Fewer than half the families in Mass. emergency shelters are new migrants

Fewer than half of the families currently staying in Massachusetts emergency shelters are migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, according to recent state data.

That's a change from last summer, when a little more than half the population in the shelter system were families recently arrived from other countries.

Gov. Maura Healey pointed to that data to defend her management of the beleaguered system in a recent interview with the New York Times. "It's hard to overcome the fear-mongering that's gone on," she said.

The shelters have been a frequent target of Republicans locally and nationally, who accuse the Healey administration of spending billions of dollars on services for new immigrants, rather than for vulnerable residents already in the state.

"The state is facing a fiscal crisis," MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale said in a statement. "Yet Democrats continue to throw taxpayer dollars at a broken system with no plan to fix it."

The state expects to spend over $1 billion funding the shelter system this fiscal year.

Massachusetts has an obligation to house homeless families and pregnant women under its unique right-to-shelter law. The state began to see more families arrive from countries like Haiti and Venezuela in late 2022 and 2023, straining the capacity of the emergency shelter system.

By 2024, the system was housing a peak of over 7,500 families, up from just over 3,400 in 2022. That led the governor to implement new restrictions, like shortening the amount of time families could stay in shelter and making applicants prove Massachusetts residency or an intent to stay in the state.

But even as the question of how to handle the influx of new migrants dominated the political debate, they rarely constituted a majority of the people using the system.

In December 2023, Republicans in the State Legislature blocked funding to the shelter system, saying the legislation should include measures to stem the flow of migrant families into Massachusetts. But state data show that even at that time, fewer than half the families in the system were migrants, refugees or asylum seekers.

This past summer, as the administration made headlines for banning migrants from sleeping on the floor of Logan Airport, state data show migrant families accounted for a slim majority — 51% — of the families in the system.

"I think the narrative is misleading," said Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. "If you look at the broader picture, it's always been a mix of newly arrived immigrant families, longer-term Massachusetts residents, as well as an unknown percentage of families who've had ties to Massachusetts, but come most recently from another state."

Healey is now facing another round of calls to limit the shelter system to people who've lived in Massachusetts for at least a year.

But Healey is standing by the reforms she's already enacted. The governor also said the overall number of families in the shelter system is steadily falling.

"The majority of folks in that system are actually Massachusetts families, they're not new immigrant families," Healey told the New York Times. "It's about what the public perception is."