‘IRRESPONSIBLE SPENDING’
Conservatives blast state shelter contracts, with hotels as high as $300 a night
Two conservative groups in Massachusetts criticized the Healey administration over the “irresponsible” cost of housing homeless families, including migrants, at hotels and motels that make up part of the state-run shelter system.
Gov. Maura Healey has turned to 76 hotels and motels to bulk up the number of beds available under the state’s emergency shelter program. Dozens of contracts with social service organizations show nights at those sites can often run up to $300, a cost that includes food and supportive services.
Massachusetts Republican Party Chair Amy Carnevale said the nightly rate was “staggering” for a single family.
“The Healey-Driscoll administration’s inaction on this crisis isn’t just costing Massachusetts millions; it’s costing billions of dollars and it is not sustainable,” Carnevale said in a statement. “Residents will be seeing the consequences of this crisis through more budget cuts and higher taxes.”
More than 7,500 families are in state-funded shelters but only half are migrants and the rest are local homeless residents, according to data from the Healey administration. More than 3,800 families were staying at hotels and motels and just over 3,650 were at traditional sites.
Demand for emergency shelters, which are required under a decades-old state law, has skyrocketed over the past year as housing and rental costs in Massachusetts continued to surge and migrants arrived in large numbers.
The cost to run the shelter system and associated services has soared to an expected $932 million this fiscal year and $915 million in the next. That comes as tax revenues have largely underperformed over the past nine months, creating budget headaches for state lawmakers.
Top Democrats on Beacon Hill have also warned that spending cuts could come in future state budgets if the price of running shelters remains at historically high levels.
A spokesperson for the state’s housing department, which partially oversees the shelter system, declined to comment Tuesday and referred the Herald to previous remarks on nightly rates.
In a statement last week, the spokesperson said the high cost of housing and federal inaction on immigration reform has led to the “unsustainable expansion of the emergency assistance program.”
“The state has increasingly been forced to utilize hotels to provide temporary shelter for families and children. In response, we work to negotiate appropriate rates with hotel providers with the goal of transitioning families as quickly as possible into stable housing,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Healey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance spokesman Paul Craney said nightly rates for hotels and motels serving as shelters that run hundreds of dollars are “simply unsustainable for the state of Massachusetts and its taxpayers.”
“The state is struggling to be economically competitive while its spending is soaring. The responsibility falls on our governor to make the hard decisions that result in our taxpayers becoming the number one priority,” Craney said in a statement. “To the average Massachusetts taxpayer, this is more than they would even spend on themselves while vacationing.”
The criticism leveled at Healey comes as her administration has spent $504 million on the emergency shelter program in fiscal year 2024, including on National Guard deployments, intake sites, shelters, overflow sites, and municipal reimbursements, according to a report released Monday.
Lawmakers have only allocated $575 million in fiscal year 2024 for the emergency shelter system, and that money is expected to run dry later this month. But Healey finance officials say the administration can turn to other pots of money to cover payments.
Legislative budget chiefs Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, a North End Democrat, and Sen. Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat, are negotiating a spending bill that could inject more dollars into the shelter system in an effort to cover the costs for the rest of this fiscal year.