Gov. Maura Healey banned migrant households from sleeping at Logan Airport beginning July 9, a transfer that can drive the oftentimes massive crowd that has used the airport as a shelter to seek out new locations to sleep, she introduced in a press release Friday.
Healey mentioned the choice to bar folks from sleeping on the ground of the airport comes as an overflow shelter at a former jail in Norfolk opened this week and administration officers traveled to the southern border to warn folks of a shelter scarcity right here.
Scott Rice, a Nationwide Guard veteran overseeing the state’s emergency shelter system, mentioned prohibiting households from sleeping on the airport is within the “best interest” of the households, vacationers, and workers.
“The airport is not an appropriate place for people to seek shelter,” he mentioned in a press release. “The administration has worked diligently in recent months to increase the number of families leaving shelter into more stable housing. With this progress, the recent opening of a new safety-net site in Norfolk and the new nine-month length of stay policy, we are now in a position to end the practice of families staying overnight in the airport.”
Migrants have been sleeping on the airport for months, a state of affairs that has precipitated concern amongst officers who oversee and run the airport. The Massachusetts Port Authority Board issued a press release in October urging the federal authorities to supply Massachusetts assist.
Households sleeping on the airport will probably be provided transportation to the overflow shelter websites, together with the previous jail in Norfolk that opened this week and may home as much as 140 households, the Healey administration mentioned.
“Staff on-site at Logan will work with families to inform them of this new policy and their options, including helping them secure transportation to another location where they have family or another option for a safe place to stay,” the Healey administration mentioned.
A spokesperson for Massport declined to touch upon the choice.
A speedy enhance within the variety of migrants arriving in Massachusetts over the previous 12 months rapidly overwhelmed state-funded shelters right here and prompted officers to broaden the community by means of accommodations and motels.
However as migrants continued to reach and Healey carried out a 7,500-family restrict on the shelter system, some new arrivals discovered themselves with nowhere to remain however the flooring of Logan Airport. Overflow shelters have opened throughout the state however these too have rapidly crammed up.
Healey has turned to an ever-increasing set of strict measures to curtail demand on the shelter system, together with a nine-month restrict on households’ keep in shelters and a requirement that households reapply for overflow shelter each month.
There have been 7,463 households within the emergency shelter system as of Thursday, in accordance with state knowledge.
