens of millions.
Housing scarcity, underinvestment
Kennealy and Maddox additionally supplied a now-familiar tackle Massachusetts’ housing and rental market within the transition doc — rental emptiness charges have been low, housing manufacturing was stalling out, and the price of residing within the state was steadily rising.
“Talent is now more mobile than ever and the cost of living is a significant disadvantage as Massachusetts competes with peer states,” Kennealy wrote within the first pages of the doc. “Home values and rents are among the highest in the country; inadequate production has contributed to estimated shortage of up to 200,000 units; and other major metro areas are permitting a lot more housing than Massachusetts.”
Maddox stated state-aided public housing models constructed 40 to 70 years in the past have been ageing after years of underinvestment and had “significant capital needs.”
“Additional funds and or/procurement relief will be necessary over the next two decades in order to preserve this unique asset of 43,270 permanently affordable, state-aided public housing units, which house a significant portion of the Commonwealth’s (extremely low income) population,” Maddox wrote.
The Baker administration stated Healey had a number of key selections to make in her first yr, together with whether or not to allocate money for the preservation and “repositioning” of state-aided public housing and discover a option to enhance general housing manufacturing within the state.
The primary-term Democrat did shepherd a $5.2 billion borrowing invoice to passage final yr that she argued is the state’s most “ambitious” try and beat again crushing housing prices and enhance accessibility for residents throughout the state.
That invoice additionally included $2 billion in authorizations to make enhancements at state-aided public housing, together with $150 million to decarbonize public housing and $15 million for “accessibility upgrades.”
The Healey administration budgeted $157 million in fiscal yr 2025 for enhancements.
Doc beneath wraps
Prime officers at Healey’s Government Workplace of Financial Improvement acknowledged that they had the transition doc however declined to supply a replica in response to a Herald public data request.
Robert McGovern, a data entry officer on the company, stated the memo contained detailed evaluation, opinions, and proposals associated to “numerous policy matters” confronting the varied officers beneath Kennealy’s supervision.
The doc, McGovern argued, helped “facilitate the transition of power of the highest elected office of the Commonwealth and inform decision-makers from the incoming Healey administration of various ongoing policy matters that they would face upon taking office.”
“It is a high-level strategic planning document designed to provide advice about how to best utilize time and resources over the course of an administration and to inform future policy decisions,” McGovern stated to the Secretary of State’s Workplace in response to an enchantment from the Herald to achieve entry to the doc.
McGovern additionally stated that “as far as we are aware, no gubernatorial administration in Massachusetts has ever before treated this kind of transition memo from its predecessors as subject to disclosure under the Public Records Law.”
“To ensure that each outgoing administration offers that level of cooperation and candor, and to promote the public interest in a smooth transition of power, this kind of transition memorandum should not be disclosed,” McGovern stated.
Nancy Lane/Boston Herald
Gov. Maura Healey (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)
