Around New England

Massachusetts Officials May Start Turning Away Families Seeking Emergency Shelter This Week In Midst of Migrant Surge

November 1, 2023

State officials can start turning away families from emergencies shelters when they run out of space, now that a state judge has denied a request to force the state to provide places for them to live.

That may happen as soon as this week.

State law in Massachusetts requires the state government to provide “emergency housing assistance” to “needy families with children and pregnant wom[e] n with no other children.” Then-Governor Michael Dukakis signed the bill into law in October 1983.

But Governor Maura Healey has capped the number at 7,500 families, saying the state doesn’t have room for more.

A surge in illegal immigrants in Massachusetts is taking up the state’s available emergency shelters.

Healey declared a state of emergency on August 8 “due to rapidly rising numbers of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts in need of shelter and services and a severe lack of shelter availability in the state.”

Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston sued the state to try to get a judge to force the state to provide emergency shelters beyond the 7,500 cap.

But Suffolk Superior Court Judge Debra Squires-Lee said in a ruling Wednesday, November 1 that she can not “prohibit the Executive from exercising its discretionary authority to manage this emergency assistance program within the limits of the funding that has been appropriated” and that “it would be inappropriate to order EOHLC to continue providing emergency shelter it does not have the resources appropriated by the Legislature to fund,” according to State House News Service.

EOHLC stands for the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which administers the shelter system.

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