The Healey administration will make another series of major changes to the state’s emergency shelter system starting next week, giving extra priority to certain Massachusetts families and setting a five-day cap on how long people can stay in overflow sites.
Gov. Maura Healey on Tuesday announced a dramatic overhaul after more than a year of sustained pressure on the emergency assistance shelter system, in effect moving further away from the so-called right to shelter law that once guaranteed all eligible homeless families access to somewhere to stay with few restrictions.
Starting Aug. 1, the state will prioritize for placement in emergency assistance shelters families who are homeless because of a no-fault eviction, who have at least one member who is a veteran, or who are homeless “because of sudden or unusual circumstances in Massachusetts beyond their control, such as a flood or fire,” Healey’s office said.
The administration at the same time will cap how long families awaiting a longer-term shelter placement can stay at overflow sites, sometimes referred to as safety net sites, at five days. Families who choose to use one of those locations after Aug. 1 will then need to wait at least six months to secure placement into an emergency assistance shelter, though they will remain eligible for other diversion services such as reticketing and HomeBase, Healey’s office said.
Existing overflow sites in Chelsea, Lexington, Cambridge and Norfolk will adopt those new policies next week, and the state will not open any additional locations “due to operational and financial constraints,” according to the governor’s office.
In a statement, Healey said the changes are “in line with the policies of other cities facing similar challenges as Massachusetts.”
“We have been saying for months now that the rapid growth of our Emergency Assistance shelter system is not sustainable. Massachusetts is out of shelter space, and we simply cannot afford the current size of this system,” Healey said. “Our administration has taken significant action over the past year to make the system more sustainable and help families leave shelter for stable housing. But with Congress continuing to fail to act on immigration reform, we need to make more changes.”
Healey last year capped the number of families that can be in the emergency assistance shelter system at around 7,500, and she signed a law this year limiting the length of stay in those facilities to nine months.
Total costs for the system and related expenses surpassed $1 billion in fiscal 2024, and administration officials estimated before the latest eligibility changes that the state would spend $915 million responding to the crisis in fiscal 2025.
This is a developing story.