The Massachusetts emergency shelter system is on track to exhaust its current round of funding by Jan. 1, according to state officials.
That fact hung like a cloud over a Monday meeting of a special legislative commission tasked with recommending next steps and potential changes for the state’s emergency shelter system. For months, the system has been overwhelmed by unprecedented demand from homeless and migrant families. And as demand has increased, so too has cost to the state.
“Obviously the current system is unsustainable, and we’ve had to make shifts in policy to try and accommodate all that’s coming through the door on a regular basis,” Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said.
The commission is grappling with how to meet current needs and determine what the shelter system should look like in the long-term. The panel has until Dec. 1 to issue its recommendations to the Legislature for potential action.
Demand on the state’s emergency shelter system remains high. The average length of stay in the shelter system was 365 days last calendar year, down from 384 the year before. The caseload has ballooned to an at-capacity level of roughly 7,500 families from the roughly 4,000 it was serving as of January 2023, according to figures presented to the commission.
The cost of running the shelter network has also shot up, from $299 million in state funding in fiscal year 2023 to $955 million in fiscal 2024.
This year, fiscal year 2025, the budget lawmakers passed and Healey signed last month funds the state’s emergency assistance shelters at $326 million. Earlier legislation authorized the use of another $175 million from a surplus account to also support shelter expenses this year.
It’s not a surprise that there won’t be enough money to keep the shelter system afloat through a full year’s budget cycle. Healey’s team has for months anticipated more than $900 million in annual costs. When House and Senate lawmakers debated their versions of this year’s budget, they said they wanted a measure of control over shelter spending and to push the administration to improve its efficiency.
Any additional shelter funding will need approval from the state Legislature.
Driscoll said the shelter system “should be able to get through this fiscal year with some additional assistance.”
“That was built into, certainly, financial planning,” she said. “But how do we get through the next fiscal year? There isn’t $1 billion available next fiscal year to accommodate what we’re doing currently, let alone … if we had an uptick or continual increase.”
Healey and state lawmakers have already put in place a series of limits on the shelter system in hopes of helping to manage the ballooning costs, from the 7,500-family cap to length-of-stay restrictions. In some cases, migrant families have been left to find their own places to sleep at night, like T stations and church gardens.
Most recently, Healey announced that families staying in state-run temporary overflow sites while awaiting space in the full shelter system would be limited to five-day stays in those facilities.
Since Aug. 1, when the new rules took effect, 34 families have exited the overflow sites, according to data presented Monday. Another 110 received administrative extensions to stay longer at overflow sites, which the state refers to as temporary respite centers.
