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By Chris Van Buskirk
Boston Herald
(TNS) Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts Tuesday as local emergency shelters fill up with the high number of migrants arriving in the state and surging housing costs displace families. bulletin news
Healey is the latest governor to turn to emergency action to respond to an ever-increasing number of displaced and newly-arrived migrant families. But the Massachusetts Democrat paired the declaration with a full-throated appeal to the Biden administration for help with funding and expediting work authorizations for migrants.
At a press conference inside the State House with shelter providers and other advocates, Healey said the emergency declaration directs local officials to utilize “all means necessary” to secure housing, shelter, and health and human services to address the “humanitarian crisis.”
“The increased level of demand is not slowing down,” Healey said. “We are unable to move people from housing and shelter into permanent housing.”
A steady stream of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts over the past year has put a strain on the state’s emergency shelter system. As spaces dwindled, the Healey administration turned to everything from hotels and motels to college dorms and military bases to house people.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said 5,550 families were in state shelters as of Monday morning — 1,887 in hotels, 3,546 in permanent shelter, 62 at Joint Base Cape Cod, and 55 in a college dorm in Quincy.
The numbers cover more than just newly-arrived migrants, the spokesperson said, though the administration estimates that just over one-third of sheltered families are new arrivals.
“That figure is 80 percent higher than it was just one year ago. It represents more than 20,000 people, growing every day,” Healey said at the State House. “These families include newborns, very young children, and expecting mothers. And it is more families than our state has ever served … in our emergency assistance program.”
Healey said the numbers are being driven by new arrivals, who she said “are the face” of the international migrant crisis.
“They are here because where they came from is too dangerous to stay,” Healey said, adding that she planned to deliver an “urgent” appeal for funding and work authorizations to the federal government.
In a Tuesday letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Healey said “burdensome barriers” to work authorizations for migrants is one of the main drivers of the crisis in Massachusetts.
Healey said Massachusetts “has stepped up to address what sadly has been a federal crisis of inaction that is many years in the making.”
“But can we no longer do this alone,” Healey wrote in the letter. “We need federal partnership, federal funding, and urgent federal action to meet this moment and to continue to serve some of our most vulnerable families.”
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The last time Massachusetts was in a state of emergency was from March 10, 2020 through May 11 for the COVID-19 pandemic. A state of emergency was also declared in September 2018 for the Merrimack Valley gas explosion.
Healey is not alone in taking emergency action over immigration woes. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order in May that allowed for the mobilization of the National Guard as the state prepared for an increase in newly-arrived migrants.
In a bid to help manage the steady stream of new arrivals in Massachusetts, officials opened two welcome centers in Allston and Quincy this summer to help families find temporary and longer-term shelter as well as basic necessities.
The Executive Office of Health and Human Services announced last week that a dorm room at Eastern Nazarene College would house up 58 families experiencing homelessness, including newly-arrived migrants.
The Quincy-area college is not the only institution of higher education housing migrants.
The Baker administration announced in November 2022 that Lynn nonprofit Centerboard would use a vacant former residential unit on Salem State University’s South Campus as transitional housing for families experiencing homelessness, including newly-arrived migrants.
There were 105 families staying at the Salem State University shelter as of Aug. 2, according to the Executive office of Housing and Livable Communities. Massachusetts is a right-to-shelter state, which means eligible families have immediate access under a 1983 law to housing options.
Healey announced in June that because of the rise in shelter demand, the state would direct some new arrivals to Joint Base Cape Cod, where the National Guard was prepared to house up to 60 families.
The spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said more than 40 hotels in 80-plus different municipalities were contracted with the state for emergency assistance shelter. The cost of state-funded shelter is unclear.
Local nonprofits have also sought to recruit private residents to temporarily house migrant families in their homes or apartments.
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