Mass. shouldn’t walk away from its right-to-shelter law
The right-to-shelter law in Massachusetts is unique, requiring this state to do something no other state is obligated to do: Provide shelter and the basic necessities of life to homeless families and pregnant women — and, most recently, to migrant families streaming into Massachusetts.
However, Governor Maura Healey said this week the state can no longer automatically provide housing to migrant families and plans to limit the right to shelter to a total of 7,500 families. In other words, for all the billboards Healey put up in Florida and Texas earlier this year proclaiming “Massachusetts: For us all,” it turns out that “for us all” does not include all migrants who turn up in our own backyard. Viewing them as a costly burden is exactly what Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida hoped for when they started directing migrants to blue states like Massachusetts.
Beyond the politics of immigration, however, walking away from the rightto-shelter law also walks the state away from something bigger: a philosophy of caring about the less fortunate that has guided state policy for four decades.
The measure was signed into law in 1983 by then-governor Michael S. Dukakis after he identified the issue of homelessness as a priority. “We should be proud of the law. We should be proud of the fact that Massachusetts guarantees shelter for every man, woman, and child,” said Philip W. Johnston, who took up that agenda for Dukakis, first as his secretary of human services, and then as secretary of health and human services. “We were proud of it when we passed the law. Nothing has changed, except the political environment has changed.”
It sure has. Forty years ago, Dukakis took political heat for not doing enough about homelessness, despite his championship of the right-to-shelter law, and his commitment of other state assistance to the most vulnerable. Today, Healey faces political heat for doing too much — with “too much” defined as abiding by state law. While Healey insists she isn’t seeking to end the law, her announcement that the state can no longer guarantee shelter for homeless and migrant families beyond an arbitrary number is an obvious end run around it.
As currently written, the right-to-shelter law does not set any specific ceiling on how many people have the right it guarantees. It just calls upon the state to administer a program of emergency housing assistance “in a fair, just, and equitable manner” to “needy families with children and pregnant woman with no other children … at locations that are geographically convenient to families who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness.”
To be fair, Healey is not the first governor to try to curtail the expansive rights granted under the right-to-shelter law. The administration of her Republican predecessor, Charlie Baker, worked to make it harder for families to access shelters, said Kelly Turley, associate director at Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. But what Healey, a Democrat, is proposing would set a different kind of precedent. “This is the first time there is a plan to create a waiting list for access,” Turley said. Advocates like Turley worry about what that means for all vulnerable families in Massachusetts, not just migrant families. “Given the current housing crisis and the increasing number of families fleeing war and poverty, we want to make sure the right to shelter survives,” she said.
Advocates believe what Healey wants to do could be subject to legal challenge. But Healey, a former state attorney general, apparently believes that the current statute is “subject to appropriation,” which means the state is required to follow it as long as it has enough funding. If there is no funding, the right to shelter ceases to exist. In the meantime, the Healey administration is talking about somehow triaging families so that the those most in need are first to get shelter beds. But first, what about trying to expand shelter capacity, by at least doing an inventory of available buildings? The Healey administration said the state would exhaust the $325 million allocated for the shelter system by mid-January. How about asking the private sector and faith community to pitch in?
There is also talk about changing the law by limiting its protections to legal citizens or putting other limitations on it. Call the right-to-shelter law impractical, burdensome, and difficult to sustain and manage — but it is also compassionate, reflecting a society or commonwealth “founded on law and united by compact or tacit agreement of the people for the common good,” as the dictionary puts it.
Does Massachusetts really want to walk away from something that makes it unique, not in a bad way, but in the best, most noble way possible?
Beyond the politics of immigration, however, walking away from the right-to-shelter law also walks the state away from something bigger: a philosophy of caring about the less fortunate that has guided state policy for four decades.