How can rock bottom not be low enough for emergency shelter?

‘It really feels selfdefeating, like robbing Peter to pay Paul.’ ELIZABETH ALFRED, Greater Boston Legal Services attorney, on emergency shelter applicants having to burn through assets to fall under the state’s asset limit

REVERE — Rock bottom wasn’t low enough.

Erica Buckley’s family was homeless. She had no income and had exhausted the last of her savings, as well as all the help her family could give. She and her two children had been living in hotel rooms for a year. Moving into her car, which could be repossessed at any minute, wasn’t an option. But even with all that, her family did not qualify for emergency shelter in our right to shelter state.

To do that, Buckley would have to liquidate most of her meager retirement savings, too.

The state denies emergency shelter to any family with more than $5,000 in assets — including in a 401(k). Buckley’s retirement account contained $13,310.49 as of mid-October. To qualify for shelter, she would have to take out some $8,000, pay the 10 percent early-withdrawal penalty, and spend it down, presumably to buy more nights in the small, unsustainable hotel room she shared with Ricardo, 14, Jaylene, 3, and Ricardo’s service dog, Drako.

And for what? She would only be right back in this exact same, desperate spot in a month or two. Buckley, 32, had lost so much already. She just couldn’t let this slender vestige of her old, stable life go, too. Why ever should she have to?

“I worked so hard for that 401(k),” she said. “That is my future, and God forbid something happens to me, that is something my kids will have.”

And so, on Oct. 17, Buckley became one of the hundreds of desperate, homeless parents officially denied emergency shelter each year in Massachusetts. She was denied because she refused to give up on that sliver of hope for the future, to deliberately make her unbearable situation even worse.

Buckley’s attempts to hoist her family through the emergency shelter system’s narrow hoops started, as so many of these stories do, with an eviction. Before the spring of 2022, she and her

kids were doing fine. For seven years, she has worked as a dispatcher for The Ride, the doorto-door MBTA service for those with disabilities. She didn’t make huge money, but it was enough to manage the $2,000 monthly rent on the family’s two-bedroom apartment in Revere, where they had lived for four years. Her children’s father helped out sometimes, though his work has been inconsistent.

After her son was diagnosed with anxiety and depression at 12, his doctor recommended a service dog, but Buckley said the landlord refused to allow him to keep it. He gave his tenants a notice to quit the apartment within 30 days.

Buckley stopped paying her rent, setting it aside instead.

She couldn’t find a lawyer to help her with the eviction, so she showed up at Chelsea District Court without anyone to guide her. She also filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, alleging her landlord was refusing to accommodate her son’s medical needs.

A judge in Chelsea ordered Buckley to leave the apartment, and to pay the landlord $11,000 in back rent and legal fees. She moved out in September 2022, that debt hanging over her. But in January of this year, the MCAD negotiated an agreement that erased Buckley’s obligation to her former landlord, and mandated that he undergo training in discrimination law and pay his former tenant $2,500 for emotional distress.

Even so, her eviction haunted Buckley. The Revere Housing Authority denied her request for subsidized housing because of it. And even if she could afford to rent a new apartment, landlords would see the eviction case and reject her.

Her mother’s landlord would not allow Buckley and her children to move in with her. The children’s other grandmother could not host them either, because she lives in subsidized housing and might lose her own home for giving them refuge. Hotels were the family’s only option. They lived in three over the last year, the rent hitting $1,400 per week sometimes.

“I feel like I’m a burden,” Buckley said, sitting in a hotel function room in mid-November, as a cheery Jaylene played with her baby doll beside her. “My credit score is nothing. My car will be repossessed at any time. I am $500 behind on my storage fees. There are days when I don’t want to get up and shower and get dressed. I save all my strength for these kids.”

She was diagnosed with panic attacks, anxiety, and depression, which she had never had before, Buckley said. She had to take an unpaid leave of absence from her job, not just because homelessness was making it impossible to work, but because being homeless meant she wasn’t allowed to work. According to a letter from Transdev Services, the scheduling contractor for The Ride, Buckley needs “a secure primary residence” to work as a dispatcher, “due to the sensitivity of the role and need for confidentiality.” A hotel room wouldn’t cut it. This was a cascading catastrophe.

Her own money was gone, and her family could only help for so long without falling behind on their own bills, Buckley said. She had to check out of the hotel in a few days.

