Baker keeps housing promise

Next month, the Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments on Gov. Charlie Baker’s policy of rolling back homeless housing in motels. Baker had been promising to stop the practice since he was a candidate in 2014 and began working toward that end in earnest when he won the corner office. Whatever the court rules, the real verdict is this: Gov. Baker has done what he set out to do and he should be applauded for it.

In 2012, at the peak of the homelessness crisis, more than 1,800 homeless families were living in motel rooms in the commonwealth. In 2012, the taxpayers of Massachusetts spent $45 million housing them there. The cost to house a family in a motel is about $3,000 per family per month. Comparatively, the cost of affordable housing is $600-$800 per month. Expensive motel “housing” eats into the funding available for other, more appropriate shelters.

“It’s not the right thing to do for the kids. It’s not the right thing to do for the families, and it’s certainly not the right thing to do for the community,” declared Baker in 2014.

He was right. Many of the hotels and motels available were far from the cities or towns where the families had roots. Often, they were out in the middle of nowhere, far from anything, along busy roads. Many families were sharing a single room in motels more at the “Free HBO” end of the luxury spectrum than anything remotely opulent or even comfortable. Having the dusty motel parking lot or musty brochure rack be the entirety of a child’s recreation space should not be acceptable accommodation for children living in poverty.

As Gov. Baker said, “Family homelessness in Massachusetts is a human tragedy that clearly must be rethought and reconsidered with respect to how these families are served.”

Baker was the right man for the job, tackling the same issue on a smaller scale as Secretary of Health and Human Services under Gov. Bill Weld.

In August of 2016, the Baker administration announced an investment of more than $90 million for affordable rental housing in the commonwealth. In addition, a slew of housing subsidies and assistance measures, voucher and workforce programs, and efforts from housing organizations in the cities and towns allowed families to move from motels to shelters and apartments.

As a result of these efforts and an improved economy, motel-housed families have decreased from 1,500 to fewer than 50 since 2015, according to the the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Gov. Baker’s compassionate endeavor has resulted in many families enjoying an upgrade from “housing” into something more like a home. It was a collaborative effort politically and showed cooperation between state and local outfits to achieve the goal of improving the lives of the homeless and embarking on initiatives to prevent families from becoming homeless in the first place, referred to as “upstreaming.”

The overall homelessness situation in Massachusetts is still a big problem. According to the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, “On January 31, 2018, there were 3,624 families with children and pregnant women in Massachusetts’ Emergency Assistance shelter program. 55 of these families with children were being sheltered in motels. (The number has since decreased to 46 families in motels as of March 22, 2018.)” The reasons for homelessness vary but domestic violence consistently shows up in the data and the dark cloud of the opioid crisis is certainly a factor.

But today we can acknowledge a little good news.

With vouchers and other housing assistance, along with job and career training opportunities, many of the commonwealth’s least fortunate could be in a position to one day own their own homes, and finally a piece of the American dream. Transitional assistance, when utilized to positive ends by good people and realized within the boundaries of its true definition, is a noble endeavor.

We should give a nod to Gov. Baker for following through on a worthwhile campaign priority and improving the lives of many who, too often, are not influential enough to otherwise have an effective advocate.