A coalition of local housing advocates rallied outside the State House Thursday, calling on Gov. Maura Healey to reverse a recent policy to evict families staying in homeless overflow sites after five days.
Protesters said the new policy, which took effect Aug. 1, could have a dramatic and dangerous impact on hundreds of migrant families seeking shelter across the state.
“What’s going on here is a crime against humanity,” City Life/Vida Urbana organizer Ronel Remy said to the crowd. “To put children out in the streets, not to care if they live or die.”
Under the new policy, dozens of families will be evicted from short-term state shelters on Friday — and those who elect to stay in “temporary respite sites” for five days will not be eligible for longer shelter stays for six months.
Hundreds of protesters marched through the State House to continue the rally outside Healey’s office, chanting “housing is a human right” and holding up signs urging Healey to “do what’s right” and “keep families off the streets.”
Dr. Lara Jirmanus, a primary care physician and fellow at the Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, delivered a letter signed by 320 health care workers and medical professionals that urged Healey to reconsider and postpone the recent policy.
“This policy is not right, it’s harmful and it’s going to create life-long negative health impacts, generating higher health costs in the long-term,” Jirmanus said, as chants of “shame” echoed through the state house chambers.
In the letter, published earlier this week, doctors and community leaders cited an encampment ban in Boston that allows the city to clear tents as a compounding factor that could “force adults and children onto the streets with nowhere else to go.”
The letter also argues that the policy decision violate “the spirit” of Massachusetts’ right-to-shelter law, a state law dating back to the 1980s that guarantees shelter for all homeless families and pregnant people. Massachusetts is the only state to have such a law.
“They will inevitably find themselves at risk of illness related to exposure to severe weather, violence and abuse, arrest, separation from their children, and deportation,” the letter continues. “Their very existence, simply for seeking safety and being unhoused residents of the state of Massachusetts, will be criminalized.”
As of Tuesday, there were 7,396 families staying in the state’s emergency shelter system and 271 in Temporary Respite, or overflow shelters, according to a Healey spokesperson. Since the implementation of the policy, 57 families who arrived before Aug. 1 have received notice that they will need to be out of those overflow sites by Friday. Healey’s office says providers are working with families to help identify their next steps.
“This new policy will help open up space at temporary respite centers so that families have a place to stay while they work with case managers to identify alternative housing,” Healey spokesperson Karissa Hand said in a statement. “Massachusetts is out of shelter space and cannot continue to afford the size of this system.”
The governor limited the state’s shelter system to 7,500 families last October and has made other efforts to curtail shelter stays since. Healey has repeatedly cited rising costs, which reached more than $1 billion last fiscal year, as the reason.
At the rally, Homes For All executive director Carolyn Chou praised the Healey administration for passing an historic housing bond bill to address housing costs earlier this week, and pushed back on the idea that the state can’t afford to accommodate migrant families seeking shelter.
“We need to welcome everyone, both new arrivals and long-term residents, into the shelter system when they need it,” Chou said in an interview with GBH News. “We’re one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in the world. There is enough, and we can make this work. It just takes the political will to do it.”
The policy’s impact is not limited to migrant families, Chou said — current residents experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity will be affected as well.
“We’re already seeing what we’re afraid of, which is families sleeping at train stations, one-year-old children having nowhere to go. Families are looking to come here to work, to support their families, to build stability, and we’re not offering that,” she said. “And long term Massachusetts residents who are facing eviction also have nowhere to go now and are having to make choices that are not safe and healthy for their families and their children.”
Kelly Turley, associate director at Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, said she’s “hopeful” that Healey will rescind the policy in the less than 24 hours before the eviction deadline arrives.
“We’re appealing to the governor, the speaker [of the state House Ron Mariano], the Senate President [Karen Spilka] and the Legislature to intervene and to do what’s right,” Turley said. “We will work with [them] to ensure that children and families here in the commonwealth are kept safe.”