But now she had another kind of help. Two attorneys from Greater Boston Legal Services had recently taken up Buckley’s cause. Sarah Rosenkrantz was appealing her rejection by the Revere Housing Authority, and Elizabeth Alfred was trying to reverse the state’s denial of emergency shelter. Together, the attorneys have spent some 13 hours so far gathering up voluminous evidence to prove Buckley’s claims and dealing with housing authorities on her behalf.

It shouldn’t take that much legal firepower, or that many hours, for a homeless family with no other options to get relief in this state. And that family shouldn’t have to rob tomorrow to qualify for help today. The asset limit is unreasonable. On that, other parts of the government concur: There is no asset limit for families trying to get into public housing or most other housing subsidized by HUD or the state, or for those seeking Section 8 rental vouchers. And recently, the state Department of Transitional Assistance did away entirely with their $5,000 asset limit for those seeking cash assistance.

But despite requests by homeless advocates, those who run the emergency shelter system declined to follow suit. So families can still be denied shelter if the value of their retirement accounts, certain second vehicles, or even the cash surrender value of their life insurance or burial insurance exceed that absurdly low $5,000 threshold.

Burial insurance. In what compassionate, rational world does this make sense?

Let’s assume for a moment that there are families trying to game the system, that — for some unfathomable reason — those with the resources to properly house themselves are nevertheless choosing to hoard assets so they can subject themselves to the loss of privacy and autonomy, the curfews, restrictions, and isolation, that is living in state shelter.

Even if that were possible, why make the asset limit so low that it forces applicants to burn through funds that would barely pay for a month or two in a hotel, and come nowhere near what is required to rent an apartment? Why include retirement savings at all — money folks are hoping to use when they are older, which would make them less of a burden on the state down the line?

“It really feels self-defeating, like robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Alfred, one of Buckley’s attorneys.

After her shelter denial in October, Buckley finally gave in. She would surrender the retirement savings for which she had worked so hard. But when she called to withdraw them, she was told she could not do so, because she was on leave. She could only get at that $13,000 if she quit her job.

At least the state didn’t force her to do that. An inaccessible asset is no asset at all as far as the shelter system is concerned. So, with Alfred’s help, Buckley’s denial was rescinded. The week before Thanksgiving, as she sat in that hotel function room with her 3-year-old playing beside her, Buckley received a call from a state housing coordinator, who had started a new application for her. For the umpteenth time in 18 months, Buckley answered all of the questions, recounting her misfortunes and setbacks.

“I applied once in May, if you can look that up. … And then I had to take a leave of absence. … I called the 401(k), it’s in the email she sent over to your supervisor. … I need a place to live to be able to work. … I don’t have income, my parents are helping me, they don’t want to see me living on the street. … I can’t stay with my mother. … My car hasn’t been repossessed because they haven’t found me yet.”

Finally, on Nov. 17, her last full day at the hotel, Buckley was approved for emergency shelter. But because the system is overloaded, in part because so many unhoused migrants have arrived in the last year, her family was put on a waitlist. She and the kids crowded into her mother’s apartment to wait, despite the landlord’s directive.

On Nov. 28, Buckley’s family was given a spot in a shelter in Peabody. And last week, the Revere Housing Authority reversed its decision: Buckley’s eviction would not keep her out of subsidized housing after all. She is now back on the waitlist, though she may be waiting months or years for an affordable apartment to open up.

Meantime, if she eventually does return to her job, Buckley has to make sure her income stays below $4,143per month, otherwise she will no longer be eligible for shelter, and will have six months to leave. Those who work with homeless families are trying to get that income limit raised, because 200 percent of the federal poverty level is still way too low to afford most housing in this state. And it works against families trying to improve their situations and get back on their feet.

Massachusetts may be the best state in the country when it comes to housing homeless families. But this can’t be the best we can do.

Living in shelter is no picnic, and the road ahead difficult, but Erica Buckley and her kids finally have the help they’ve needed for so long.

Why on earth did we make it so hard for them?

‘I feel like I’m a burden. My credit score is nothing. My car will be repossessed at any time. I am $500 behind on my storage fees. There are days when I don’t want to get up and shower and get dressed. I save all my strength for these kids.’

ERICA BUCKLEY, homeless parent denied emergency shelter