As Massachusetts buckles under the strain of housing, feeding and finding work for the state’s migrant influx and homeless, the House is weighing in with its own ideas of how to solve, or at least stem, the crisis.
The result is a skillful rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
As the Herald reported, the House plans to vote on legislation Wednesday that limits families’ time in state-run shelters to nine months unless they are employed or in job training.
The nine-month limit on shelter stays, which can be extended by three months if a person has a job or is enrolled in a work training program, will help exit both migrants and locals in a “timely manner after receiving ample support aimed at helping them to successfully enter the workforce,” said House Speaker Mariano said.
One problem: The right to shelter law remains intact.
While the meter’s ticking on a migrant family in a state shelter, ready to run out at nine (or 12) months, there are other migrants arriving right behind them who’ll need shelter ASAP. It does little good to establish last call if the bar stays open and free all night. Expect a crowded house.
Top Democrats proposed keeping the nine-month shelter stay limit in place until April 1, 2025 or when the Healey administration’s 7,500 family cap on the system is lifted, according to the text of the bill. It’s optimistic to believe that the cap will lift if there are no changes to the right to shelter law. People are still making the journey to the United States, whether seeking a better life, fleeing war, poverty, or, in the case of criminals, looking for a fresh place to do business. And Massachusetts is great for migrants — one can get a drivers license, get food and shelter and have the state help secure job training and possibly employment. Who wouldn’t want to come here?
Of course, the House plan shovels more money at the problem. Mariano wants his chamber to approve an additional $245 million to respond to an influx of migrant and local families seeking shelter,. On the bright side for Greater Boston, House Dems also want Healey to set up state-funded overflow shelter sites in “geographically diverse areas.” It’s only fair that other communities be “selected” for the task.
But is nine months enough? Jeff Thielman, the CEO of International Institute of New England, a resettlement agency, said “For many families it’s going to be too aggressive of a timeline unless they have enough job training, English training, and support finding housing.”
What if it isn’t? Will Healey give them the heave-ho anyway?
The Senate plans to weigh in. Senate budget writer Michael Rodrigues said the Senate will “take a good look” at the House proposal “and react with our own proposal.”
“Providing this assistance to migrant families is very expensive,” he told the Herald. “But I think there’s a lot of interest in trying to be creative in how we deal with that situation.”
Bottom line: something’s got to give – and it can’t continue to be whatever dwindling pandemic funds are left, or money that has to come from state programs to fill in the revenue gaps.
