(*This story was updated at 7:23 a.m. on Friday, March 22, 2024, with additional reporting.)
The Massachusetts state Senate voted 32-8 just after 9 p.m. on Thursday to limit how long families can stay in the state’s overburdened emergency shelter system and give the administration authority to draw down more than $800 million from state savings to pay for the crisis response into mid-2025.
The chamber’s Republicans, Sens. Peter Durant and Ryan Fattman, of Worcester; Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, R-1st Essex/Middlesex, and Patrick O’Connor, R-1st Plymouth/Norfolk, joined Democratic Sens. Nick Collins, 1st Suffolk; John Cronin, D-Worcester/Middlesex; Walter Timilty, D-Norfolk/Plymouth/Bristol, and John Velis, D-Hampden/Hampshire, to vote against it.
“In the face of declining revenues, increasing expenses, and economic uncertainty, this bill abandons our responsibility for appropriating funds, and sets the stage for the depletion of a transitional escrow account that could well be needed to support important priorities like local schools, roads and bridges, and police and fire protection. It does so to put funding on auto – pilot for an unsustainable course to a growing crisis,” Tarr said in a statement distributed by the state Republican Party.
With an alleged rape at a Rockland shelter site in the news, senators voted 39-0 to adopt an amendment from Sen. Michael Moore, D-2nd Worcester, to charge a special commission created in the underlying bill with “reviewing safety practices and procedures at emergency shelters … including hotels and motels used for emergency shelter and overflow emergency shelter sites.”
In a statement, Senate President Karen E. Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, said the Senate-approved bill “addresses the state’s fiscal reality while also treating individuals who have migrated to our state with dignity and respect.”
“As we continue to navigate through a challenge that has landed on our doorstep because of Congressional inaction, today we are addressing the immediate need to house families, bolstering our existing efforts to support those who have immigrated here in becoming part of our workforce, and providing a roadmap to manage this effort over time,” Spilka said.
The chamber’s top budget-writer, Senate Ways & Means Committee Chairperson Michael J. Rodriques, D-1st Bristol/Plymouth, noted that about half the families currently in the system are state residents.
“If the money were to run out without any action on the plan, we would be talking about thousands of these families suddenly on the street in many communities across the state. This is an unacceptable and equally irresponsible outcome,” Rodrigues said, according to the Boston Herald.
The vote tees up a likely clash with the majority Democrat state House over the two chambers’ dueling proposals to address the soaring costs of the commonwealth’s emergency shelter system, as migrants continue to stream into the Bay State.
Rodriques said Thursday that the cash-strapped shelter system will run out funding in the first or second week of April, putting additional pressure on the House and Senate to get a deal, the Herald reported.
“We’re going to try to get it done as quickly as possible,” he said, according to the Herald. “I don’t draw any lines in the sand. I’ll go into conference committee with [House Ways & Means Committee Chairperson AaronMichlewitz with an open mind.”
Thursday’s Senate vote came a little more than two weeks after the state House passed a $245 million spending bill aimed at containing the costs of a shelter system where expenses are where costs are expected to soar past $900 million a year over the next two years, amid a time of flagging tax revenues.
Last year, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s office announced a self-imposed cap of 7,500 families in the state’s shelter system, which includes both migrants and state residents who are experiencing homelessness.
As of Thursday morning, 7,522 families were enrolled in the system, with 18 enrolling in the last 24 hours, state data showed. Hundreds more are being housed in overflow sites, with additional hundreds on a state waiting list, MassLive previously reported.
An administration-authored report recently submitted to lawmakers indicates that families who stay in the shelter system are there for an average of a year or longer, imposing increased stresses on the system as demand continues to rise.
Healey’s office has continued to call for assistance from the federal government, arguing that the state can only do so much in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform. The chances for action, in an election year, appear remote — particularly in the wake of a collapse earlier this year of a bipartisan reform plan.
