Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey asks for $425 million more to pay for emergency shelters housing migrants

Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald on Jan 6, 2025

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BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey filed a $425 million spending bill Tuesday that attempts to drain nearly all of an account filled with pandemic-era surplus dollars to pay for emergency shelter costs through the rest of fiscal year 2025.

Money for the state-run shelter system — which is housing both migrants and local residents — is expected to run dry by the end of January without another infusion, and Healey argued more cash is necessary to “ensure continued safe shelter and services for families” amid heightened demand.

“In the face of this continued demand and the federal government’s failure to advance a solution, additional resources are necessary to fund the current system in the short term while accelerating efforts to increase the rate of exits and bring the caseload down to sustainable levels in the medium- to long-term,” Healey said in a letter to lawmakers.

Healey coupled her nearly half-billion dollar request with proposed policy changes that make good on her promise to slash the amount of time families can stay in state-run shelters from nine to six months, phase out the use of costly hotels and hotels by the end of the year, and reduce the population of the shelter system to 4,000 families by June 2026.

Both the spending request and policy proposals will need buy-in from Democrats who control the House and Senate. A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka said her office would review the bill “once it arrives in the Senate.”

A spokesperson for House Speaker Ron Mariano did not immediately respond to a Herald inquiry.

The governor has faced criticism over the past year and a half for her spending decisions related to the emergency shelter system, which has come to house 7,500 families with children and pregnant women.

The heat intensified after a migrant from the Dominican Republic was arrested last month at a shelter in Revere with an AR-15 and roughly $1 million worth of fentanyl. The incident came after a migrant girl was allegedly raped last year by a Haitian national at a Rockland shelter.

In her letter to lawmakers, Healey acknowledged the current structure of the shelter system is “unsustainable” and politicians must “work together to make sure the need in this area does not unduly crowd out our ability to serve residents through other programming in our budget.”

“That is why funding alone is not sufficient. This supplemental budget that I am filing for your consideration includes policy reforms that build on lessons learned from the last year and ensure that the (emergency assistance) shelter system can appropriately meet the needs of families while balancing the need to return EA caseloads to sustainable, affordable levels,” Healey wrote.

Massachusetts Republicans immediately slammed Healey for asking for more money to pay for the state-run shelter system, which was created under a decades-old law that sought to provide temporary housing to families with children and pregnant women.

MassGOP spokesman Logan Trupiano said the Healey administration will drive the state “into financial ruin before they listen to Republicans and address the root causes of the migrant crisis.”

“Their unchecked spending has spiraled into a perpetual cycle of escalating costs that has led to a humanitarian disaster in the commonwealth,” Trupiano said in a statement. “Massachusetts residents are being forced to foot the bill to fund a crisis that puts their own well-being and safety at risk.”

The Healey administration spent just over $856 million in fiscal year 2024 on the emergency shelter system — which was less than originally projected — and has already doled out more than $357 million through the first half of fiscal year 2025, according to state data last updated Dec. 19.

The Legislature handed Healey $639 million to pay for shelter services in fiscal year 2025, including $325 million in the annual budget and another $256 million in a supplemental spending bill.

With cash expected to run out on Jan. 31, the Healey administration said it needed another $425 million injection to survive the rest of the fiscal year that ends in June.

In her spending bill, the first-term Democrat proposed tapping nearly all of what remains in an account filled with surplus dollars leftover from the pandemic. A Healey spokesperson said there will be a “small amount” leftover in the account if the Legislature approves the request as written.

“We appreciate the Legislature’s consideration of this proposal, and we continue to call on the federal government to act on a bipartisan border security bill because Massachusetts taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this federal problem,” Healey said in a statement.

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