Few answers on what’s next for homeless and migrant Mass. families as shelter cap looms

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Next week will mark a turning point in the state’s migrant shelter crisis. The big unanswered question is: What’s it turning into?

Gov. Maura Healey announced on Oct. 16 that the emergency shelter network — overextended as it houses an influx of migrant families and longtime Bay Staters grappling with an unaffordable housing market — will reach its limit by the end of the month. When the system hits its capacity of 7,500 families, she said, the state will deploy a triage system that prioritizes families with health and safety risks and puts others on a waitlist if no room is available.

With that limit looming, it's not clear what it means for Family No. 7,501.

The question came up in the semi-regular meeting between Healey and legislative leaders. But Senate President Karen Spilka offered no answers around what happens once a family needs to be turned away from shelter for the first time.

“There’s still — details are being worked out,” Spilka told reporters.

The first question, of course, is where a waitlisted family is supposed to go until room opens up.

Another: Will families keep arriving in Massachusetts from elsewhere once there’s no guarantee of shelter? The stream of new shelter enrollments has continued as capacity wanes — the 7,202 families in emergency shelter as of Tuesday included 31 who entered the system in the previous 24 hours.

There’s also bigger-picture legal and legislative puzzles. Massachusetts faced a lawsuit before, under former Gov. Charlie Baker, over policies that resulted in eligible families not immediately securing shelter placements, and it’s possible a legal challenge could emerge here, too.

Healey says the 7,500-family cap is not a bid to scrap the state’s 1983 law establishing a right to shelter for homeless families with children and pregnant women, but a reflection of the fact that money, physical space and provider bandwidth all have limits.

The funding piece might be the key to how this all can happen. The Healey administration, in an FAQ document for cities and towns, laid out a piece of its rationale: “Under state finance law, state agencies are not allowed to incur costs when there is no currently identified or reasonably likely source of payment.”

Healey in September filed a spending bill seeking another $250 million for the shelter system, which lawmakers have been sitting on. Standing alongside Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano on Monday, the governor chose not to press them on her funding request, saying only that it “will be a subject of discussion.”

Instead, she reiterated her call for the federal government to help, both financially and through immigration policy changes. But if there is federal relief on the way, officials here don’t see it on the horizon — unless dynamics change now that the U.S. House has elected a speaker after a 21-day vacancy.

“If you're expecting money to come out of Washington now, you might as well go buy a bridge in New York City, because chances are both are about the same,” Mariano said.