Legislators who have not always felt adequately informed about the state’s emergency family shelter crisis will soon get more regular reports on the shelter landscape from Gov. Maura Healey’s administration.
The $3.1 billion supplemental budget Healey signed late Monday includes a series of reporting requirements that were attached to a $250 million infusion of shelter funds that is only expected to cover shelter costs through the winter and into the spring.
The requirements include disclosing the number of families and new immigrants enrolled in shelters, how much the state is spending on the emergency assistance system, and the number of families on the waitlist Healey created in connection with her cap on shelter spots.
Though the rapid growth of families in need has been largely driven by an influx of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers entering the state, there has been little available information about just how many of the families in the EA system are new arrivals.
Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus’s office maintains a dashboard of EA data, which includes information on the total number of families currently enrolled in the system and how many were enrolled in the last 24 hours. It does not show how many of those new enrollees are new immigrants — though Healey previously said that about half of those in the system are U.S. citizens.
The dashboard also shows a map of Massachusetts with broad data on how many families are enrolled by municipality. Boston, Springfield, Worcester and Lynn have had “over 200 families” for at least a month; whereas other towns are categorized as having “between 51 and 200 families,” or “1 and 50 families.”
The supplemental budget Healey signed Monday will require her administration to provide a breakdown of families in shelters, hotels and motels delineated by municipality.
The Executive Office of Administration and Finance and the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities will need to submit these reports on EA data to the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means every two weeks.
The law also requires reporting on the number of individuals and families with work authorizations who entered the system as migrants.
Healey has repeatedly called on the federal government to expedite the work authorization process to help migrants who are eager to work to leave shelter and support their families financially. More than 1,000 migrants received help with their work authorizations during a clinic held in November by the Healey administration and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. State officials have also connected shelter residents to job training programs.
The administration will also have to provide an update on the total amount spent on the emergency housing program, including shelter, food and other services. This includes a breakdown of the total amount spent on municipal supports and given to school districts, delineated by municipality.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in August, Healey said the state was spending more than $45 million each month to support EA families, and still lacked the tools to meet the rapidly rising demand.
On the day she sent the letter, Aug. 8, there were a total of 5,586 families in the state’s shelters. As of Tuesday, there were 7,527, plus 174 families on a waitlist.
Despite the 35% increase in the number of families the EA system is housing, the administration has not provided another update on how much is being spent each month.{/div}
{div class=”subscriber-only”}Asked Wednesday if there was a more recent monthly spending figure, an EOHLC spokesperson said he did not have one and it would likely take a few days to get one.{/div}
{div class=”subscriber-only”}The only other financial picture of how much the EA system growth is costing the state came out of a hearing when the Healey administration was sued for imposing a cap on the number of families the shelters could house.{/div}
{div class=”subscriber-only”}EOHLC Deputy Chief Financial Officer Sarah Barrese wrote in an affidavit that the $325 million appropriated for the EA system in the fiscal 2024 budget would be depleted by Jan. 13, 2024, if the system continued to grow at the same rate.{/div}
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