Governor Maura Healey’s administration has shown a commitment to phase out the use of hotels and motels as emergency shelters over the next 19 months. Simultaneously, the team will seek a legislative amendment to expand rental aid for deserving households. They also aim to set up a reserve fund for covering shelter related expenditures, alongside reducing residence time in routine shelter facilities and protracting residence time in extra capacity sites.
The administration is grappling with an annual expenditure exceeding a billion dollars linked to the Massachusetts emergency assistance family shelter system. Thus, the government has declared a series of reforms, albeit without providing an exhaustive breakdown of projected expenditures, potential savings, or blueprints for implementation.
The updated policies and legislative predictions arrived on the scene following the approval of a report by the Special Commission on Emergency Housing Assistance Programs. The document made varied general recommendations without specifying the Healey administration’s potential strategies or forthcoming programs to tackle the highlighted issues.
The comprehensive report has encouraged the establishment of financially and operationally sustainable family emergency shelters. A few key areas identified were lessening the reliance on hotels and motels as emergency shelters, allocating more specific resources to households, and bringing clarity to the guidelines surrounding these shelters.
Healey’s strategy involves moving away from hotels and motels as emergency shelters over the course of fiscal years 2025 and 2026. The objective is to transition to an array of more economically feasible and supportive shelter alternatives. It is expected that local communities will receive prior notice about this hotel usage policy change which will entail meetings with service providers.
To further support families in need, Healey’s administration plans to suggest modifications to the HomeBASE rental assistance program. The changes, if passed, could mean families qualify for as much as $25,000 of annual rental support for two years.
Additionally, a supplemental budget is expected to be submitted in the hope of procuring extra funds for the shelter system for the remainder of fiscal year 2025. It’s intended that these additional funds would be channeled into a newly formed ‘Family Shelter and Services Reserve’ account.
The administration, as part of the supplemental budget, will also aim to trim down the usual length of stays in shelters from the current nine months, down to six months. They seek to refine the criteria for extending the stay to expedite the process of rehousing families and providers.
Plans are in place that families receiving targeted support at supplementary capacity locations (‘overflow sites’) will not be eligible for placement in the ‘Bridge Shelter Track’. The revision to the duration of stays in overflow sites is anticipated to take effect from Dec. 10, while the contraction of traditional shelter stays still hinges on legislative endorsement.
The administration is eyeing to curtail the use of hotels and motels as emergency shelters as swiftly as possible. In recent commission meetings, officials underscored the significance of progressive elimination of the reliance on hotels and motels for emergency housing.
Emergency assistance services rendered via hotels and motels are the costliest subtype, despite usually not equipped with family-required conveniences such as kitchens or laundry rooms. A point made evident from the report’s findings.
Added travel-related issues for job-seekers is another disadvantage of utilizing hotels and motels, as they often are situated far from public transport facilities. This further underlines the pressing requirement for alternative, more suitable shelter options.
In 2014, the state had faced a similar situation, with a peak shelter demand that included 4,600 families, with a whopping 1,500 of them being accommodated in hotels and motels. That crisis led to the development of tools providing assistance for diversion and exit, as stated in the report.