In order to ensure that every family in Massachusetts has a safe place to sleep and live, our state provides emergency shelters for short-term support and housing subsidies to help low-income families find more permanent homes.
Our new report, “Shelter, Housing, and Homelessness Policy in Massachusetts” looks at both parts of the state’s multi-year “Housing First” effort, which has limited families’ access to shelter while modestly increasing affordable housing resources.
- Shelters: The need for shelter increased dramatically during the Great Recession, driving up the costs of shelter programs. Since that time, the state has imposed strict new limits on shelter access, forcing some families to live in unhealthy conditions before they can enter shelter.
- Housing Support: Over the past few years, the state has created—or expanded—a number of programs designed to help low-income and homeless families find housing and pay rent. In some cases, these supports may be too small and too time-limited to keep families housed over the medium and long-term.
Looking ahead, both the Governor and the House have proposed budgets for FY 2014 that keep the new limits on shelter eligibility, reduce funding for shelter, and provide only limited new funding for housing.
Want to know more? Read SHELTER, HOUSING, AND HOMELESSNESS POLICY IN MASSACHUSETTS
Hello,
Thank you for all of your efforts this past year to improve the lives of families who are participating in/trying to access Emergency Assistance (EA) shelter and resources!
As the Senate gets ready to release its version of the FY’14 budget in the next two weeks (on/around May 15th), we are asking organizations to take quick action to help protect families who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. In particular, we still are working to secure language that would require the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) to provide Emergency Assistance shelter and services to families who are at imminent risk of staying in places not meant for human habitation and are working to make sure that families who are timing out of the HomeBASE rental assistance program do not return to homelessness.
To do this, we are asking you to please:
Send a letter to Senate Leadership: Send a letter on your organization’s letterhead to Senate President Therese Murray and Senate Ways and Means Chair Stephen Brewer asking for these issues to be addressed in the Senate version of the FY’14 budget.
A template is attached below for your convenience, which you can add to or adjust to reflect your personalized message. Please send these letters in the week ahead, and encourage allied organizations to do the same.
Participate in a call-in day on May 7th: Contact your State Senator on Tuesday, May 7th (or if that is not possible, before then) to ask her/him to share their strong support for these initiatives with Senate Leadership and throughout the Senate budget process.
Senators can be reached via the State House switchboard at 617-722-2000 and identified via http://www.wheredoivotema.com.
Spread the word: Mobilize your staff, program participants, friends, et al. to contact their State Senator as well. The more calls, emails, letters, and visits with Senators on this issue, the better.
In addition to the template, attached is an EA fact sheet, with the proposed language on the back. Additional information on the EA campaign can be found here:
http://www.mahomeless.org/component/content/article/78-mch/185-ea-proposed-fy13-reg-changes
and information about the House budget process and outcomes can be found here. MLRI’s important new publication, “Out in the Cold: Homeless Children in Crisis in Massachusetts” can be accessed here. Please also see Representative Rushing’s amendment to the House budget for more details on the HomeBASE proposal:
http://www.malegislature.gov/Bills/188/House/H3400/Amendment/House/649/OriginalText
Your advocacy really is critical, as the House failed to include these protections in their budget proposal, which was debated last week. We need to get the Senate to include these changes, so that they have a chance of being adopted as part of the final FY’14 budget, which is set to take effect on July 1st.
Please reply to this email or call me if you are do send a letter and/or make calls, and please contact me with any additional questions.
Thank you so much!
In solidarity,
Kelly for the Coalition
DRAFT Template for Contacting Senate Leadership
(Place on your agency’s letterhead)
May XX, 2013
The Honorable Therese Murray
Senate President
State House, Room 332
Boston, MA 02133
The Honorable Stephen Brewer
Chairman, Senate Committee on Ways & Means
State House, Room 212
Boston, MA 02133
Re: Restoring Access to Emergency Assistance Shelter and Housing for Vulnerable Children and Families Experiencing Homelessness
Dear Senate President Murray and Chairman Brewer:
On behalf of (insert organization’s name here). I am writing to voice our concerns about the restrictions on access to Emergency Assistance (EA) family shelter that have been implemented by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) this fiscal year. Under these eligibility restrictions, vulnerable families are being turned away each day, even when they have no safe place to stay that night with their children. (Insert information here about your organization’s connection/experience with the issue.)
We are especially concerned about families who are at imminent risk of having to sleep in places not meant for human habitation with their children. Under the current regulations, most families must first actually stay in a place not meant for human habitation before becoming eligible for shelter. As a result of these policy changes, each night across the Commonwealth, families who previously would have been provided with the safety net of shelter are left to sleep in cars, vans, parks, beaches, campgrounds, outdoor porches, and other unsafe places before their shelter applications can be approved. Other families are turning up in emergency rooms in unprecedented numbers, burdening our already overwhelmed health care system. Some families are taking their chances and going home with strangers offering assistance, in the hopes that these hosts truly will be “Good Samaritans”. In fact, based on DHCD’s own numbers, since the implementation of these regulations in September 2012, at least 216 families were forced to sleep in places not meant for human habitation before they were placed in emergency shelter.
Annualizing DHCD’s own numbers, we estimate approximately 320 families per year would first have to stay in places not meant for human habitation before getting shelter if the language were not adopted. If each of these families were placed in shelter a few nights earlier to avoid this fate, the cost to the Commonwealth would be only about $75,000 – $100,000 per year. This small investment would have a large impact on children, families, local schools, hospitals, and the wider community.
We are grateful to you for this year’s increased investments in housing programs like the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP) and the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) homelessness prevention program. Unfortunately, those programs and investments have been unable to protect the families with children being denied emergency shelter who have no safe place to sleep tonight.
We ask you to please include language and funding in the Senate’s version of the fiscal year 2014 budget to:
• Provide access to EA shelter for families at imminent risk of having to stay in places not meant for human habitation (line item 7004-0101)
• Clarify that families who have stayed in three or more places in the last 30 days and have nowhere else to go should be eligible for EA shelter under the unstable housing/ health and safety risk sub-category (line item 7004-0101)
• Extend HomeBASE rental assistance benefits and/or other resources to families timing out of the program so that those more than 5,000 families do not have to return to homelessness (line item 7004-0108)
• Make the necessary increased investments in housing, homelessness prevention, and safety net programs in FY’14 (line items such as 7004-9024, 7004-9005, 7004-9316, and 4403-2000)
Without these language changes and investments, Massachusetts will be unable to reach our shared goal of preventing and ending homelessness here in the Commonwealth. Your leadership is needed so that we can preserve the safety net of shelter while making renewed investments in prevention and housing.
Thank you for your attention and support!
Sincerely,
Name
Title
Organization
Contact Information
The story of how the restrictions on family shelter (in my view, the biggest policy failure of the Patrick administration) came about is here.
Advocates for the families with children who find themselves sleeping in places “unfit for human habitation” are handing out this report. called Out in the Cold.
Do not be put off by the title. It’s terrible to be having to “prove” you and your children are truly homeless by sleeping on the beach in the spring too.
Find the report here
