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A state commission charged with studying the emergency shelter system in Massachusetts has proposed cutting costs in response to a $1 billion tab for those services this fiscal year, including by reducing the use of expensive hotels and motels. A draft final report on the shelter system the group released largely sidesteps proposing specific changes, and instead calls on state officials to make family homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring — broad themes that could guide reforms in the face of massive costs and increased demand. Gov.
Healey administration officials have estimated that about half the families in the shelter system are migrants from other countries and the other half Massachusetts residents. The draft report calls on the governor to take “steps to reduce costs within the (emergency assistance shelter) system and increase efficiency,” and minimize the use of pricey hotels and motels, used to rapidly increase shelter system capacity. Hotels and motels, which can cost taxpayers hundreds of dollars a night for a single family, make up about 46% of the shelter capacity in Massachusetts, according to the report.
The document, due to the Legislature by Dec. 1, stops short of offering a detailed breakdown for bringing down the price of emergency shelters, which are projected to cost $1 billion annually over the next several fiscal years. Lt.
Gov. Kim Driscoll, who chairs the commission that authored the report, passed any major shelter-system changes on to state lawmakers, contending they can decide “if they want to figure out more specifics on what’s the hard boundary and what’s the soft boundary.” The overall review of the state’s overburdened shelter system comes as several cities, including Lowell, Brockton and Fall River, have dealt with both hosting a considerable migrant population and an increasingly intractable domestic homeless crisis.
Lowell certainly qualifies as a ground zero for both the state’s migrant and homelessness dilemma. One of those expensive hotels referenced in the report, Lowell’s Inn & Conference Center, a nine-story complex formerly the property of UMass Lowell, was taken over by the state to house a large population of migrants, predominantly Haitians, who fled from political unrest and violence in their home country. Many found their way to Lowell, with approximately 200 families made up of some 700 individuals — many of them children — landing at the emergency assistance shelter on Warren Street in the city’s downtown.
While migrants have been successfully ensconced in a comfortable environment, offering both housing and three meals daily, that can’t be said of the city’s homeless population, for which city officials have struggled to find a solution. The deteriorating condition of the city’s main homeless shelter, the Lowell Transitional Living Center on Middlesex Street, has called its future into question. The City Council has discussed how to address the growing homeless crisis, with the shelter at the crux of many of those conversations.
Councilor Paul Ratha Yem even asked City Manager Tom Golden to look at an alternative site, citing economic and safety concerns. “This motion is a plea and a request from businesses owners in the area,” Yem said. “It’s a plea and a request from parents of children attending Lowell Community Charter Public School .
.. also from the parents of children attending STEM Academy.
” In his comments to Yem’s motion, Mayor Dan Rourke called the shelter “a dump inside and out,” and said that the shelter residents “deserve somewhere better.” But where, and for how many, since the LTLC —- the largest shelter in the state north of Boston — can’t accommodate all those who, either by necessity or preference, now live on the street? And that, of course, has only exacerbated the problem. Lowell took a major step to stem this crisis, by enacting an ordinance that effectively forces these individuals off the street.
Lowell and Brockton city councils both voted Tuesday night to ban people from camping in public spaces. The new rules represent coordinated attempts to crack down on homeless encampments. The 8-1 Lowell City Council vote — with Councilors Sokhary Chau and Yem absent — specifically bans sleeping and camping in public spaces when shelters are available.
According to WBUR, the ordinance also requires the city to offer shelter to violators, who may face fines or arrest if they refuse to leave or re-establish campsites. Since 2023, the city has executed a series of encampment sweeps, which moved many of the homeless toward the Back Central neighborhood in which the South Common, a 22.5-acre park, is located.
That area has long been identified as a hub for drug activity, fights, overdoses, and gunfire. On Oct. 18, police disclosed they had made 214 arrests, while responding to 604 incidents since June 5 in the JAM neighborhood around South Common — encompassing Jackson, Appleton, Middlesex, and other nearby streets.
Supporters of the measure say the ordinance speaks to a quality of life issue that has negatively impacted nearby businesses, their customers, as well as a federally run low-income housing project. So, in Lowell we have all the elements that the state commission says should be addressed — the unsustainable cost of housing migrants and homeless residents in hotels and making homelessness a rare, brief, and non-recurring circumstance. It’s a tall order, but one whose time has come.
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