SJC to take up homeless housing suit

Gov to defend his bid to end motel stays

As Gov. Charlie Baker is gearing up for re-election, the state’s highest court is preparing to weigh in on a major promise from his first campaign — to stop housing homeless in motels — in a fast-tracked case with dozens of families and millions of dollars at stake, officials say.

The Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments next month about Baker’s policy of rolling back homeless housing in motels.

State law requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to provide shelter to lowincome families who’ve lost housing for reasons beyond their control, which in past years led to thousands of people being temporarily housed in hotels and motels when shelters were otherwise full.

Citing concerns about conditions in those areas, Baker vowed to stop that policy when he ran for governor in 2014, and motel-housed families have decreased from 1,500 to fewer than 50 since 2015, according to DHCD. But homeless advocates said that change has led to families being housed in shelters that are located far from their previous communities, affecting schools and medical appointments, and don’t accommodate their disabilities.

In 2016, five homeless women filed a lawsuit against DHCD saying Baker’s move away from motels was preventing homeless families from getting shelter — in violation of state law — and demanding motels be included as a housing option. And late last year, a Superior Court judge’s injunction said DHCD was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and ordered the agency to allow homeless families with disabilities to stay in motels if that was an appropriate solution while the lawsuit makes its way through court — an order that was immediately appealed by DHCD.

Now, attorneys for the ACLU and Greater Boston Legal Services — who are working for the women who filed the lawsuit — and DHCD are asking the SJC to review the injunction as soon as next month.

“We are very pleased the SJC agreed to hear this because families are out there suffering in places that don’t accommodate disabilities because of the stay on order. We hope it gets resolved very soon,” ACLU attorney Ruth Bourquin told the Herald.

But the Attorney General’s office, which is arguing the case for DHCD, is arguing DHCD is not violating the ADA and that creating housing agreements with motels would cost the agency an extra $8 million — money that would have to come from other shelters’ funding.

“Where the lion’s share of the program’s appropriation pays for family shelters, that is where the reductions will come. In short, more motels mean less family shelter units, which reverses many years’ effort to do the opposite,” the appeal reads.

DHCD spokeswoman Samantha Kaufman said: “The Baker-Polito Administration believes homelessness is a human tragedy and that sheltering homeless families in motel rooms is the most disruptive and least effective way of meeting this tragedy.”