Photo: Sam Doran/SHNS
BOSTON (State House News Service) - House Speaker Ron Mariano is "still searching for some answers" about the scope of the fast-changing emergency shelter crisis, while Gov. Maura Healey on Tuesday delivered another impassioned plea for federal aid that she acknowledged so far has not been forthcoming.
The record number of families in need of shelter, many of them new arrivals from other countries, was top of mind for Healey -- who warned the situation is "not sustainable" -- and top House and Senate Democrats when they sat down for their first formal leadership huddle in more than three months.
Days after Healey proposed steering another $250 million toward shelter services as part of a supplemental budget to close the state's books on fiscal year 2023, Mariano said Beacon Hill's top officials discussed the issue "at length" behind closed doors.
"Right now, I think that we're still searching for some answers on the potential total expenditures that we'll be dealing with," Mariano told reporters. "There's a lot of questions around the number that need to be tightened up."
He added, "The administration is doing the best that they can do to gather all this information and give us some hard numbers, and it's not an easy thing to do. It's people coming from all different countries and coming in at all different points of entry. So it's a difficult challenge."
The number of people seeking shelter services in Massachusetts, many of them newly arriving immigrants, continues to grow rapidly as cities across the country grapple with a heightened level of demand.
On Aug. 6, two days before Healey declared a state of emergency around the crisis, there were 5,550 families housed in hotels and emergency assistance shelters, according to state data. By Tuesday, that number had grown to 6,528, a Healey spokesperson told the News Service -- reflecting a nearly 18 percent increase in just under six weeks.
Healey said Tuesday that about half of the roughly 22,000 people housed in the state's shelter system are new arrivals from other countries. The state is now "reaching capacity in terms of what we're able to do," she said.
"Right now, this is a situation that was created over time by the federal government -- Congress's failure to act on much needed immigration reform and a federal administration that has been unable to provide us with the funding to support what really is a federal problem," Healey said. "So we, as a state, are now forced to bear the burden and the responsibility of this. I am grateful to all in government and outside of government who have stepped up and who have answered the call. But I want to be really clear that this is not sustainable. This is not sustainable."
Healey said the administration has an "incident command center" that involves multiple different state agencies overseeing its response to the shelter crisis.
The first-year governor spent part of the summer calling for action by Congress and the Biden administration, urging faster processing of work permits for immigrants and an injection of federal money to reduce the burden on Massachusetts and other states.
"It's clear help isn't coming from the feds," Healey said after Tuesday's meeting with Mariano and Spilka. "I mean, we've been continuing to call upon and call upon the federal government and Congress to act, and it is because help has not been forthcoming that we find ourselves in this situation."
The fiscal year 2024 state budget allocated $325 million for the state's emergency assistance family shelters line item, and Healey -- who last month estimated the state is spending more than $45 million per month on shelter programs -- asked lawmakers to put another $250 million toward those needs by tapping into available one-time reserves.
Asked if he expected the House to support that request or change the $250 million proposal, Mariano replied, "I'm not sure."
Massachusetts guarantees all homeless families access to emergency shelter under a 1983 "right-to-shelter" law, the only state to do so. Some Republicans have argued that the scale of demand for services today warrants rethinking or outright repealing that policy.
Last month, when asked if she considered lifting the right-to-shelter law even temporarily, Healey replied, "No. I was never going to end, nor do I have the authority to end, right-to-shelter in the state."
She took a less decisive tone Tuesday in response to a question about whether Massachusetts should rethink its status as the only right-to-shelter state in the country.
"Well, obviously, that was a law that predates a lot of what has happened geopolitically and the forces that we've seen and the likes of what we've seen to date," Healey said about the law Tuesday. "That'll be up for discussion [and] debate by others for sure."
Her fellow Democrats in the House and Senate gave early signals they are not all that interested in revisiting the policy. Asked if they had any conversations about changing the law, Mariano offered a two-word answer -- "I haven't" -- and Senate President Karen Spilka replied by describing families in dire circumstances.
"The bottom line is, for now, these are families, these are children, that are coming and if they're here, what's the alternative? Having them sleep on the Common or outside, particularly as the weather starts getting colder?" Spilka said. "We need to come up with a plan, because if these folks and families and children keep coming, we need assistance, and that is one of the primary goals that we're trying to do, to get our federal delegation to help us with getting the funding, the resources, the permits, and make some changes that will at least alleviate some of the pressure on the state and cities and towns."
Written By Chris Lisinski/SHNS
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