Around New England

Maura Healey’s Administration To ‘Reticket’ Migrants In Emergency Shelters Out of Massachusetts, Report Says

August 8, 2024

Governor Maura Healey’s administration plans to send some of the families in state-funded emergency shelters on airplanes out of Massachusetts, State House News Service reported Thursday, a day before the first evictions are planned.

“The administration has notified 57 families, who arrived prior to Aug. 1, that they will have to leave by Friday. Some of these families have been ‘reticketed,’ a term the administration has used to describe paying for plane tickets out of Massachusetts,” the wire service reported Thursday, August 8.

The story does not say where the shelter occupants will be sent.

Massachusetts is the only state in the country with a law that guarantees free shelter at the state’s expense to homeless families and pregnant women – including to migrants from other countries without legal status in the United States who have come to the state in large numbers in recent times.

The surge in migrants has led the state to sharply increase funding for emergency shelters and also led Governor Healey to limit the number of people who can live there and to announce evictions for some starting Friday, August 9.

“Because of the circumstances and really our capacity here, we had to make some changes to policy. But, you know, I’ve said from the beginning that we are going to continue to triage this,” Healey told reporters Wednesday, August 7, according to State House News Service.

As of Wednesday, August 7, “there were 7,396 families in the emergency family shelter system and 271 families in overflow shelters,” State House News Service reported, quoting a Healey spokesman.

Protesters against the evictions held a rally outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston on Thursday, according to The Boston Herald.

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