Massachusetts Democrats slammed Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Kennealy for what they argued was his failure to reform the state’s right-to-shelter legislation or put in place safety checks throughout his tenure as housing and financial growth secretary below former Gov. Charlie Baker.
The criticism leveled on the 57-year-old from Lexington got here a day after he informed the Herald that he personally warned Gov. Maura Healey about rising demand for emergency shelter throughout a November 2022 transition assembly between the Healey and Baker administrations.
However Massachusetts Democratic Social gathering Chair Steve Kerrigan stated Kennealy dropped the ball on shelter reforms when he was in command of the state company that largely oversaw this system.
“Mike Kennealy managed the shelter system for four years, and he should explain why he refused to conduct CORI criminal background checks on people, did not impose a residency requirement, and allowed people to stay in the shelter system for as much as eight years. And he never once proposed a change to the right to shelter law,” Kerrigan stated in an announcement Thursday.
Logan Trupiano, a spokesperson for Kennealy, stated Kerrigan “has it confused,” and it was Helaey who “ignored” calls to amend the right-to-shelter legislation.
“Steve should read the 1,000 ‘serious incident reports’ that Healey either actively hid from the public or was entirely oblivious to. This spin would be laughable if her mishandling of the crisis weren’t so grossly negligent,” Trupiano stated in an announcement that referred to a sequence of studies launched earlier this 12 months.
In an interview this week, Kennealy stated he met in individual with Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll in 2022 to debate urgent points his govt company was coping with, together with the spike in shelter demand. However he stated “nothing really happened” after he spoke with the 2 incoming elected officers.
“Her claim that no one could have seen this crisis coming, I think, is absurd. I mean, I warned her directly,” Kennealy beforehand stated in a cellphone name. “The warning signs were everywhere. I think, for whatever reason, they chose to ignore them.”
These aware of Healey’s transition into the Governor’s Workplace have refuted Kennealy’s account of the assembly, telling the Herald he solely targeted on the necessity for money to increase shelter capability and didn’t provide recommendation on coverage to reform this system.
Earlier than an unrelated occasion Thursday afternoon, Healey didn’t handle her dialog with Kennealy when pressed by the Herald.
“I can speak to what I inherited when I took office. When we took office, I inherited a shelter system that was in crisis, that wasn’t equipped to handle the growing surge. I took reforms. I took action, including reforming the right-to-shelter law, establishing residency requirements and wait times, and also instituting criminal background checks,” she stated.
Kennealy was the top of the previous Govt Workplace of Housing and Financial Improvement, the company that oversaw emergency shelter help shelters arrange below the state’s right-to-shelter legislation. Healey break up the company into two throughout his first 12 months in workplace.
The decades-old statute requires state officers to offer non permanent housing to homeless households with kids and pregnant ladies, although Healey and different Beacon Hill Democrats have put in place myriad restrictions on who can entry the system.
Demand for fast shelter began to spike in August 2022 as migrants from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Haiti began to reach in Massachusetts.
Baker, who was serving his last months as governor, repeatedly warned state lawmakers that money was working out to maintain increasing emergency help shelter capability. Legislators didn’t act on a $139 million invoice Baker filed in November handy additional cash to the system.
In a letter earlier this month, Healey’s administration argued Kennealy and Baker left them with an emergency help shelter system that “was flawed from the outset and simply not set up to handle the growing number of families entering the system.”
This system had no residency necessities, capability limits, waitlists, immigration conditions, size of keep limits, prison background checks, or necessities to reveal previous prison convictions earlier than entry, and was more and more reliant on expensive accommodations and motels, in line with the letter.
The Healey administration and Democrats within the Legislature have since carried out insurance policies addressing all these areas after going through intense criticism for shuttling tons of of tens of millions into this system amid a spike in migrants arriving in Massachusetts.
Healey has additionally confronted pushback for a sequence of significant safety incidents in state-run shelters, just like the arrest of 1 immigrant at a Revere shelter who was in america illegally and allegedly discovered with an assault rifle and a fentanyl stash value $1 million.
Kerrigan stated Kennealy’s solely response to a surge of households in search of shelter “was to ask for millions more in taxpayer funding and send people into hotels.”
“Mike Kennealy failed to lower housing costs and failed to reform the shelter system. That lack of leadership is not surprising from a person who wouldn’t even make a choice for president in the last three elections,” Kerrigan stated.
Holly Robichaud — a strategist working for Brian Shortsleeve, Kennealy’s probably opponent within the Republican gubernatorial major subsequent 12 months — stated the “migrant housing crisis” started on Kennealy’s watch.
“Healey didn’t inherit a broken system, she just followed the Kennealy playbook that kept voters in the dark even as their tax dollars were being used as migrant magnets. This is why Republicans can’t beat Healey with Kennealy,” Robichaud stated in an announcement.
Trupiano, Kennealy’s spokesperson, shot again.
“Brian Shortsleeve’s campaign not only sounds like the Democrat Party he has helped fund to the tune of over $90,000 — but is equally as ignorant to the (Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s) finding that Maura Healey alone bears responsibility for the migrant crisis,” Trupiano stated, referring to a report DiZoglio launched this week on Healey’s dealing with of the shelter system.
