State senator among activated Guard members
Deployed to help support shelter system in Mass.
State Senator John Velis, a Westfield Democrat and National Guard member, is among those who have been deployed to buttress the state’s overwhelmed emergency shelter system, where more than 3,000 families are currently living in state-subsidized hotels or motels.
Velis, who represents a swath of western Massachusetts, was activated last week “as part of [the Guard’s] mission to support the Commonwealth’s Emergency Assistance Shelter System,” his office confirmed in a statement Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Velis declined to give other details, including for how long Velis will be with the Guard or what his exact duties will be, citing restrictions on what he can say publicly while he’s currently activated. Officials at the Guard did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday.
His role, and timing, in the crisis are unique: Velis is the only member of the Massachusetts Senate currently in the National Guard, and will gain first-hand experience of the state’s response — and the complexities facing it — at a time when Governor Maura Healey is asking lawmakers for hundreds of millions more dollars to sustain the shelter system.
Federal Homeland Security officials will also be in Boston this week to assess the migrant crisis and ways to provide more federal support.
Velis, too, has been vocal about the state and federal response, including criticizing a proposal to house migrant families on the Westfield State campus as the state scrambled to find sites statewide. University and college campuses shouldn’t be considered “until every other single option,” he told a local television station last month.
Velis, who co-chairs the Legislature’s committee on veterans and federal affairs, was among dozens of lawmakers who signed a letter to Biden and Congressional leaders last month, urging them to move on bipartisan immigration reform.
There are few veterans or military personnel serving on Beacon Hill. In the Senate, Michael Rush, an Iraq War veteran, serves in the US Navy Reserves, while Senator John Cronin, a West Point grad, is a former US Army infantry officer. Jon Santiago, the state’s secretary of veterans’ services and a former state representative, is a major in the US Army Reserves. Less than 7 percent of the Massachusetts Legislature’s members were veterans as of 2021, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Healey in August said she was activating up to up to 250 National Guard members to help families living in the statesubsidized hotels, dozens of which didn’t have a contracted service provider, typically a nonprofit organization, to help families access medical care, find transportation, or organize food deliveries.
National Guard members began arriving at hotels and motels in mid-September, and as of Friday, were assisting nearly 1,100 families across the state, according to state data. More than 6,800 families in total were in the emergency shelter system as of Friday, 3,100 of which were living in a hotel or motel.
When Healey took office in January, there were fewer than 400 families in hotel shelters.
She estimated last month that roughly half of the people being housed in the system are immigrants, whose arrival in Massachusetts, like it has elsewhere in the country, has strained local resources and amplified criticism, including from Healey, of the Biden administration’s response.
Local officials have said they’ve routinely had to scramble to assist arriving families — sometimes, they say, with little help. Healey, like other governors, has been pressing Biden for more federal assistance to address the influx of migrants here, twice writing to the Biden administration to implore officials to quickly grant work permits and to send money to help the state provide necessary resources such as housing and transportation.
In the interim, she sent the Legislature a proposal last month to infuse $250 million into the shelter system. It’s a significant amount given she signed a budget in August that dedicated roughly $325 million to the state’s emergency assistance and shelter system for the entire fiscal year.
The Legislature has yet to act on the request, which Healey folded into a larger spending bill designed to close the books on the fiscal year that ended June 30.